Remember the dead. Fight for the living. Workers’ Memorial Day 2025
Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 130 No 3, 23 May 2025, page no 6.
Workers’ Memorial Day is an International Day of Remembrance that this year was held on Monday 28 April, honouring those who went to work and never came home.
This year, Queensland unions held a vigil outside Queensland Parliament House and invited MPs to attend the service. In the past year, there were 39 work-related fatalities in Queensland. This figure remains too high, with every worker deserving the right to go to work and return home unharmed from their employment.
The vigil followed the WorkSafe Queensland Workers’ Memorial breakfast service held earlier in the day, where family members of victims of work-related fatalities reflected on loved ones lost at work.
WorkSafe Queensland keeps an honour roll of remembrance for all work-related fatalities, which demonstrates the tragedy and loss caused after any work-related fatality, but even more so when many workers continue to die very young (www.worksafe.qld.gov.au/queensland-workers-memorial/honour-roll).
Every time a worker dies, there is so much pain and suffering for their family, friends, workmates, and their community. That is why Queensland unions always strive to make work safer and hold employers who breach their duty of care to workers accountable.
This work will continue until we see all preventable fatalities reduced and eliminated through regulation, enforcement, education, and cultural changes.
This year, like all years, we remember the dead and fight for the living.