Memorial ceremony for workers killed on the job

As usual, the mourners, one by one, cast a single red rose into the Delaware River, one rose for each person killed on the job during the last year.

As usual, like every Workers' Memorial Day ceremony, the petals floated away, bright spots of red on dark water - 144 roses this year, one for each person killed in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware from March 2014 to March 2015.

As usual, a bagpiper played "Amazing Grace," the mournful strains floating across Penn's Landing. Family members wept, remembering the fathers, sons, mothers, and daughters who left for work and never returned.

And as usual, there were stirring calls to action - more laws, more vigilance, more punishment for employers who fail to keep their workers safe.

But Friday's ceremony seemed more poignant because of a cruel coincidence - a spate of recent deaths, with four workers dying in less than two weeks.

Jeffrey Bayers, 60, a Philadelphia Parking Authority employee, died Wednesday when he was pinned under a tow truck.

Funeral services were held Tuesday for electrician Joe Iacovino, 36, who was burned on a job at the King of Prussia Mall on April 13 and died two days later.

Stagehand Tony Haines, 61, died April 12, when he fell as he was tearing down a set after comedian Jerry Seinfeld's show at the Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City.

Carpenter Benjamin Hattendorf, 42, died April 17 after falling off a construction site in West Philadelphia.

"He fell 100 feet," said Barbara Rahke, who heads the Philadelphia Area Project on Occupational Safety and Health, which organized Friday's event, one of many around the nation held on various days to commemorate Workers' Memorial Day, officially set for April 28.

Hattendorf's death particularly affected Rahke. From her office, she can see the construction site where Hattendorf died. That morning, he ate breakfast in her building's cafeteria. "It's really unbelievable," she said.

Friday's sad ceremony at Penn's Landing followed breakfast and speeches at Sheet Metal Workers Local 19's banquet hall.

Pam Susi, program director at the Center for Construction Research and Training, talked about how important safety standards are to protect people, some of whom die years later from illnesses caused by exposure to dust or chemicals on the job.

Michael Phillips, president of United Auto Workers Local 8275, said Philadelphia labor leaders would begin a push to urge district attorneys to criminally prosecute employers whose unsafe workplaces lead to deaths.

"These people need to start going to jail," he said.

And later, speaking at the ceremony, Rick Bloomingdale, president of Pennsylvania's AFL-CIO, said legislation would soon be introduced in Harrisburg to extend to state employees safety protections available to workers under the federal Occupational Health and Safety Act.

For all the speechmaking, nothing was as moving, though, as the individual stories of the workers who died - some told by families, some written on placards carried in a sad procession from the union hall to the ceremony at Penn's Landing.

"At least he's not forgotten," Mary "Peg" Borger said through tears. "Nobody should have to go to work and not come home."

Borger's husband, James, a mechanic at the Philadelphia Zoo, died Sept. 29 when a golf cart fell on him.

There was a placard for Joyce Craig, who died on Dec. 9, the first female Philadelphia firefighter killed on the job.

Another placard honored Theresa Hunt, the caseworker shot by a patient at Mercy Fitzgerald's Wellness Center in July.

Holding a placard for her son, Kevin, a SEPTA inspector struck by a train Nov. 5, 2009, Janet Sparks also cuddled her son's grandchild, Adrian, eight months old.

Her message to the group? Despite tragedy, she said, "life goes on."