Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette photos
	United Mine Workers of America Presidetn CecilE. Roberts speask about miners yesterday at the ceremonies in Market Square, Downtown.
	Chuck Knisell of Cumberland Mine in Kirby, Pa., uses a sledgehammer to ring a bell as names of miners who have died in the past year are read during a Worker's Memorial Day ceremony yesterday in Market Square.

National and local labor leaders gathered with about 250 members of various unions in Market Square yesterday to remember workers killed on the job in the past year and to encourage unions to push for heightened safety standards and protection in the workplace.

The rally was held as part of Workers' Memorial Day, which commemorates the creation of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and came a day after publication of a letter detailing the final hours of the 12 miners killed in a January explosion at the nonunion Sago Mine in Tallmansville, W.Va.

Cecil E. Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America and the rally's keynote speaker, said the country must make occupational safety a top priority.

"We can put a man on the moon," he said. "We can launch a cruise missile, have it go 50 miles and fly through the right window of one of Saddam Hussein's castles. But we can't put a communications system in a mine here in the United States. We don't have enough mine rescue teams in America. And we do nothing about it."

The 19 men killed on the job in Allegheny County in the past year, including state police Cpl. Joseph R. Pokorny, were represented by wooden crosses placed on the stage's stairs. A black tombstone stood on the top step, bearing the names of the Sago victims and 13 other men killed this year in coal mines across the country.

The name of each man was read aloud, followed by the ringing of a bell struck with a sledgehammer by Chuck Knisell, a coal miner who used to work at Sago and knew all 12 men who died there.

Mr. Knisell, of Kirby, Greene County, now works at a unionized mine in Cumberland County, and said he hopes future Workers' Memorial Day events can be more upbeat.

"It's good to remember the people who have died, but it's a shame we have to do this," he said.

"Hopefully, we can come here in a few years and celebrate the labor movement, not remember people's deaths."