The Labor Day parade is a beloved tradition in Pittsburgh, a celebration and recognition of the union workers who forge the steel in our skyscrapers, mine the coal that powers our factories, teach our children and care for our seniors. In my home, we always made a special point to recognize the transit workers — like my dad — who operate the trains and buses that get folks where they need to go.

This year we’re recognizing Labor Day with heavy hearts, in remembrance of the two steelworkers who didn’t make it home from their shift at the Clairton Coke Works a few weeks ago, Timothy Quinn and Steven Menefee.

It’s not enough to simply eulogize the workers who lost their lives. We must take action to make workplaces in Pennsylvania safer. That’s what the Shapiro-Davis administration is doing, by reforming our workers’ compensation law to ensure emergency responders with post-traumatic stress receive the coverage they deserve and the treatment they need. We’re also pushing to cover annual cancer screenings for firefighters, we’ve stepped up enforcement of child labor law violations and we’re cracking down on worker misclassification.

These efforts all fit a common theme: to make Pennsylvania work sites the safest in the country.

It took more than 100 years of American innovation and union organizing to win the protections workers have today. However, after less than nine months in office, the Trump administration is rolling back worker rights and making workplaces more dangerous.

It was during the Gilded Age that unions began to organize for safer working conditions and better pay. In those days it was risky, to a worker’s health and income, to stand up to the robber barons, who were raking in the profits and weren’t eager to give up any ground to workers.

Here in southwestern Pennsylvania in 1892, clashes between Pinkerton agents and Homestead steel mill workers turned bloody. Across the country, workers continued to fight for fair wages, safer workplaces and a better future. Facing a growing crisis of a nationwide railway strike and eager to appear friendlier to working-class voters, President Grover Cleveland made Labor Day a federal holiday in 1894.

It took until the 1930s for federal legislation to guarantee workers the right to organize and bargain collectively, to establish a national minimum wage and to ban child labor. The Occupational Safety and Health Act, which protects worker health and safety in private companies, only became law in 1970, a little more than half a century ago.

These and other vital protections are at risk as Trump slashes funding and fires workers who enforce federal workplace safety and wage laws and regulations. These cuts will have real consequences that hurt Pennsylvanians.

This is not a hypothetical — the effects are already being felt in our commonwealth. For example, the federal agency that is investigating the deadly incident at the Clairton Coke Works is the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, which is supposed to present their findings and make recommendations that prevent future accidents. The Trump administration is planning to close down the board and zeroing out its funding by the end of the month, making it impossible to complete their report and share their recommendations.

That’s just one example of how President Trump is attacking workers. His regime is cutting the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which funds safety training for such dangerous jobs as fishing, logging and farming. His Labor department is trying to take away federal minimum wage and overtime protections for home health care workers and organizing rights for farmworkers. His administration is stonewalling a new rule to protect miners from black lung disease and hold coal companies accountable.

The AFL-CIO recently issued a report that found nearly 400 workers die every single day in America from workplace injuries and occupational illnesses. That’s simply unacceptable.

But now the Trump administration is taking us backward, to the Gilded Age that Trump so admires, when workers had little power and no protections.

This Labor Day, I’m proud to stand with the workers and unions that helped make America truly great.

Austin Davis is lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania.

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