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April 26, 2018
April 28, Day of Mourning for
Workers Killed or Injured on the Job
Affirm the Right to Healthy and Safe
Working Conditions!
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April 28, Day of
Mourning for Workers Killed or Injured on the Job
• Affirm the Right to Healthy and Safe Working
Conditions!
Workers Speak Out in
Defence of Their Rights
• Doug Finnson, President, Teamsters Canada
Rail Conference
• Peter Page, Executive Vice President, Ontario
Network of Injured Workers' Groups
• Simon Lévesque, Health and Safety
Director, FTQ-Construction
• Nathalie Savard, President, Union of Health
Care Workers in Northeastern Quebec
• Geneviève Royer, High School Remedial
Teacher
• Denis St. Jean, National Health and Safety
Officer, Public Service
Alliance of Canada
• Lui Queano, Organizer, Migrante Ontario
• Mike Cartwright, Occupational Health and
Safety Committees of the Hospital Employees' Union and the BC
Federation of Labour
• Bill McMullan, Care Aide, Vancouver Island
• Samantha Cartwright, Care Aide, Prince
George
• Quebec Truck Drivers to Commemorate Fellow
Workers Who Died on
the Job - Normand Chouinard, Quebec Trucker
For Your Information
• Fatalities and Injuries at Work in Canada
and Internationally
• Asbestos-Related Deaths - Peggy
Askin, Past President, Calgary and District Labour
Council
April 28, Day of Mourning for
Workers Killed or Injured on the Job
Affirm the Right to Healthy and
Safe Working
Conditions!
 Once again this year on the
occasion of April 28,
the Day of Mourning, workers will hold ceremonies and meetings and
observe minutes of silence to mourn the dead and fight for the living.
These events are taking place under very difficult conditions where
those who control and own the production facilities demand absolute
control of the workplaces in order to serve their narrow private
interests, without the workers who do the work having a say and control
over their working conditions. This includes the right to healthy and
safe conditions. How can there be healthy and safe conditions at the
workplace if the independent and organized voice of those doing the
work
is silenced? Monopolies demand unhindered control over production
facilities and reject any intervention by government in their affairs
other than putting forward schemes to pay the rich and using the police
powers of the state to try to crush the struggle of workers for their
rights. Government policies and actions actually compound problems
rather than establishing production standards as a matter of principle
and enforcing health and safety standards without which production
cannot take place. This is done in the name of high ideals such as the
"health of the economy," the "national interest" which, they assert,
require that the monopolies be competitive on global markets. This
leads
to spurious formulas and practices such as self-regulation by industry.
The result of this can be seen, for example, with the railways. Rail is
a sector where the health and safety of workers and the public is
actually most at risk, where self-regulation has led to serious
deterioration in working conditions including workers being forced to
work
routinely beyond the point of exhaustion.
Workers are rejecting the dictate that they have no
role to
play in determining their conditions of work. In particular, they
are organizing to smash the silence about their conditions, both
amongst
themselves at the workplaces and at the level of public opinion itself.
They are publicly explaining what their issues are and how they are
fighting for
themselves and society.
They are opposing the disinformation of the monopoly media and putting
forward
demands that will change the situation in their favour and in favour of
society. The participation of all is required in actions
that build a united and organized force in defence of their rights. In
doing so, they seek to avoid being caught in various traps designed
by the monopolies and governments in their service to paralyze their
initiative, such as engaging
exclusively in filing grievances and fighting arbitrations, which among
other things monopolies are using to drain unions' finances. Workers
are increasingly
going into the arena of public opinion to defend and affirm their right
to safe and healthy conditions and their right to adequate compensation
at a
Canadian standard in the face of increasing workplace injuries and
work-related illness.
 In this organized struggle
for their rights workers
argue that safe and healthy working conditions and adequate
compensation for injured workers are an integral part of workers'
exchange with their employer -- their capacity to work in return for
definite conditions that are acceptable to them. Insinuations and
outright accusations that the
problem is the behaviour of workers and that it is the workers who are
to blame for accidents and occupational diseases is a frontal attack on
the conditions of this exchange. It creates an untenable situation with
respect to relations of production in the workplace and in society.
Every day, workers find themselves confronted with the
need to reverse the situation in their favour with regard to their
health and safety and that of the public by increasing their resistance
and fighting for a new direction for the economy. Workers are finding
ways and means to speak out and smash the silence on their working
conditions.
The slogan Our Security Lies in the
Fight for the Rights of All guides
them to build unity in action and affirm their rights and the rights of
all.
On April 28, workers express their determination
to affirm their right to healthy and safe working conditions!
Workers
Speak Out in Defence of Their
Rights
Doug Finnson, President, Teamsters
Canada Rail
Conference
The number one issue is disciplining of workers, the
treatment of the workers who get injured. Health and safety, according
to the employer, is our responsibility. When a worker gets injured,
they say, "You hurt yourself, you injured yourself," and the worker
gets
disciplined. I think that employers purposely do not understand what
health
and safety is. When they say that they are going to put more emphasis
on health and safety, what that translates into is that they are going
to discipline more workers. Basically they want to be able to blame the
workers for everything. It seems that there is no appreciation of the
fact that we should be doing things so that injuries do not take place,
not waiting for an injury to happen. It makes no sense to me that we
are so reactive when it comes to health and safety. It is also a
symptom of lack of proper legislation that the employer has so much
control over health and safety in the rail industry. I think too that
the employers minimize what is taking place in terms of the true number
of
injuries that are taking place. When the railroads get into trouble,
when something terrible happens, they hide behind statistics, that we
went so many thousands of miles without an accident.
Health and safety problems are very often fatigue
related. We have to get out of the pattern which exists in the rail
industry, that when workers feel fatigued, when fatigue sets in in the
workplace, it is a "work now grieve later" situation. That should not
be
a "work now grieve later" situation. Workers find themselves working in
situations where
they should not. They are forced to work overtime or work longer than
they are supposed to, longer than the schedule, longer than what the
contract says they are supposed to, that is "work now grieve later."
You
should be able to stop, to be able to say that someone else should run
that train for me. We are fighting fatigue all the time.
We have to tell workers that health and safety is ours.
It is our broken body, not the company's body. We have to work to get
the message across. In our work we inform, we educate, we build
confidence in the workers' ability. And they have to be active in the
union. It is only if you are active that you understand what we have to
deal with
right now. To be active in the union is essential.
Peter Page, Executive Vice President,
Ontario Network
of Injured Workers' Groups
The Ontario Network of Injured Workers' Groups' launch of province-wide
organizing campaign "Workers' Comp Is a Right" on September 11-12, 2017
coincides with the return of MPPs
to the Ontario Legislature.
Since last August, the Ontario Network of Injured
Workers' Groups (ONIWG) has had this campaign called "Workers' Comp Is
a Right!" We decided on three demands that we present to the three
parties that could form the government, to ask what they would do about
them.
 The three issues are:
pre-existing conditions; that
there should be no cuts based on phantom jobs, what they call deeming;
and that they have to listen to the injured worker's doctor. The issue
with pre-existing conditions is that the Workplace Safety Insurance
Board (WSIB) is reducing the benefits
of workers by claiming that the workers had a pre-existing condition
prior to
getting injured, a bad back for example. You may have worked 25
years as a mover and your back never bothered you once. Then you have
an accident, you hurt your back, and they say that this is because of a
pre-existing condition that you had -- you had scoliosis, whatever --
and
they reduce your benefits.
The deeming issue is that the Board deems that anyone
is capable of working regardless of whether they are able to do so or
not. There are many examples of workers that we know who will not be
able to return to work or will only return to limited employment which
is not sustainable. The Board uses this to cut benefits to the worker
and
save money.
The third one is that they are using their doctors to
decide on the workers' conditions. Instead of listening to the injured
worker's treating physician, the Board does a paper review with a paper
doctor and decides that the worker is able to go back to work. They
make that decision. They do not take all of the injured worker's health
care issues
into consideration. Say the worker had a broken arm. They say it should
be healed in three months so they cut his benefits even if he still has
ongoing issues and his physician says that he is not able to return to
work.
 So far, we have met with
over 23 MPPs in Ontario --
Liberals, Conservatives and NDP -- and we will be having more meetings
with candidates of all parties in regards to the issues that injured
workers want addressed by whoever forms the government.
I want to say, by the way, that the WSIB is fully
funded now. There is no more unfunded liability yet injured workers are
still being denied benefits, even more so now. The Board wants to
be 120 per cent funded. They did not get this money by raising the
assessment rates of the employers. They got the money from denying
benefits to
injured workers. It is the cutting of injured workers' benefits that
has resulted in the Board having a fully funded system. And it is now
taking five to six years to adjudicate claims.
We are saying that compensation is a right. Workers
deserve to be treated with justice and dignity.
Simon Lévesque, Health and Safety Director,
FTQ-Construction
Day of Mourning march to National Assembly in Quebec City, April 28,
2015.
What comes to mind first and foremost is that the main
killer in the construction industry is asbestos. We have it
everywhere in the construction sector. They put it everywhere in the
buildings, from the 1950s to the early 1980s. Our workers are
exposed to materials that contain asbestos. At the beginning of
the 1990s, it was acknowledged that this was a problem, measures
were taken in construction work; low, medium and high risk work was
established. Everyone agreed that it was a sneaky disease, that it took
a long time before the disease broke out. The latency period for
developing cancer caused by asbestos -- mesothelioma or pleural
cancer -- is between 15 and 30 years. You arrive at your
retirement to learn that you suffer from asbestosis. There are cases
where mesothelioma is not recognized as being related to asbestos and
work. We have to fight to get it recognized. In addition, the standard
of asbestos that is allowed in the air is ten times higher in Quebec
than
in the rest of Canada. We are asking the government to change the
standard to at least meet the Canadian standard. It is the economic
argument that is given, that we have been producers of asbestos for a
long time, and it was said that it was not dangerous. Even today, it's
difficult to get inspectors on asbestos cases, even though the
government days it's a
priority. The reason is that there is such a long latency
period, there is no perception of an immediate danger.
 Construction is still the
sector with the highest
number of fatalities at work per year. We are working hard to change
the behaviour of employers. The level of prevention that is being done
is stagnating. If the employers are not told by the inspectors to
change their methods, if they do not receive warnings, they do not
move. We want health and safety to be taken up by the industry as a
whole, and with the
involvement of workers. The big employers in construction do not want
this to happen. They want to keep their management rights. For us, at
this time, the taking up of responsibility by the industry means that
construction sites would have prevention representatives. The position
of prevention representative is included in the Occupational Health
and Safety Act, but was never promulgated as far as
construction is concerned. We managed to
win them on the sites of 500 or more workers, but
the pressure is huge from the employers not to have any, so
that there is no space for workers on the sites even if these are the
conditions we are working under. There has been progress at
Hydro-Québec, there is a dialogue, a change of culture. But for
most of the big companies, there is a refusal to work with the unions.
The prevention representative is nominated by the union
and is someone
who
is constantly there, who is aware of everything that happens, who makes
sure that accidents are reported. He is there mainly to try to make
sure that accidents do not happen. Also, he protects workers in the
context where workers have no job security. There is a bond of trust
with the representative, who is not there to act like a policeman on
the
building sites.
In current conditions having a prevention representative
has become even more
important. Things have changed on construction sites. In the
not-too-distant past, there were workers' actions on the construction
sites against employers who were intimidating workers. When
that went beyond the limits, it was not uncommon for workers to refuse
to work and say that the work would not
resume if the employer's representative carrying out intimidation was
not
excluded from the job site. Now, as soon as we do that, we will
be sued. We are the ones being called bullies. It is
necessary for workers to regain their role to uphold health and safety
on construction
sites.
Nathalie Savard, President, Union of Health Care
Workers in Northeastern Quebec
There is a lot of work to be done regarding the health
and safety of our members.
Our members often face violence, particularly in the
Residential and Long-Term Care Centres (CHSLDs) from patients who
become aggressive, families who become aggressive with us too.
Employers organize occupational health and safety committees, I think
it's mainly in order to look good. When we come to discuss substantive
issues such
as violence against nurses, particularly in the CHSLDs, prevention
problems, the lack of
inspection of lifting devices that we are using with patients, these
are things that do not receive the needed attention. It is the same
thing for hazardous materials that we must use. We have charts
regarding the use of this
material that explain what to do if there are problems, and the charts
are not getting updated. A main issue is lack of training, for example
for nurses who go to work in people's homes. There is a lack of
training to deal with patients who become violent. This is not the
fault of the patients, it is caused by their dementia. It seems like
there is a
lack of political will to deal with these issues.
Also, the pressure is very strong because of the
shortage of personnel, the lack of resources. Budgets are not set
according to the
needs. We are also seeing more and more problems of psychological
health. We try to get them recognized as an occupational disease, but
it is not easy. In terms of mental health, there is a lot of prejudice
on the part of
employers, and there is also prejudice in the general population.
Recently, at the level of the Occupational Health and Safety Act,
those
who
work
in
the
health
care system have finally been recognized as a
priority
group because of musculoskeletal disorders and psychological health
problems so we hope that from now on things are going to move quickly
in
order to sort out the problems. [In the Act, priority groups are
those that are considered the most hazardous, needing prevention
mechanisms, such as the mining, forestry and chemical industries, etc.
-- WF Note.]
There is also the issue of safety for expectant
mothers. Hospitals are
trying to keep more workers who are pregnant in the workplace. But with
the shortage of nurses, this is putting the nurses who are at work
under a lot of pressure. Often we must intervene to enforce the
limitations on what is expected of these workers. We have to protect
our members on this issue.
Nurses are having to work faster and faster
as there are fewer and fewer people. It's a complex situation. All the
problems
society is facing end up in the health care system. If we want to keep
our people healthy, we have to take care of them. There has to be a
focus
on training. There must to be health and safety committees including
the union and the employer where problems can be raised and solved. We
have to provide good service to patients and that needs to be
done in a safe environment. That is the main issue.
Geneviève Royer, High School Remedial Teacher
The main problem is that none of the arrangements that
are being made in education are based on the needs that teachers have
identified. The main need in the short term is the decrease in the
teacher-pupil ratio. This demand has been put forward at least
since 1995, when teachers identified that in the social context in
which we live classroom size must be reduced. They need this to
provide quality education and to identify students in difficulty and
also to be able to identify the help that students need. We cannot
identify difficulties because we have 30 students in a class. When
we do identify difficulties the resources are not there. This is the
main
problem that exists and this is creating the problem of burnout that is
more and more common among teachers. To avoid solving the problem,
there is the ideological offensive that says there is no money and so
we have to manoeuvre in the absence of the necessary funding. The
reforms that were instituted, which were imposed on the teachers,
were that teachers should be able to function with 30 students,
making six groups of five, and so on. This is a diversion because a
decrease in the teacher-student ratio would mean investing in
education, new teachers being hired, new classes opening up. It would
be something positive but in the modus
operandi of the state this is
not positive, it
is an expense that must be avoided.
 At the same time as we have
this
refusal to reduce the teacher-student ratio, we also have the
phenomenon, which we saw in health care with deinstitutionalization in
the 1990s, of standardization of students.
Standardization means that the student has to be in a regular class.
When I started teaching there
were a lot of specialized classes. The pretext for standardization was
to say that students were marginalized in specialized classes so they
needed to be introduced into regular classes. It was a pretext to close
the specialized classes year after year and integrate these students,
but without the associated services required to meet their needs.
In addition, the anti-social offensive has an effect on
families, on children. There may be a group of 30 with 10
to 15 students who have special needs that are not being
addressed. When the needs are not met, it becomes an issue of
behaviour, it becomes the problem of the teacher who must "learn to
manage" their classes,
etc. The overload, which is the result of the destruction of
educational arrangements, is presented as a personal problem of the
teacher. With the anti-social offensive we get a lot of students who do
not eat breakfast in the morning, we have parents who are themselves in
crisis, without jobs, needing help to sort out their lives. In this
context,
collectives are targeted. It is the parents who must supposedly learn
to raise their children, etc. Enemies are created and targeted while
the organization of the education system is unscientific and
irrational. This puts tremendous pressure on teachers. There has been a
huge increase of long-term absences among teachers. It is not uncommon
for a
teachers to be absent from class for a year or two. It is exhausting
for teachers to have young people in front of them and to know that
they are not meeting their needs. There is a form of violence that sets
in; the group becomes restless, the teachers go into survival mode,
they start expelling students. This is in contradiction with the
pedagogical
professionalism inherent in teaching. With this destruction, many
parents choose to go to the private system because there is more
stability. There is an exodus from the public to the private sector. To
cope with this exodus, teachers engage in many activities that go
beyond their workload. There is the issue of lowering of standards in
the
educational system. For example, there is pressure from the authorities
to give students a passing grade at any cost. Teachers object to this
lowering of standards in education, which is an attack on their dignity
as teachers.
What keeps us going is the collective. Teachers rely on
one another, they help each other to deal with different situations.
What I see in this situation is that our tasks have increased so much
and our work has become so complex in the context of the anti-social
offensive that we would be able to run the schools. We manage the
money. We
manage the activities of the students. We manage relations with the
parents. We learn to look for the strengths that each teacher has to
solve the problems we face. Also, in times of negotiations, teachers
engage in organized trade union struggle in order to improve their
working conditions which are the learning conditions of the students.
Denis St. Jean, National Health and Safety Officer,
Public Service Alliance of Canada
Each year we adopt a special theme to focus on a health
and safety issue that is important for our workers. This year, we
selected one that is very important in the federal public service:
harassment and violence in the workplace. We are asking that the law
require that the workplace be safe and healthy. For instance, we want
legislation that
will support women workers who report incidents of violence and
harassment. We are carefully examining Bill C-65 on sexual harassment
and violence that is now before the House of Commons and the outcome of
the public consultations currently being conducted by the Ministry of
Labour across Canada.
Over the years we have been surveying our members at
our national and regional health and safety conferences. The response
of our members is number one, violence and harassment. The second is
the issue of mental health in the workplace and the third is the lack
of training on these topics.
Harassment and violence come in all forms. We are
obviously talking about physical violence, but we are also talking
about psychological violence. We are talking about intimidation,
threats of reprisal, unacceptable behaviour, incivility. This is
happening mainly as an issue of power at the workplace, where people in
support positions are
primarily targeted by those who have more power than them. Most cases
of intimidation at the workplace are cases of a person who is in
position of power, like people who are part of management, versus a
person who has less power. It is an abuse of power, a demonstration of
the kind of balance of power that we see at the workplace. In the
federal public service, surveys are conducted once every two years and
the results are consistent, with almost one in five people in the
public service reporting being harassed in the workplace and 25
per cent
reporting they did not take any action to try to solve the problem of
harassment. This indicates a lack of trust in existing processes and a
culture where harassment is tolerated as a normal condition of work.
The only way to counteract this lack of power is
obviously to be part of a union, to be able to find solutions, whether
through collective agreements, the legislative changes we are demanding
and the legal remedies.
Lui Queano, Organizer for Migrante Ontario
Demonstration in Toronto, September 15, 2017.
For migrant workers, a main problem is that they are
not given proper safety equipment. Many are working on farms and are
being exposed to fertilizers without being given the proper protective
equipment. This is a very basic thing, but it is not being provided in
an adequate manner. They are using all these fertilizers but they are
not
provided with personal protective equipment, and if they are it is
often used and worn out equipment, not new. They cannot ask for new
ones. These workers are seasonal and the government is not paying
proper attention to their safety. They are amongst the most vulnerable
workers.
Migrante right now is doing a lot of community safety
education with these workers. We are also educating them on their
rights in the work places. We are encouraging them to inform us when
there
are issues. Migrante is very much willing to
help them, including on the legal front. We have seminars for them, in
cooperation with Migrant Resources Centre Canada. We invite
workers to drop in there to learn, to educate themselves about the
importance of protection, so that they know what they need to know
about their jobs, so that they are not afraid to talk about their
conditions at work. Migrante Canada visits migrant workers. For example
we
found out in Prince Edward Island that migrant workers were working in
the fishing industry and had no organization. These were mostly
Filipino
workers. Migrante is helping them to organize themselves.
We are also coordinating with the Caregivers Action
Centre to demand that the federal government immediately repeal a
section of the law that denies permanent residency to immigrants with
disabilities. This is a section of the Immigration and Refugee
Protection Act, which denies permanent residency to an entire
family if one
member is sick or has a disability that would pose an "excessive
demand" on Canada's health care system. The caregivers spend their
money to come to Canada, perform a very valuable and
needed service, only to find out that they are not accepted.
Migrante organizes so that migrant workers can speak
out, organize, be more confident, have a voice.
Mike Cartwright, Occupational Health and Safety
Committees of the Hospital Employees' Union
and the BC Federation of
Labour
In health care the biggest challenge to health and
safety is the lack of staff. A significant number of our injuries are
due to being short-staffed, understaffed. This is happening to care
aides, recreation workers, housekeepers and kitchen staff, as well as
others. Most are musculoskeletal injuries (MSIs), some cuts and scrapes
and
abrasions but the
majority are MSIs. There is also a significant increase in work-related
stress. There are a lot more injuries in complex care settings, in
seniors' residences, than in hospitals. A lot of the "complex care
homes" are not set up to be complex care. Buildings are not proper for
dementia care. Staff aren't trained properly. There is not enough
staff. You
often have one person doing a two-person lift. Many of the residential
care homes were built back in the '60s and '70s and '80s.
In the private, for-profit residential homes, the owners are in
business
to make money not to spend it so they often don't provide the lifts or
other equipment that workers need to do their jobs safely.
 The BC Federation of Labour
Occupational Health and Safety Committee is lobbying
the government to change the Worksafe BC Board and Worksafe regulations
with respect to safe staffing levels, to fatigue levels. We have put in
recommendations for length-of-day language because right now there is
no restriction on how long someone can be at work.
The mandate of these two bodies is to raise awareness
so workers know their rights and how to enforce them and to advocate
with government. The HEU Occupational Health and Safety Committee
assisted in creating the
curriculum for our "Know and Enforce Your Rights" course for members in
member to member education sessions. We're also reaching out all across
the province to all locals to make sure that their Joint Occupational
Health and Safety Committees are functioning. We want to educate our
members to be able to combat the attacks by management or the
intimidation by management saying "Just do this" even if it's unsafe.
We want to give our members the tools to say "No, I have the right to
refuse unsafe work. I have the right to know about hazards in my
workplace."
Bill McMullan, Care Aide, Vancouver Island
I work in a group home which is the home of several
individuals. The people that I care for are adults with severe and
profound disabilities, both cognitive and physical. They require full
personal support, with attending medical appointments, meal preparation
and feeding, dressing, bathing, social activities, basically to
interpret their needs
and to see that they get the care that they require.
With regards to our working conditions, the biggest
difficulty that we face is being short-staffed. There is an erosion of
full-time positions. Every year there are more full-time positions
being reconstructed into part-time positions. The wages for care aides
in the community
are lower than the wages in hospitals so there is a
problem of retention.
When they start people often work at multiple worksites and then to
grab some security they will take a part-time job here and there and
everywhere which prevents them from being accessible and available for
full-time jobs and employers take full advantage of that and collapse
full-time jobs. In my sector workers are often isolated from one
another and some of the newest workers are not aware of their rights
and that is also taken advantage of. There are a lot of things that
contribute to diminished health and wellness for workers in my sector.
We have aging equipment -- lifts, slings, modified beds, electric tubs
--
and at the same time you have an aging workforce that is doing
repetitive
work so you need the equipment working.
In this sector there are both private, for-profit
operators and non-profit societies, all funded by government through
Community Living BC (CLBC). The problem is that as service needs change
and an individual
needs more care, CLBC won't fund those increased needs. They force the
agency providing services to cope and the agency downloads that onto
the staff who
have to do more with less. We also have problems with inadequate
training to deal with individuals that are aggressive.
Also, there are some agencies in Community Social
Services, among those that are privately owned, which will deliberately
bring in more aggressive individuals to live in a group home because
the higher the aggression the higher the dollars that they get from
CLBC. It's not uncommon to have
a 20-year-old
female care aide dealing with an aggressive male one on one, and often
the protocol is "lock yourself in a room when they're out of control."
That's the behaviour support plan. Without adequate staff and proper
training workers' safety and the safety of the people we care for is
compromised.
Samantha Cartwright, Care Aide, Prince George
I work in a residential complex care facility
with 58 beds. Most of the people are seniors and about 85 per
cent are in the throes of dementia by the time that they come into
care, unfortunately, because the wait lists are so long. The
other 15 per cent are cognitively well but physically extremely
unwell, so some of them fight you on
care -- "No, you're not using that ceiling lift on me. You can use the
Golvo lift," when the Golvo lift has been deemed inappropriate.
Staffing levels have not changed significantly in the last 20
years, but 20 years ago the physical needs of the residents were
far less than they are now.
Our work is complicated, balancing the needs of the
residents with safety. People with dementia have difficulty
communicating. Water for some people with dementia is actually
terrifying and they can become combative. Bath teams are still single
people. Even when a care plan requires two or three people to deal
with aggressive behaviour,
the bath person still does the bath by herself. Part of it is that the
workers on the bath team are really good at their job and know that if
they have a partner that the resident is not familiar with it will
create a more dangerous situation but if they are on their own they
know how to deal with aggression because they know how to deal with the
person, they have a relationship, they are trusted. Our work has risks
and hazards by its nature.
Our biggest problem is being short-staffed. In our jobs
we need to work as a team and when we are short-staffed, both
chronically and when workers are not replaced when they are absent, we
are expected to figure it out ourselves which creates two problems,
unsafe working conditions and conflict between workers because it is
not possible
for two workers to do the work of four or more.
Quebec Truck Drivers to Commemorate Fellow Workers Who
Died on the Job
- Normand Chouinard, Quebec Trucker -
An important event for Quebec truckers will be held on
April 28, the Day of Mourning for Workers Killed or Injured on
the Job, in the small municipality of Yamachiche, in Mauricie, a
tribute to truck drivers who have died on the road. It is under the
initiative and impetus of the non-profit organization "SSPT chez les
camionneurs" (post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) among truckers)
that such a gathering is taking place for the first time.
 SSPT chez les camionneurs
was created in 2013 when
driver Patrick Forgues was involved in an accident in which a man died.
The man committed suicide by throwing himself in front of Forgues'
truck. Mr. Forgues was diagnosed with PTSD one month later and his life
was turned upside down. On the initiative of his wife, Kareen
Lapointe, a Facebook page was created to help truckers and their
families to demystify post-traumatic stress disorder. The
organization's Facebook page states, "A year later,
the demand for such a service was such that we started a non-profit
organization called SSPT chez les camionneurs."
People from the trucking industry across Quebec and
elsewhere will finally be able to commemorate those who died on the
road. There will also be testimonials from injured truck drivers, and
support services are going to be offered at the event site. It will
also be an opportunity to smash the silence on the daily working
conditions of truck
drivers and the constant dangers they face. Truck driving is one of the
most dangerous jobs, which still has one of the highest rates of
work-related injuries and fatalities. Recognition of post-traumatic
stress disorder as an occupational disease in trucking is an important
issue as the number of road accidents on North American roads is
increasing,
with huge consequences for the well-being of drivers and the public.
For
Your Information
Fatalities and Injuries at Work in Canada
and
Internationally
The most recent available statistics on fatalities and
injuries at work in Canada are from the Association of Workers'
Compensation Boards of Canada (AWCBC) from 2016.
The statistics show that in 2016 the number of
fatalities at work was 905, up from 852 in 2015 and
slightly down from 919 in 2014. This means 2.47 deaths
every day. The sectors where the number of fatalities were the highest
are construction (203), government services (158), manufacturing (144)
and transportation and storage (82). Of these fatalities, 320 were
due to traumatic injuries and disorders and 567 to diseases, the
greatest number being 427 cases of malignant neoplasms, tumors and
cancers.
Among the 905 dead, six were young workers
aged 15 to 19, twenty aged 20 to 24 and thirty
aged 25 to 29.
In addition to these fatalities, there
were 241,508 claims accepted for lost time due to a work-related
injury or disease, up from 232,629 in 2015 and 239,643
in 2014. These included 7,583 claims from young workers
aged 15 to 19, 22,005 from workers aged 20
to 24
and 24,927 from workers aged 25 to 29. The sectors where
the number of claims accepted for lost time was the highest were health
and social services (43,836), manufacturing (33,084), retail trade
(26,924) and construction (25,645).
The AWCBC defines a time-loss injury as "an injury for
which a worker is compensated for a loss of wages following a
work-related accident (or exposure to a noxious chemical) or receives
compensation for a permanent disability with or without time lost in
his or her employment." To be included in the statistical report, the
injury must
have been accepted by a workers' compensation board or commission
(cases not accepted by a workers' compensation agency are not included
in the reports).
The AWCBC says the number of lost time claims that are
being accepted has been steadily decreasing since 1995
(from 410,464 in 1995 to 241,508 in 2015) while the
number of fatalities has remained 915 a year on average. This
likely indicates a high number of unreported injuries even amongst
unionized workers, of challenged and rejected claims, and the massive
shift of the workforce towards precarious employment of all kinds. This
precariousness of employment is increasing even amongst the workforce
that works for the monopolies as they are subcontracting more of the
work so as to lower the claims of the workers on the value
they produce. These workers are considered as disposable and they are
swiftly replaced when they hurt themselves, the injury often remaining
unreported under the pressure that the subcontractor may lose its
contract with the monopoly if it "causes trouble" by allowing workers'
reports of injuries. In provinces such as Ontario, employers get
"rebates" from the government if they reduce the number of injuries
reported.
According to Worksafe BC, health care assistants or
care aides continue to have the highest rate of injury of any
occupational group. Care aides provide personal care -- bathing,
dressing, feeding, toileting to people with disabilities and seniors in
private homes, group homes, hospitals and seniors' homes. The rate of
injury in this sector
was 8.7 per 100 workers, four times the BC average
of 2.1 per hundred. In a series of meetings through the province
in March in preparation for provincial bargaining which will begin this
year, members of the Hospital Employees Union, which
represents 49,000 health care workers in the province, identified
overwork
and understaffing as their biggest concern and demanded increased
investment in publicly funded and publicly delivered health care.
The compensation system itself has become "a very
litigious, difficult, cumbersome system" representatives of injured
workers point out. The system is also not funded properly, they add.
Workers report that their claims, when they are legally allowed to make
a claim, are systematically being challenged.
Internationally, the latest global figures date from
the XXI World Congress on Safety and Health which took place in
Singapore in 2017. These figures are based on data collected
in 2014-2015 and are included in the report Global Estimates
of Occupational Accidents and Work-related Illnesses 2017
presented to
the Congress.
They indicate that an estimated 2.78 million
work-related fatalities occur annually compared to 2.33 million
estimated in the previous study completed in 2014 which was based
on data from 2010/2011. The estimated global total of fatal
occupational accidents and work-related illness in the 2017 report
reflects
the inclusion of respiratory cases caused by chronic obstructive
pulmonary disease and work-related asthma which were not included in
the 2014 report. For fatal occupational accidents, there are an
estimated 380,500 deaths a year, an increase of 8 per cent
since the previous study. Fatal work-related diseases were at least
five times
higher than fatalities due to occupational accidents. In 2015,
there were 2.4 million deaths due to fatal work-related diseases,
an increase of 0.4 million compared to 2011. Taken together,
circulatory diseases (31 per cent), malignant neoplasms (26 per cent)
and respiratory
diseases (17 per cent) contributed more than three-quarters of
work-related deaths, followed by occupational injuries (14 per cent)
and
communicable diseases (9 per cent). The number of non-fatal
occupational
accidents was estimated to be 374 million, increasing
significantly from 2010.
According to the figures, while the total employment
in 2014 for all countries increased by four per cent compared
to 2010, the number of estimated fatal occupational accidents
increased by about eight per cent to 380,500. In total, it is
estimated that more than 7,500 people die every day; 1,000
from occupational
accidents and 6,500 from work-related diseases. The rate of fatal
occupational accidents increased slightly between 2010
and 2014.
Asia constituted about two-thirds of the global
work-related mortality, followed by Africa at 11.8 per cent and
Europe
at 11.7 per cent. The Americas and Caribbean stood at 10.9
per cent and Oceania at 0.6 per cent.
Neo-liberal free trade agreements and the anti-social
offensive are a major factor in the continued deterioration of living
and working conditions, including health and safety at work, in all
countries. They concentrate decision-making power in the hands of
global oligopolies on a supranational basis. The oligopolies consider
health and safety
regulations as impediments to their drive for profit and domination.
Deaths and injuries take a particularly heavy toll on workers in the
countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean due to their
super-exploitation.
The International Trade Union Confederation reported
two years ago that global oligopolies such as Samsung, Apple,
Walmart and others directly employ barely six per cent of the
workers who create the value of their global empires. The other 94
per cent work for smaller companies who subcontract to the monopolies.
These workers face even worse conditions, without any support when it
comes to health and safety.
The situation is very similar in Canada where the
working class has been divided into arbitrary categories such as
"independent contractor," "temporary foreign worker," "undocumented
worker," among others. Employers use these designations, along with the
increase in short-term and casual jobs and other forms of precarious
employment, to
impose increasingly unsafe conditions.
Asbestos-Related Deaths
- Peggy Askin, Past President, Calgary
and District Labour Council -
One hundred and sixty-six workers were killed on the
job or died from work-related illnesses in Alberta in 2017.
Eighty-three died from work-related disease, with 67 deaths
related to asbestos exposure, six deaths from respiratory diseases
not related to asbestos, and 10 firefighters, nine of whom died of
cancer.
Firefighters waged a protracted fight to have certain cancers
recognized as arising from their work and exposure to carcinogens.
Workers employed in construction had the highest rate of death from
accidents or work-related disease.
 "It has been estimated that
asbestos was responsible
for approximately 1,900 lung cancer cases and 430
mesothelioma
cases in Canada in 2011," the Canadian government's Regulatory
Impact Statement states. At this time, workers from several
generations, from those in their fifties to those in their eighties are
dying
from respiratory diseases directly related to workplace exposure to
asbestos. This disease is latent, the fibres remain in the lungs for
decades, and then start to ravage the lungs and the lining of the lung.
Affected workers include those in construction who
built and renovated every industrial, commercial and residential
building and were exposed to asbestos in the course of their work.
Workers in the petroleum and mining sectors were also exposed to
asbestos. Workers in BC and the western provinces worked in the
asbestos mines in Cassiar,
BC from the early 1950s until the mining operation closed
in 1992.
These are generations of workers who should not have
been exposed to asbestos as it is a known fact that studies conducted
in the 1920s and 1930s revealed the danger of exposure to
asbestos.[1]
The callousness of governments in the service of the
monopolies when it comes to workers' lives is starkly revealed in the
"cost-benefit statement" with regard to banning asbestos. It says, "The
government administrative costs are estimated to be about $4
million, and the administrative and compliance costs for the
construction and
automotive sectors are estimated to be about $30 million. It is
also estimated that preventing a single case of lung cancer or
mesothelioma provides a social welfare benefit valued at over $1
million today. Given the latency effects of asbestos exposure, benefits
would not be expected to occur until 10 to 40 years after the
coming into force of the proposed regulations in 2019; therefore,
the present value of future benefits per case would be lower than the
value of current cases. For example, $1 million per case
in 2050 would be valued at about $380,000 per case today
(discounted at 3 per cent per year). Therefore, if the proposed
regulations can prevent at least five cases of lung cancer or
mesothelioma each year (5.3 cases on average), for a period of at
least 17 years, then the health benefits for these sectors ($34
million) would be expected to justify the associated administrative and
compliance costs ($34 million)."
Quebec workers in the asbestos mines waged a militant
and courageous five-month long illegal strike in 1949, against
the dangerous working conditions they faced. The organized workers'
movement has fought and is still fighting that employers be held to
account for the death toll these lung diseases are causing. Workers
continue to
fight to put an end to dangerous working conditions and empower
ourselves to hold corporations and governments to account.
Asbestos use will finally be banned in Canada
in 2018, almost a century after the deadly consequences of
exposure first became known.
The following are key dates in the history of
asbestos use in Canada.
1920s : The Metropolitan Life Insurance
Co. sets up the Department of Industrial Hygiene at McGill University.
Asbestos is believed to be making workers ill and causing a "dust
disease" of the lungs.
1984: An Ontario Royal Commission suggests a
ban on crocidolite and amosite asbestos fibre, but suggests that
chrysotile can be used if there are controls on dust.
1987: The International Agency for Research on
Cancer declares asbestos a human carcinogen.
1998: The Rotterdam Convention, a treaty on
certain hazardous chemicals and pesticides in international trade, is
adopted and opened for signatures.
2004: The Rotterdam Convention comes into force.
2005: A European Union-wide ban on chrysotile
asbestos takes effect.
2018: Canada finally bans asbestos, with
regulations to come into effect in 2019.
Note
1. "A look at Canada's 140
year history
with asbestos," Canadian Press,
December 15, 2016.
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