Labor leaders honor Key Bridge victims on Workers Memorial Day: ‘We have more work to do’

Father Ty Hullinger echoed the words of labor activist Mary Harris “Mother” Jones during a Sunday ceremony honoring the lives of workers killed on the job: “Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”

The pastor of Transfiguration Catholic Community in Pigtown proceeded to offer a prayer for the six workers killed just over a month ago after the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed below them. Joined by labor leaders and local officials at a solemn ceremony at Baltimore’s Middle Branch Park, Hullinger went on to call for the protection of all laborers facing unsafe working conditions.

Sunday was Workers Memorial Day, an annual day of remembrance for laborers killed or hurt on the job, started in 1989 by the AFL-CIO. Thousands of workers nationwide are estimated by the organization of labor unions to be injured or killed on the job each day, and the issue became front and center in Baltimore last month after the six men, all employees of Brawner Builders, died while working an overnight shift filling potholes on the bridge that was struck by a cargo ship early that morning.

“It’s a very painful reminder that we have more work to do,” Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, said at Sunday’s ceremony. Behind her were six wreaths representing Miguel Luna, Alejandro “Alex” Hernandez Fuentes, Maynor Yassir Suazo Sandoval, Dorlian Ronial Castillo Cabrera, José Mynor López and Carlos Hernández. “Six workers who went out to a shift to do a tough job in the middle of the night, and they never came home again,” Shuler said. She and other officials later laid those wreaths in the Patapsco River, where a few miles east, the bodies of four of those workers had been recovered and two more were still being sought.

Last year, local labor officials held a Workers Memorial Day ceremony that focused on six other construction workers who were killed in a high-speed crash on Interstate 695. Over the past five years, the Maryland Department of Labor has investigated approximately two workplace deaths each month, according to state Labor Secretary Portia Wu. Construction workers make up only 5% of the workers in Maryland but about 30% of the state’s workplace deaths, she said.

“There’s much more we need to do,” Wu said at Sunday’s ceremony, noting that work zone safety changes are already visible after the Baltimore Beltway crash last year. “We cannot continue to have health and safety violations and workers’ lives being put at risk every day.”

Wu’s department includes the state’s occupational safety agency, which is probing Brawner Builders’ adherence to labor laws in an investigation prompted by the March 26 bridge collapse. After investigating last year’s deadly crash on I-695, Maryland Occupational Safety and Health issued citations to the State Highway Administration and Concrete General for signage violations that were unrelated to the collision. The National Transportation Safety Board is also investigating the bridge collapse and last year’s crash.

“These unsung heroes have paved the way for us to commute to work, reunite with family and traverse our communities,” said Alex Vazquez, national organizing director for CASA, an immigrant advocacy nonprofit. “They toil relentlessly, often in the dead of night, amidst freezing temperatures and throughout the unforgiving pandemic — forsaking their own comfort for our convenience.”

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott was also in attendance at the ceremony. “As we honor these six individuals that we lost, every other worker that we lost, it should push us all to be better each and every day,” he said.