International Worker's Memorial Day Event In Manchester Announced

International Workers’ Memorial Day takes place annually on 28 April.

 

For the 2026 IWMD events, the ITUC global theme focuses on psychosocial hazards at work, including stress, working hours, job insecurity, bullying, and the mental health impacts of work organisation.

 

Greater Manchester Hazards Centre has issued details of this year's event next week at their Manchester event:

 

In 2026, the global trade union movement, coordinated by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), is marking Workers’ Memorial Day with a focus on the urgent and growing crisis of psychosocial hazards at work, highlighted through its global campaign at 28april.org.

 

Psychosocial hazards—including work‑related stress, excessive workloads, long and unpredictable hours, job insecurity, bullying, harassment, workplace violence, and the misuse of technology and surveillance—are among the leading causes of work‑related ill health worldwide. These risks contribute to mental ill health, cardiovascular disease, burnout, and suicide, yet are preventable.

Despite this, they are still too often ignored or treated as individual resilience issues rather than recognised as health and safety failures rooted in how work is organised.

 

The ITUC warns that deregulation, weak enforcement, insecure work, climate‑related pressures, and technological intensification are driving a global rise in psychosocial harm.

 

Greater Manchester Hazards Centre will mark International Workers’ Memorial Day with a public event at Lincoln Square in central Manchester 0n 28th April from 11.30am.

We will be remembering those we have lost and standing with workers currently experiencing harm caused by work-related stress, pressure, and insecurity.

 

Will at Greater Manchester Hazards Centre, said:
“Psychosocial hazards are real workplace hazards. Stress, bullying, harassment, overwork, and insecure work are killing workers just as the  physical dangers are. This Workers’ Memorial Day, we honour those we have lost and recommit ourselves to changing the way work is organised so that it protects, rather than damages, people’s health.”

International Workers’ Memorial Day is also a call for action. In line with the ITUC’s 2026 campaign, Greater Manchester Hazards Centre calls on employers, regulators, and governments to:

• Explicitly recognise psychosocial hazards as workplace health and safety risks
• Conduct effective risk assessments addressing work‑related stress and mental health
• Prevent bullying, harassment, violence, and discrimination at work
• Regulate excessive working hours and unsafe workloads
• Strengthen enforcement of health and safety legislation
• Ensure protection for all workers, including those in insecure and outsourced work

Psychosocial harm at work is not inevitable. Strong laws, strong enforcement, and strong unions save lives. On 28 April, we remember those who have died and recommit to fighting for safe, healthy and dignified work for all.

 

The long‑standing message of Workers’ Memorial Day — “Remember the Dead. Fight for the Living.” — reminds us that behind every statistic is a worker whose life has been permanently changed or cut short by unsafe work, including unsafe systems of work that damage mental health.

 

For further information about the day's event, click the image above.

 

Other events will be held around the country see: https://www.megaphone.org.uk/events