MOURNING THE WORKER-DAY JOB

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"Today I challenge you to find a news article, and to write a poem using (mostly, if not only) words from the article! You can repeat them, splice them, and rearrange them however you like. Although the vocabulary may be “just the facts,” your poem doesn’t have to be — it doesn’t even have to be about the subject of the news article itself." 


So says the prompt at NaPoWriMo today. I'd like to try this one, but have to be out the door en route to Vancouver in about an hour. Van is about eight hours away, driving, so I think I'll just do a little article, and fast!

So, back to my email and into the trash where I just sent CBC News and the Globe and Mail after pursuing the headlines.

From CBC, the first few paragraphs of an article on Workplace Safety:

"Today is the National Day of Mourning to remember workers injured, killed or afflicted with an occupational illness while on the job. And if it turns out to be an average day for workplace safety in Canada, three workers will die.

In 2012, the most recent year for official statistics, there were 977 workplace-related fatalities in Canada, according to the Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada. But those numbers only cover workplaces where workers can receive provincial compensation benefits.

"Hundreds more die from under-reported illnesses and occupational diseases that go unrecognized in the compensation systems," says the Canadian Labour Congress, which first established the National Day of Mourning exactly 30 years ago this year.

The number of work-related injuries has fallen dramatically since the late 1980s, according to federal government and AWCBC statistics. In both 1986 and 1987, there were almost 50 work-related injuries per 1,000 employed workers in Canada, according to federal government calculations. By 2010 that number had fallen to about 15 per 1,000.

Health and social service industries accounted for the highest number of injuries on the job, according to the AWCBC. That's 17 per cent of the 245,365 workplace injuries in Canada in 2012.

Manufacturing was second  and construction third on the injuries graph."

Work-related injuries falling

The AWCBC numbers, which only cover workplaces under the workers' compensation systems, suggest that ratio likely continued to drop in 2011 and 2012.

The labour movement attributes much of that drop to improving health and safety standards in the workplace.

Nevertheless, an average of 672 workers were injured every day on the job in Canada in 2012, as counted by the AWCBC."

And now, without further ado, my poem:

Mourning the Worker-Day Job

Under reported, unrecognized, falling,
cover the numbers, the worker-day job
related to systems' continued construction
that cover the benefits, worker-day job
hundreds and hundreds will die without service
hundred and hundreds will die every day
hundreds and hundreds will die under standards
cover the injuries, the worker-day job
fatalities recent, fatalities counted
statistics drop health to to the graph of the day
there the numbers and numbers, official and under
reported and recent, they die every day
statistics drop service related to illness
statistics drop health on the worker-day job
counted by standards of average service
hundreds and hundreds will die every day

And that is as far as I'm going with this one. "Not her best work," is how it would be marked, if it were to be marked, but it isn't, and I have to finish packing, and I'm out of here, so have a good one and for heaven's sake play safe out there!

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