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I think it’s just human nature to believe that truly horrible things only happen to other people. That somehow, by virtue of being an average person with an average life and average dreams, the law of averages will also – somehow – mostly round out the devastating blows, too.
If you’ve had a sudden, traumatic loss erupt in your life, you know just how jarring, just how cruel, the wake-up call can be. If the loss happened on the job, you know the true weight and significance of protecting workers’ health and safety. You know the price paid for the lack of it is too high.
A husband. A father. A son or daughter. A nephew. A grandparent. A brother. A mother.
The true loss from each workplace injury, illness, and death can’t be measured in a balance sheet or reported statistics. It certainly isn’t counter-weighted by a courtroom conviction or a sizable fine.
When it happens to you — or your people, or your person — the averages no longer round out the odds. Devastating workplace injury, illness or death is no longer something that happens to other people, because it happened to you.
Each and every workplace tragedy sets off a cascade of effects throughout the personal and professional lives of everyone affected: worker, family, friends, co-workers, first responders. The list is long. The results are devastating and long-term. And none of us are immune. Workplace injury, occupational disease, and traumatic fatalities can happen at any workplace, to any worker, and to any family. The laws, standards, codes, and best practices for occupational health and safety were developed to protect us. They were borne from unquantifiable loss and pain.
A moment in time can change everything. Workplace health and safety is about protecting all of us. It is our right. We owe it to each other.
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I really had never thought about workplace tragedies much. Oh, you heard the news and would think that’s awful, that poor person, that poor family. Then in 2003, we became that news story, those unfortunate people, that devastated family when our son John was killed at work. A workplace tragedy had happened to us. We were no longer in “la, la land”. Our moment in time had happened and we were changed forever.
That’s exactly it, Marj. Thank you for articulating it so well.
As a Nurse I dealt with death all the time. Seeing families devastated by losing a loved one, hearing about workplace accidents and the young lives lost and those affected, dealing with it was part of my career. BUT on Jan 13, 2005 I was no longer a Nurse dealing with someone else’s loss, I was the mother of Jonathan who became one of those young losses, one of those young lives cut to short, one of those families affected by the loss of a workplace fatality. We became the family who was going through the most devastating loss anyone could go through and my son became a statistic that we only read about or whom I would care for. We became one of those families whose lives were changed forever!
It’s so unreal, and doesn’t seem possible, does it? I’m so sorry, Arlene. I wish we didn’t know this.
I was a health and safety rep at the company I was working for. I had been involved in several investigations, been to the conferences, took the training, and thought I knew about Health and Safety and the effects of unsafe work and conditions. On July 10, 2003 what I thought I knew came to be my reality. My family and I have been dealing with the effects for 13 years now.
I am sorry for your loss. Thank you for sharing.