Simon Lévesque, Head of Health and Safety, FTQ-Construction, QuebecThe problem of the spread of COVID-19 should not be trivialized. There are measures in place, but, as is usually the case, it seems that the construction industry is being left out.
There are serious problems on big sites too. For example, sugar shacks have closed because people must not eat side-by-side, but on large construction sites workers eat in construction trailers and they eat side-by-side. The separation of one metre is not respected. The measures are declared inapplicable in construction and that is what we are fighting against. We are asking, for example, that there be suitable dining spaces that can accommodate workers while maintaining the necessary distance between them. One problem we are facing right now is that as soon as there is a worker who coughs, they want to fire him. There are workers who smoke and who have been coughing for a long time. We are faced with a situation in which either no action is taken or we have measures like these where workers are attacked if they have a particular condition. Even today, a supervisor told a worker to leave the site because he was coughing. We demand that everything the government asks of citizens and in the workplace also be applied to construction sites. In addition, it is necessary to follow the evolution of the situation with regard to the disease, and if we have to eventually reorganize the work, which involves a slowdown in production, we must prepare for it. You have to plan things right away.
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We have a lot of
questions. For a long time we've been
saying that the issue of occupational hygiene in construction has been
neglected. We have been fighting for years for adequate sanitary
conditions. We received new regulations in 2016 that we are fighting to
enforce. The regulations are very specific on the issue of washrooms.
We are the
only workplace in Quebec where we are obliged to specify that washrooms
must be heated, ventilated, that there must be a flush toilet, warm
water, soap, toilet paper, a trash can -- otherwise we will get
nothing. Still there are employers who do not comply with the
regulations. In addition, the regulations do not cover construction
sites of 24
workers or less. There is no provision in these cases for the employer
to be obliged to provide soap and water for the workers to wash their
hands. The primary measure to prevent the virus from spreading is hand
washing. And such sites constitute the vast majority of sites in
Quebec. We are stepping up our work so that all construction sites have
access to adequate toilets.