FEATURE

By ALAN BRAITHWAITE

Throughout the 1970s fairly
sophisticated health and safety
legislation was introduced across
Canada. These efforts followed
successive waves of worker and union
struggles to promote a healthier work
environment in response to
catastrophic workplace carnage.

These various safety statutes
contained similar provisions for a new
set of workers’ rights: the right to
refuse unsafe work, the right to
participate in joint health and safety
committees, and the right to know.
Along with other more comprehensive
provisions these new safety laws held
out the promise of a cleaner and safer
workplace.

Not more than a decade later these
laws and their enforcement apparatus
have become a lightening rod of labor
criticism for lax regulatory practice.
During this period enforcement
budgets were stripped to the bone and
standard-making capabilities severely
limited. Over all, activities have been
guided by a conservative pro-business
philosophy.

For all the promises, there is little to
show for. It is impossible to say that
these new laws had any major effect on
the safety and health of workers in the
country. Overall, enforcement and
standard-setting activities must be
judged a failure.

Between 1971 and 1980, the same
period in which this new legislation
was being installed, the frequency of
work-related injuries increased by over
16%. In 1971, one worker was injured
every 23 seconds. By 1980 one worker
was being injured every 13 seconds. In
Ontario, Canada’s industrial heartland,
there was a 75% increase in lost time
accidents being reported to the Labour
Ministry’s Industrial Health and Safety
Branch.

Let me put this in some perspective.

The public laments the increasing
toll of injury and death arising from
highway traffic accidents, criminal
assaults and homicides. Massive
efforts are launched by leading public
figures to deal with these unacceptable
injures and deaths, and efforts never
seem to be enough. Yet, these efforts
are mammoth compared to the
resources governments devote to
preventing the human carnage in the
workplace.

On average, there are some 86,000
highway traffic injuries every year, yet
there are some 400,000 to 450,000
injuries reported to worker
compensation boards annually.

6 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, JUNE 10, 1987

There are some three out of every
100,000 persons who are victims of
homicides, yet there are 33
work-related fatalities for every
100,000 workers. This is 11 times the
rate of homicides.

There are some 446 out of every
100,000 people who are injured from
criminal assault. Yet there are some
19,570 work-related injuries for every
100,000 workers — twenty-five times
greater than the rate of criminal
assault.

While these figures are startling,
they only represent the tip of the
iceberg. They do not include
work-related illness and diseases and
the many injuries that are either
rejected by worker compensation
boards, or remain unreported.

A report appearing in
Occupational Health in
Ontario by Dr. Annalee Yassi
shows that well over 50% of claims for
serious work-related disease and 63%
of cancer claims are rejected by the
worker compensation board. Based on
conservative calculations, it is
estimated that there are some 700
work-related cancer deaths a year in
Ontario. Yet only 95 cancer deaths
were reported to the WCB and only 44
of these were accepted as
compensible. This is less than 1 out of
every 17 occupational cancer deaths
by conservative estimates.

There are reasons for this
catastrophe which are clearly related
to the current balance of class forces
and the role of the state in maintaining
the existing power of capital over

labor.

Despite the passage of new safety
legislation and the appearance of new
found worker rights, very little has
been done to alter the social context of
the workplace or the special nature of
the work relationship. To a great
extent the labor contract hides the
reality of a workplace in which one
party to the contract has unilateral
control over a great many health
related aspects of the work
environment. In effect, managerial
prerogatives related to health and
safety remain largely unchallenged.

Indeed, a recent investigation of
Ontario’s Health and Safety Division
showed the enforcement of the
provinces’ safety laws is being
intentionally systematically thwarted.

Very little effort and few resources
are devoted to the strict enforcement
of the safety laws. For example, only
205 inspectors are provided to police
all of Ontario’s worksites. This

includes about 72,000 registered firms
plus the many thousands of
construction projects. Another 120,000
sites have yet to be registered and,
therefore, inspected.

Imagine what the public would think
about a police system that provided
only 205 police officers to patrol our
roads and communities. In fact, there
are twice as many people provided for
the protection of our fish and wildlife in
Ontario.

While the safety law invests
inspectors with wide-ranging powers,
in real life, the inspectors are hemmed
in by a system of red tape and general
policies that prevent inspectors from
enforcing the act like a traffic cop.
These policies are informed by a
philosophy that believes employers
should face as few restrictions as
possible, including restrictions on the
killing and maiming of workers.

Very few charges are laid against
employers who violate Ontario’s
safety laws. Less than 1% of all orders
issued to employers ever result in
charges being laid. Of the charges that
are laid, only 25% ever succeed in a
conviction. When convictions are
achieved the fines are pitifully low.
And no one has ever been sent to jail.
The class bias in all this was starkly
illustrated recently when the province
recently charged miners in Elliot Lake
and Sudbury with criminal negligence
in the death of their co-workers as a
result of mining accidents.

Ironically the state’s dismal record
on enforcement and prosecutions is
officially justified by the provision of
joint health and safety committees
which allow worker participation on
health and safety matters. The
underlying assumption of the joint ©
committee system is that cooperation
is possible on the basis of a presumed
commonality of interest between the
parties. From this it is assumed that
voluntary compliance with the laws is
possible through consultation and
discussion on issues which are viewed
as non-adversarial.

While on the surface this may
appear as just naive, in truth it serves
as an ideological cover for an
unwillingness to disturb the
distribution of class power in the
workplace.

Health and safety issues are no
different than any other contested
issue of labor-management relations.
Work environment issues involve
spending money. For employers, these
expenditures are capital investments
with little or no prospect of return.

Health and safety cannot be
maximized without adversely affecting
profits.

Good safety practices also threaten
the employer’s authority over the
production process and the workers.

More important, the relationships
between labor and management are
neither equal nor voluntary. No
worker enters the employment
relationship voluntarily. Workers have
no choice but to sell their labor
power. They can only choose who to
sell it to. And even this choice is
limited in times of significant
e Continued on next page

PHOTO: MIKE PHILLIPS

He