EDMONTON – As working people throughout the world pause on April 28 to remember workers killed or injured on the job, members of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees will think especially of two members who died on the job in 2001.

"AUPE members who are working on Sunday, the official Canadian Day of Mourning, are asked to observe a moment of silence to remember John Graham and Elsie George," said union President Dan MacLennan.

Graham, 60 at the time of his death in a plane crash while fighting a forest fire, was a 35-year member of AUPE Local 5, which represents forestry officers and others in the conservation field.

Graham and the pilot of the spotter aircraft were assisting with the fight against a major fire about 100 kilometres northeast of Red Earth Creek in northwestern Alberta on May 5, 2001, when the small aircraft went down. Both perished in the crash.

Elsie George, a 30-year member of Local 42 at the Alberta Hospital Ponoka, died on the job on June 4, 2001, when she suffered a heart attack during her night shift.

"We remember our two colleagues with sadness, as we do working people like them throughout the world," MacLennan said.

"We are very thankful that so far in 2002 no AUPE members have died on the job," he added.

The Canadian government passed the Workers Mourning Day Act in 1991 to officially recognize the sacrifice by working people killed or injured on the job. The day is now marked in about 90 countries worldwide.

"Working people should use this occasion to honour their colleagues, but also to recommit themselves to striving for safe conditions in their places of work," said AUPE Union Representative Grace Dykau, who specializes in workplace safety issues.

"Without vigilance by working people, both in their own workplaces and in the legislative realm, work will continue for many to be a risky activity," she noted.

In 1991, the first year the Day of mourning was observed, 86 workers died on the job in Alberta. In 2000, 118 workers were killed.

In the 10 years for which there are figures from the Alberta Workers Compensation Board, 977 Alberta workers died because of unsafe working conditions, Dykau noted.

In 1991, she said, the WCB had 55,162 workplace injury claims filed. In 2000, there were 146,361 – an increase of more than 250 per cent.

"Yet according to the Alberta Public Accounts and Statistics Canada in this same time period we’ve seen public spending on occupational health and safety decline from $10.61 per worker to $4.36," she said.

"Clearly, as a society we need to recommit ourselves to workplace safety," Dykau concluded.


For more information, contact:
Dan MacLennan, President, AUPE, 780-930-3301 or 780-910-8392 (cellular phone)
Grace Dykau, Union Representative, AUPE, 780-930-3343
David Climenhaga, Communications Director, AUPE, 780-930-3311 or 780-717-2943 (cellular phone)

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