(Radio Iowa) – Today (Friday) is Workers Memorial Day and labor groups across the state have ceremonies planned to honor those who lost their lives on the job in the last year. The Iowa Labor Center’s Paul Iverson says year-after-year there is one connection between the deaths.  “Every year, so many things that were so senseless that could easily have been prevented if proper safety practices were followed,” he says. Fifty workers died on the job in Iowa in the last year. They were as young as 20 and as old as 84. Iverson has been putting together small obituaries for the last six years for each worker who died in the state in an attempt to remember they are not just statistics.

“All of those numbers you see are real people. That had real lives. There’s a real human cost and hoping that policymakers take that into account,” he says. Among the 50 people who died on the job, nine were from injuries related to a fall. Around 10 were struck by cars, and several were hit by distracted drivers.