A moving and emotional commemoration

For 38 years workers have been gathering under the West Gate Bridge to remember that moment, when at 11.50am on 15 October 1970 a 111-metre span collapsed sending 35 men to their death.

How profound, asked one speaker, that only last week medical tests on workers employed on the bridge confirmed that they had been exposed to unsafe levels of lead. This oversight by the employer, John Holland, the same company that built the bridge and has worn the accusation of neglect ever since the bridge came down in 1970, led to a four-day stoppage.

It was a moving and emotional commemoration, as they always are, made even more significant by the presence of Bob Setka, who rode the bridge down in 1970. Metals secretary Gary Robb told of how his father attended a stream of funerals of men he'd known. There also at the commemoration was ETU shop steward Daniel Previti and his mates, who are involved in upgrading the lighting on the bridge. The boys handed over a cheque of $400 to the commemoration committee 

Little could anyone have imagined that only moments before they began discussing the safety problems faced by workers on worksites then and now a worker had died on a worksite in Coburg.  At 11am Thomas Kelly had been struck by machinery and knocked into wet concrete. Is it any wonder OH&S is such a priority amongst workers, and its interpretation by some bosses and the ABCC a source of frustration and anger? 

There was not one paragraph in the newspapers about the West Gate commemoration.