Alberta
• New Health and Safety Legislation Will Further Compromise Workers' Rights
- Peggy Askin
• Debate in the Legislature

Jackpine Oilsands Mine Joint Review
• The Fundamental Question that Needs to be Addressed - Peggy Morton
• An Assault on People's Right to Decide - Rita Soto

Uphold the Rights of Long Term Care Workers
• Monterey Place Health Care Workers Persist in Defending Their Rights and Dignity

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Alberta

New Health and Safety Legislation Will Further Compromise Workers' Rights

- Peggy Askin -

The Protection and Compliance Statues Amendment Act, Bill 6 was introduced on October 23rd during the fall session of the Alberta legislature. Bill 6 amends the Safety Code Act, the Fair Trading Act, and the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Introducing the Bill, Progressive Conservative MLA for Edmonton Southwest Matt Jeneroux stated: " If passed this bill will provide significant new protections to Albertans at home, in the marketplace, and on the job. It will also raise awareness about the responsibilities associated with workplace health and safety...."

Workers have a right to a safe and healthy workplace. But instead of providing legislation to guarantee this right, the government has actually launched an attack on the workers which will make workplaces less safe.

This omnibus bill dealing with three acts was introduced as one bill using the rationale that all three acts needed changes to regulations. The changes to the Occupational Health and Safety Act are of particular concern. The amendments to the Occupational Health and Safety Act for the first time define "worker" as one of the categories of regulated persons under the Act. Together with the other main change -- the introduction of administrative penalties for health and safety violations -- this sets the stage to criminalize workers, blaming them for unsafe work sites and their consequences.

The new Act permits regulations to be put in place whereby both employers and workers can be ticketed for safety violations on the spot. Fines will be established through the regulations, which the government states will be "hundreds of dollars."

The Executive Director of the Alberta Construction Association told the Calgary Herald that the Association supports the plan because it will help discourage safety infractions on job sites, such as an employee who refuses to wear a helmet. This statement shows how the employers are trying to shift the blame for workplace accidents and deaths onto the workers. It is well known that safety violations are used as a pretext on construction sites to fire and discipline workers all the time. In many cases workers are faced with confusing and even contradictory rules and regulations. Young workers coming onto job sites do not get the training they need. Where the workers have no union to hold the contractors in check, the mandatory safety meetings consist mainly of getting the workers to sign the sheet that they attended a meeting. Workers know very well that unsafe and poorly maintained equipment can be found on construction sites throughout the province. Instead of addressing the refusal of employers to fulfill their responsibilities, the Act will criminalize workers.

During debate in the legislature, Matt Jenereux, MLA for Edmonton South-West, stated: "Our administrative penalty framework achieves balance in that penalties can be levied against both employers and workers. This is important. Everyone has a responsibility when it comes to workplace safety. Employers, employees, and government have a shared responsibility to keep our workplaces and workers safe. Bill 6 provides the tools to hold people accountable when they put others at risk."

Such statements have nothing to do with the reality of the workplace. The Redford government speaks of "shared responsibility" while it uses the state machinery to permit employers to act with impunity. The E. Coli outbreak at XL Foods in Brooks, Alberta put the lie to this fairy tale about "shared responsibility." Relentless speed-up, insufficient training and a toxic environment where workers were pushed to process as much product as possible in the shortest possible time severely impacted not only the workers but those who became seriously ill as a result. Through their union the workers at Lakeside put forward many proposals regarding line speed, training and other matters. But the provincial government would not even agree to hold a public inquiry, much less restrict the monopolies from endangering the health and safety of workers and all Canadians. Now it turns out that inspectors were officially instructed to ignore problems which endangered the health of Canadians. Instead of being held to account, they say their instructions were "misunderstood." Nobody is confused that the new penalties for violations are designed to apply to the workers, not the employers and not those responsible for the actions of state agents.

As much as workers fight for and want safe workplaces, they do not control the pace of production in workplaces or the planning and pace of construction at building sites. The owners control production and the government has the responsibility to hold them to account for safety. Instituting on-the-spot fines and targeting individual workers will not make workplaces safer. Safety will be made an issue of discipline and the punishment of individual workers, rather than addressing the actual safety violations. How will this give rise to safe work sites? Workers already have a lot of experience that criminalizing workers does not lead to safer workplaces.

The Alberta Federation of Labour opposes bringing in regulations to fine workers for safety violations. Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour, said: "At the end of the day, workplace safety is primarily the responsibility of employers and government as regulators." McGowan pointed out that under existing legislation, companies can be fined as much as $500,000 through the courts for a serious first offence. Administrative penalties under Bill 6 have a maximum of $10,000 per occurrence per day for high-risk non-compliance. McGowan expressed concern that these administrative penalties will replace full legal prosecutions against companies that break the law.

With the use of on-the-spot fines to target workers for safety violations, the responsibility is being shifted onto the workers. Workers already have a lot of experience with how pressure is exerted on them not to report injuries on the job. This is done both with the carrot and the stick, using "reward" systems for no lost-time injuries on one hand and the humiliation and discipline of workers who suffer an injury on the other. In no way has this led to safer workplaces. The necessity for safe and healthy conditions is denied and what is denied above all is the key role of the workers' collectives and defence organizations to bring the human factor into play to sort out how to make workplaces and industries safe.

During the week of October 15, only one week before this legislation was introduced, five workers died in five days in workplace accidents in the province. The deaths of these workers is a tragic loss to their families, friends, workmates and communities. Working people want to eliminate the unsafe conditions that give rise to such loss of life and tragedies. A spokesperson for Occupational Health and Safety, quoted in the media said the incidents are not related but appear to be a "tragic coincidence." There have been 103 workers killed on the job so far this year in Alberta. Seventy-eight workers lost their lives in workplace related accidents in 2011. To declare that these deaths are unrelated is a way of declaring the problem "unknowable" and to refuse to hold the oil and gas and construction monopolies and all employers to account for the loss of the lives and limbs of the workers they employ.

Workers reject with contempt the manipulation of the very real concern about health and safety to serve the striving for profits and attempts to criminalize workers' right to healthy and safe workplaces. It is by defending this right through their collective resistance in defence of all workers and demanding that this right be recognized and enforced that workers will make headway in providing this problem with a solution.

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Debate in the Legislature

During debate in the Alberta Legislature on the new health and safety legislation, Bill 6, Matt Jeneroux, Conservative MLA representing Edmonton South-West, provided the rationale for bringing in administrative penalties and suggested that they will be used in place of prosecution through the courts.  He said, "Administrative penalties will allow regulators to do much more than issue a warning to violators. In the past many warnings have been ignored, and the only way to deal with the situation was through protracted and costly suspensions or prosecutions."

This lacks credibility as the reason for the change, because it is not true that regulators can only issue a warning to violators. The Human Services Alberta website guide for employers states: "If an officer believes a work site is dangerous, he or she can order work stopped right away or call for corrective measures. An officer can also order equipment shut down if it appears unsafe to operate."

The introduction of administrative penalties targets workers for discipline and fines on work sites they do not control. These administrative penalties appear to be part of the process of eliminating legal and public accountability of employers who endanger the health and safety of workers and Canadians. Decisions of when fines will be levied and the amount can be removed from the courts and become a matter of executive arbitrary powers.

Under the new legislation, the maximum fine for a major infraction would be $10,000 a day. Compare this to the fines levied against Syncrude for the death of 1,600 ducks in a tailings pond. At the time the federal prosecutor said that he might seek to apply his maximum fine to each and every one of the 1,606 ducks, a fine that would total about $481 million, or approximately $300,000 for each duck killed. Syncrude agreed to a compromise where it would pay a $3 million fine.

Far from ensuring safe and healthy workplaces, this legislation will create a situation where corporations have more impunity.

Brian Mason, Alberta NDP leader, put forward an amendment that opposes workers being included in the category of those who are subject to administrative penalties and regulated persons.

In introducing the amendment, Mason said:

"Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I'm pleased to move on behalf of my colleague the hon. Member for Edmonton Strathcona that previous Bill 6, the Protection and Compliance Statutes Amendment Act, 2012, be amended in section 2(10) in the proposed section 40.3(1) by striking out clause (e). Now, Madam Chair, I'll speak very briefly to this. The intention of the administrative penalties is to influence the workplace, and (e), by the way, includes workers as being subject to administrative penalties under this act. Those that are subject to administrative penalties in this act include contractors, employers, prime contractors, suppliers, and, (e), workers.

"This amendment proposes to delete workers from being subject to administrative penalties. The question is why. The amendment is modelled on British Columbia's legislation. In consultation with stakeholders the government emphasized, to quote their own material, that 'An administrative penalty system . . . promotes remedial action, preventive in nature, to address a health/safety issue by re-establishing compliance with regulatory requirements . . . not seek redress for (i.e. punish) a wrongful activity.'

"Now, administrative penalties are unique extra-legal mechanisms that must be used to compel compliance, not to impute or punish guilt. Because they don't involve a court of law, administrative penalties are open to misuse at the same time that they can be used to serve as crucial mechanisms for allowing OH&S officers to penalize contraventions of the act. OH&S legislation is designed to protect workers, and this amendment also seeks to protect workers by ensuring that administrative penalties will apply to target the employers whose responsibility it is to ensure safe workplaces and safe work practices in accordance with OHS legislation.

"Madam Chair, not to put too fine a point on it, employers have control over the workplace; workers don't. Administrative penalties in this case aimed at workers are misplaced because they have very little control over the health and safety culture, the standards, the conditions that exist in the workplace. That is the role of the employer. Their employer has that responsibility and has the authority to make those decisions; workers don't. To single out workers and to include them as being subject to administrative penalties is not going to do anything to improve the safety of the workplace but will serve to intimidate and potentially harmfully affect workers who have no control in the workplace. So I urge the government side and other members to support this amendment, which is to delete clause (e) so that workers would not be subject to penalties that are designed to enforce behaviour among employers."

Note

Bill 6 and the full debate on this bill are available here

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Jackpine Oilsands Mine Joint Review

The Fundamental Question that Needs
to be Addressed

- Peggy Morton -

Four weeks of hearings in Ft. McMurray, Alberta by the Joint Review Panel (Energy Resources Conservation Board) on Shell Canada's Jackpine Mine expansion concluded on November 21. Shell Canada Energy is proposing a $12 billion expansion of its Jackpine Mine project, which is located about 70 km north of Ft. McMurray on the east side of the Athabasca River. The expansion project would increase bitumen production by 100,000 barrels per day, bringing production at the mine to 300,000 barrels per day.

Jackpine is a joint project of Shell Canada Energy (60 per cent), Chevron (20 per cent) and Marathon Oil Canada (20 per cent). Shell Canada is wholly owned by Royal Dutch Shell, an Anglo-Dutch monopoly and the world's second largest company by 2011 revenues. Royal Dutch Shell had revenues of US$470 billion and profits in excess of $31 billion in 2011. It is second only to Exxon Mobil, the world's largest monopoly with 2011 revenues of $US 486 billion. Chevron (formerly Standard Oil) and Marathon are both U.S. owned global monopolies.

Through its legal counsel, Shell clearly puts forward its view of the world. Shell's own studies paint a disturbing picture of the cumulative effects of present and future oil sands development in environmental degradation and negative impact on the Aboriginal nations on whose traditional lands the projects are taking place. But Shell argues that the only question which the panel should consider is the impact of this one project. As oil sands projects are developed in stages, this means Shell is arguing that the panel should not even consider the final size of the Jackpine Mine, but only the effects of this 100,000 barrel a day stage of the project. Having said that, it dismisses all evidence, both from scientific studies and Aboriginal traditional knowledge as to adverse effects of the project and resorts to slander against anyone and everyone who dares to question its assertion that the project is "overwhelmingly in the public interest."

If all the projects which have been approved, are now undergoing review or have been announced receive approval and are built, production in the oilsands will rise from the current 2.3 million barrels/day to over 9 million barrels/day, more than four times existing production.[1] Yet Shell says the panel should completely ignore this reality and instead only examine the effects of a 100,000 barrel/day project.

How can Canadians exercise any control in the face of a regulatory process which is based on monopoly right? Permitting the monopolies to exercise control in this manner is clearly unsustainable given the profound impact on the society of the decisions taken by these private interests. It clashes with the most fundamental right which people have, the right to decide on matters which profoundly affect them. Shell makes its decisions based on what will further its private interests, in the main how to grow its capital as fast as possible and as much as possible. In doing so it engages in fierce competition with its rivals who are doing the same and this vicious inter-monopoly competition gives rise to trade wars, which in turn lead to war and devastation. According to Shell, this is how the world operates and the only way the world can operate.

Shell essentially claims that there is no society, only its narrow aims. This view is clashing with the aim to bring into being a new direction in political and economic affairs consistent with the socialized, interconnected nature of the economy and the modern way we live. This is not, as the disinformation would have it, a fight "for" or "against" the modern socialized economy, but a fight for a new direction and the right of Canadians to decide.

According to Shell, it will "create" jobs and contribute to the state treasury to fund social programs. The claims which Shell makes in this regard should also be investigated. First of all, why does Shell claim that it is contributing to the state treasury? The hard work of the workers applied to Mother Earth creates the wealth, not the owners of capital. Second, Shell and all the monopolies neglect to mention that they extract billions from the state treasury in pay-the-rich schemes. Shell is paid directly for its carbon capture and storage program and for research and development. It receives the services of publicly-funded scientists and public funding to train the workers that it needs, as well as billions in infrastructure spending to make its projects possible.

The owners of capital deliberately confound matters, especially that the social product which the working class produces must be reinvested in social programs, public services and the productive economy, so that all can prosper from industrial mass production and not just a privileged few.

Note

1. Operating Projects: 2,250,400 barrels per day
Under Construction: 787,905 barrels per day
Projects with Regulatory Approval: 2,215,950 barrels per day
Projects Under Regulatory Review: 2,380,270 barrels per day
Projects Announced / Disclosed: 1,404,000 barrels per day

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An Assault on People's Right to Decide

- Rita Soto -

Even before the hearing into the Jackpine Mine got underway, the fact that the hearing was in contempt of the fundamental right of First Nations, the Métis and Canadians to decide became clear. The Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (AFCN) asked that the hearings be adjourned while it filed a constitutional challenge with the Alberta Court of Appeal. During the week prior to the hearings, the Energy Resources Conservation Board ruled that it did not have jurisdiction on questions of constitutional law. (The new legislation now being debated explicitly states that the regulator will have no jurisdiction on matters of Aboriginal rights.) The AFCN estimates that Shell's proposal would disturb 12,719 hectares of land and destroy 21 kilometres of the Muskeg River which will be diverted for the project.

The panel then proceeded to apply the Harper dictatorship's new regulations concerning who is granted status to participate in the environmental assessment hearings. The law now requires the panel to determine if people meet the "interested party" test.

The applications of dozens of First Nations people who live downstream from the mine were rejected. Dene National Chief Bill Erasmus was denied standing. Many of those who were rejected were Aboriginal elders who wished to make oral statements concerning their traditional knowledge. They were refused apparently because they did not fill in detailed written submissions which were not even noted as required in the application. French monopoly Total also apparently failed to meet the application requirements, but the panel decided to grant Total standing. This in itself revealed that the entire process is in contempt of the right of people to participate in decisions which affect their lives.

The self-serving motives of Shell and other monopolies also gives rise to another assault on people's right to decide. Scientist David Schindler, a world renowned limnologist who gave evidence at the hearing pointed out that scientists provide facts to inform public decision-making. The "greenwashing" carried out by the oil cartels together with the governments in their service prevents the public from making informed decisions by manipulating public opinion and providing false and misleading information. Huge sums are being spent from the public treasury and the added-value seized by the monopolies to create the impression of widespread reclamation and a picture of an idyllic landscape where habitat is restored and plant and animal species thrive.

Environmental associations and scientists pointed out that, in fact, Shell's environmental assessment showed the highest level of environmental impacts ever reviewed by an oilsands panel. The Oilsands Environmental Coalition is calling for changes that could make oilsands development more responsible. These include establishing and implementing a low-flow limit on water withdrawals to protect the Athabasca River, implementing a comprehensive wetland protection policy, requiring proof of successful long-term reclamation of liquid tailings and introducing federal regulations to limit greenhouse gas pollution from the sector.

Dr. Schindler pointed out that no fewer than six studies, including those carried out by Environment Canada show that amongst other things fallout of contaminants from airborne sources in the oil sands has been ignored since the late 1970s, despite high emissions in recent years. This includes contaminants such as mercury, arsenic and lead.

Not only is this evidence to be ignored and suppressed, but the traditional knowledge of the Aboriginal nations is also to be rejected. The traditional knowledge provides evidence for example of how the rivers have been used in the past and changes to their water levels which in turn impact how the peoples can travel and make use of their traditional territories. Treaty 8 which covers the area of the oil sands was a treaty to share the land with the settler population. Aboriginal peoples neither ceded their land nor abrogated their responsibility to Mother Earth, and certainly did not agree to hand over control to the mainly foreign monopolies like Shell.

Shell says the right to decide belongs to the monopolies because the only possible way to develop the economy is to allow the "free market" forces to have the unbridled and unrestricted right to decide. Even the totally inadequate existing regulatory regimes are now being eliminated at both the federal and provincial level to serve this demand. This demand is clashing with the right of Canadians to set a new direction for the economy and further reveals the need for public control of energy resources.

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Uphold the Rights of Long Term Care Workers

Monterey Place Health Care Workers Persist in Defending Their Rights and Dignity