IWA SAFETY CONFERENCE

By VERNA LEDGER
Regional Safety Director

The 83rd IWA Safety and Health Confer-
ence was held at the Holiday Inn, Harbour-
side, on October 15 and 16, 1982.

The Conference was opened by IWA
Regional President Jack Munro who talked
about the tragic increase in fatalities in the
Forest Industry during the first 9 months of
1982. He stated that this was even more of a
tragedy when considering the reduced
number of workers and hours worked in the
industry due to layoffs and shutdowns.
Brother Munro stated that what is needed
now is more education and training and less
pressure for increased productivity at the
cost of protective measures.

Brother Roger Stanyer, Regional 3rd
Vice-President and President of Local 1-80,
gave the welcoming address on behalf of
Local 1-80, Host Local for the Convention.
Brother Stanyer opened his remarks by
noting that the history of the IWA shows
that one of the main reasons the IWA first
organized was because of the hazardous
conditions which existed at that time in the
woods and mills. Brother Stanyer pointed
out that Safety and Health has remained a
priority for the IWA.

The Regional Safety and Health Director
also discussed the 42 forest industry deaths
in the first nine months of 1982, and stated,
“Tt is not possible to determine if cutbacks or
concessions are contributing factors, but
beyond a doubt the uncertainty of the
present employment situation, coupled with
the reduced priority placed on preventative

measures have increased pressures on
workers.”

Local Union Reports were presented by
Local Union Safety and Health Directors,
who supported with further evidence, the
statements that safety and health protec-
tion initiatives were being dropped or
delayed due to the economic slump in the
industry.

As one delegate said: “Unfortunately it
seems Health and Safety issues have slip-
ped lower and lower on the priority lists as
workers are told that to pressure for improve-
ments which require expenditures, might
mean the difference between the operation
continuing to run or shutting down. Faced
with these kinds of propositions, the trade-off
becomes jobs at the expense of protection.”

Brother Larry Stoffman and Geoffre
Berry, Ph.D., presented a session on “For-
maldehyde — A Worker and Public Health
Hazard”.

Brother Stoffman outlined the difficulties
in determining safe levels of formaldehyde
since it is a suspected carcinogen. The
present permissible concentration level
accepted by the Workers’ Compensation
Board is 2 ppm. However, the Consumer
Protection Act recommended permissible
concentration for the public is 0.5 ppm,
which is a far superior standard. Which in
effect means workers exposed to formalde-
hyde at work are not given the same protec-
tion as the public.

Mr. Geoffre Berry who is a leading
researcher in Canada on environmental
pollution demonstrated various methods of
measuring formaldehyde concentrations,
but warned that none of these methods
could be considered entirely accurate. He
suggested a ‘“‘zero or lowest measurable
concentration” should be the goal to aim for
in protecting workers from formaldehyde
exposure.

Mr. Rob Griffeon, WCB, presented a slide
demonstration and gave a talk on “Ergo-
nomics — A Total Work Environment
Approach To Sawmill Design”. Mr. Griffeon
had been to Sweden and visited several

sawmills there. He presented his impres-
sions of the advances achieved by the
Swedish workers and employers in work
environment.

Delegates to the Conference dealt with 45
resolutions covering such subjects as Job
Safety Training, Fallers and Buckers Train-
ing Standards, Chemicals, WCB Regula-
tions, Rehabilitation, Compensation and
WCB Medical Department.

The election of Regional Safety and
Health Council Officers was held on the
second day of the Conference. Elected were:

Chairman - Henry Nedergard (Local 1-85),
1st Vice-Chairman - K. Lidberg (Local
1-363), 2nd Vice-Chairman - I. Cleave (Local
1-424), 8rd Vice-Chairman - J. Pirker (Local
1-207), 4th Vice-Chairman -R. Davies (Local
1-80), Recording Secretary -R. Agnew (Local
1-217).

The Conference gave a vote of thanks to
retiring Chairman, Brother Jack Welder,
Local 1-423.

While the economic slump in the Forest
Industry and the resulting slide of health
and safety as a priority, caused delegates to
voice their concerns, it also brought the IWA
members closer together in their determina-
tion not to surrender to this type of economic
blackmail as was stated by the Regional
Safety and Health Director, and reiterated
by the delegates, “We know the answer, the

problems are economic and social, the
solution is political.”

©
SASK. “BLOODBATH”

By RON THOMPSON

REGINA — Among all the firings in the
ongoing ‘bloodbath’ of Saskatchewan’s new
Tory regime, the dismissal of Bob Sass from
the department of labour is so far causing
the biggest uproar.

Sass was fired July 29 from his post as
associate deputy minister and director of the

department’s occupational health and
safety branch.

The dismissal, more than any of the more
than 100 others in the civil service since the
Tories took office, sparked a storm of protest
among unions across western Canada.

In Regina, a committee to reinstate Sass,
including representatives from most major
industries, was formed within days of the
firing.

Led by Mike Quinn of Regina, the commit-
tee calls the firing of Sass “a declaration of
war against the workers of Saskatchewan”,
according to an open letter written to
Beemer Grant Devine to protest the dismis-
sal.

“Sass has this reputation of success,”
Quinn told reporters. “The workers trust
him, They feel threatened. They feel the
Devine governmentis going to undercut the
regulations and getting Sass out of the way
is the first step.”

Associate deputy labour minister for 10
years, Sass wrote the province’s pioneer
occupational health legislation and within
a couple of years took over direct adminis-
tration of the plan.

The legislation requires joint employer-
worker safety committees in most work
places, the right of workers to refuse unsafe
work and tough standards for control of

potentially harmful workplace chemicals
and other hazards.

The program became a model for similar
legislation brought in by most other provin-
ces during the 1970s, and made Sass one of
the world’s most sought after speakers and
consultants in the field.

Support for the reinstatement committee
has been coming in from across the West,
but particularly from union groups who had
contact with Sass:

© Steelworkers union Saskatoon repre-
sentative Terry Stevens charged the govern-
ment with gutting the labour department
with the firing of Sass and eight other
department officials.

© The Retail Wholesale and Department
Store Union, in its newsletter praised Sass’
efforts on behalf of workers and warned that
“his dismissal is really just the opening gun
in a war against occupational health and
safety”.

e Alberta Federation of Labour president
Harry Kostiuk, in an open letter to labour
minister Lorne McLaren, said the “decision
to fire Sass ultimately translates into
workers suffering and lives lost due to
industrial illness and accidents”.

e A letter from the B.C. Council of the
Confederation of Canadian Unions says the
firing “can only be viewed as the pettiest
kind of partisan. politics”.

© Other support came from the Interna-
tional Longshoremen’s and Warehouse-
men’s Union, the Canadian Association of
Industrial, Mechanical and Allied Workers,
the Canadian Paperworkers Union and the
Telecommunications Workers Union.

The charges of political partisanship were
stated most bluntly by Quinn in his letter to
Devine, who said the government had
disregarded workers and heeded the
Chamber of Commerce instead.

The Chamber’s labour policy committee
chairman was quoted in May to have said “I
think I am expressing on behalf of the
employers our hope and our desire that the
hit list (within the labour department) be
long”.

Quinn called that statement “Mafia-like”
and, in his letter, said, “We view (firing
Sass) as a political ‘payoff’ to some em-
ployers and their representatives... because
of his aggressive advocacy of worker rights
and enforcement of occupational health and
safety”.

The RWDSU newsletter said, “Corporate
backers of the current government are
interested in production and profits and
have made it clear that safety and health

should only be an issue when it might
interfere with attainment of these goals.

“There will be a demand by those who
paid the piper in the last election for a total
down grading of the (occupational health
and safety) Division,” the newsletter said.

Sass has since been employed at the
University of Regina teaching in the faculty
of administration.

Commonwealth

NEW ACT FOR
FARMWORKERS

The Commissioner of Employment and
Immigration Canada has announced that
effective January Ist, 1983, agricultural and
horticultural workers will need to work only
15 hours a week or earn 20 percent of their
maximum weekly insurable earnings to be
eligible for UIC.

Under the current Act agricultural and
horticultural workers must earn at least

$250 and work at least 25 days for the same

bee: before their employmentisinsura-
le.

Lumber Worker/November, 1982/11

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