A symbolic but significant gesture took place on Workers’ Day, and it deserves much more attention than it has been given.

Last Monday, Isabelle Bonnici laid a wreath at the foot of the Workers’ Monument in Msida, in memory of all the workers who lost their life while doing their job.

Isabelle Bonnici is the mother of Jean Paul Sofia, a 20-year-old man who died last December when a building under construction collapsed in Kordin.

The gesture, according to a statement released by a group of friends close to Jean Paul Sofia’s family, was to emphasise the importance of safeguarding the life and health of all workers who, with so much perseverance and sacrifice, provide a living for their families.

In Malta, Workers’ Day has become too political and partisan, and little attention is given to the real significance of the day in question. In many other countries, the event brings to the fore issues that are worker-related.

An Associated Press report on the activities around the world held last Monday had the following introduction: “People squeezed by inflation and demanding economic justice took to streets across Asia, Europe and the Americas on Monday to mark May Day, in an outpouring of worker discontent not seen since before the worldwide COVID-19 lockdowns. French police charged at radical protesters and troublemakers smashing bank and shop windows and setting fires as unions pushed the president to scrap a higher retirement age. South Koreans pleaded for higher wages as did others around Latin America. Spanish lawyers demanded the right to take days off. Migrant domestic workers in Lebanon marched in a country plunged into economic crisis.”

Here in Malta, we had a Nationalist Party protest march which targeted mostly the now-rescinded agreement the government had reached to have three public hospitals passed on to the private sector. But, as said earlier, it was a partisan activity. Although the issues which led to protests in many countries are singular to that nation, and here we state that protests should always be kept peaceful, there are others which we share with them, such as inflation and its effects on our way of life.

Elsewhere, too, Workers’ Day is used to highlight workers’ plights. In Italy, for example, data is published on work-related accidents, and the media also concentrates on how much more needs to be done to improve conditions of work.

This is what, probably, Isabelle Bonnici had in mind when she laid that wreath. She wanted to make yet another gesture to push for a public inquiry which would be aimed to uncover much more than a magisterial inquiry can do about the death of her son. The government has so far refused to accept her plea.

She wanted to say that a job is not only about the pay at the end of the month, but it is also about safety. She has lost a son because something went terribly wrong on that construction site. Like her, there are many other families who lost a loved one on the place of work, and whose lives were altered because an accident took their husband, wife, son, daughter, father or mother away from them.

Isabelle Bonnici, and all those whose lives were shattered from one moment to another, deserve answers.