P-04-410
: A Permanent Memorial to Wales’s Workers
Petition
wording:
We call on the National Assembly for Wales to urge the Welsh
Government to fund, either directly or through the Arts Council of
Wales, a permanent workers memorial.
Last year, eleven people died at work in Wales. Death and
injury at work loom large in Wales’s history. The
tragedy at Gleision last year was a reminder for many of the
horrors of the past. Yet despite the way that workers’
deaths have shaped Wales’s past and continue even today,
there is precious little to show that we remember them. Some
trades unions marked the International Workers Memorial Day with
rallies and so on, but it was just a day, soon over and
forgotten. It is surely time for a permanent memorial for all
Welsh workers. Some sites of past disasters have memorials,
such as Senghenydd and Gresford, but there is nothing to mark the
lives of the many others who have died at work. A permanent
workers’ memorial would show our respects to all these
workers, and it would also be a salutary reminder of the importance
of much-maligned health and safety.
It’s the fifth anniversary of the 2007 Corporate Manslaughter
Act this year - how good it would be for the Welsh Government to
announce, this year, that it was establishing a permanent memorial
to be revealed in 2014, the 40th anniversary of the Health and
Safety at Work Act. The Bevan Foundation is an independent charity
(no. 104191) concerned with social justice in Wales. We are
changing Wales through research, debate in our publications and
events. For more information see
www.bevanfoundation.org
Petition
raised by: Bevan
Foundation
Date
petition first considered by Committee: 2
October 2012
Number of
signatures: 23