Every day, an estimated 8,000 people die due to unsafe and unhealthy working conditions according to a report from the International Labour Organization (ILO) published in October 2025.
About 1,000 workers die from accidents and 7,000 from work-related diseases, accounting for 5–7% of all deaths globally.
They die because an employer decided profit mattered more, because a warning was ignored, because no one had the power to stop the production line.
International Workers Memorial Day is for them. The ones who left for work and never came home, the ones who came home slowly, poisoned by asbestos or broken by stress. Their names should be on our lips; their deaths should be a call to action. A worker with the right to speak saves lives – a union rep who can walk the floor, ask the difficult questions and refuse to be brushed aside can save lives.
Workplaces with union safety reps are safer
Workplaces with union safety reps are safer. The TUC has shown it. RoSPA’s current commission on OSH skills confirms it. When workers have a collective voice, injuries drop, near misses get reported, risk assessments actually happen. We have forty years of proof since the 1977 Safety Representatives Regulations were won.
Those reps are volunteers. They step up because they know that without them, someone gets hurt. They are democracy in action – elected by their co-workers, accountable to them, and feared by bosses who cut corners.
PR gives trade unionists a voice
Now look at our political system, the same principle applies. When people are divided into small constituencies, when a minority of votes delivers total power, voices get ignored. Groups that don’t fit the safe seat model are left out, their concerns become invisible, just like a worker without a rep becomes invisible.
Proportional representation is the same demand: a voice that cannot be silenced. A representative who actually answers to you, no wasted votes, no one left to face the boss alone.
This is the fight, the fight for safety at work is the fight for democracy. Both rest on the same truth – if you can’t speak, you can be sacrificed.
On this Workers Memorial Day, we fight for every worker who deserves a rep who has their back – and we fight for an electoral system that gives every community a voice. Trade unionists who know that democracy doesn’t end at the workplace, it begins there. Because when workers are heard, workers stay alive.