Workers attend
logging industry
Safety forums

CAMPBELL RIVER, BC. — The
long awaited Logging Industry Safety
Forums took place in four different
B.C. locations from late-May to mid-
June. The forums, sponsored by the
Ministry of Labour and Consumer
Affairs in co-operation with IWA
-CANADA, the industry, and the
WCB, stopped here on June 8 to
receive input from workers and
employers.

The forums were held at the request
of IWA-CANADA and the industry.
At its National Health and Safety
Conference held in September of 1989,
IWA delegates called for such a confer-
ence to identify reasons for accidents
and fatalities and to seek solutions to
the problems.

A steering committee consisting of
representatives from the IWA, the
Ministry of Forests, the Council of
Forest Industries, the WCB, the
Truck Loggers Association, along
with various interior employers have
committed themselves to taking the
solutions that came from the forums
back to their respective bodies.

IWA - CANADA’s National 2nd Vice-
President, Neil Menard, told the
forum that all parties must work to
get occupational health and safety
issues out of the adversarial arena
and make a firm commitment to pro-
tecting workers.

John Hindson, Director of Field
Services for the OH&S division of the
WCB, said that we need to get grass
roots involvement to reverse the
injury and fatality statistics.

According to Hindson, in the log-
ging industry there were 6.2 fatalities
per thousand workers in 1940, and
that has been reduced to about 1.3
deaths per thousand in the 1980's.
Also according to Hindson, WCB sta-
tistics indicated that from 1962-89,
over 1,200 workers were killed in the
province's logging industry.

Bert Hawrysh, occupational health
and safety specialist for COFI, said
“We haven’t got much to be proud of
over the years,” and the industry
needs a new way of looking at things.
Hawrysh said WCB statistics don’t
give causes of accidents, so there is
not enough reliable data.

Today the WCB only investigates
death and risk of near death, toxic
chemical releases, structural flaws, or
dangerous blast incidents.

The forum broke into workshop ses-
sion groups to discuss negative and
positive factors affecting safety and
discussed actionable solutions which
could improve occupational health

and safety over the next 5 years.

Some of the negative factors that
came up included the following.

Most in attendance agreed that lack
of worker training is a major problem
with a poor induction process and/or
enforcement of WCB training regula-
tions.

Out in the bush there is often a lack
of co-ordination of safety standards
between major companies and smaller
contractors, said many present. With
that comes a lack of communication
between crew members in different
phases of logging operations. In addi-
tion, supervisors often turn a blind
eye to safety infractions.

Economic pressures to boost pro-
duction were cited as negative factors
affecting health and safety. Pressure
to increase production and shift
adjustment (shortening, or resched-
uling) are stressful for workers.

© Local 1-363 member Dan Brown, a logging truck driver at MB’s Menzies Bay Division, gives a presentation on behalf of a work-
shop group examining positive and negative factors affecting safety.

Loggers lack adequate
Safety training says Munro

To increase production parent com-
panies will often change contractors
and put extra pressure on the new
contractor to produce.

The lack of some safety regulations
in the logging industry (ie. logging
truck size, quality of road building,
landing sizes, etc.) were all cited as
negative factors affecting safety.

The issue of personal responsibility
was also raised. General apathy and
the lack of personal focus on safety
issues are negative factors.

Positive factors affecting worker
health and safety include the ade-
quate funding of safety committee
functions by employers. Worker train-
ing and first aid training can also
benefit the worksite.

Shorter work shifts and less turn-
over in the industry were cited as
positive.

Better communication between
major companies, contractors and
phase contractors were all cited as
positive factors along with stronger
personal commitments to a standard
of performance throughout the indus-
try.

“We haven’t got much
to be proud of over the

years”

— Bert Hawrysh
Council of Forest Industries

When it came to discussing action-
able solutions to be implemented,
there were many suggestions.

Most in attendance agreed that the
WCB should develop a set of stan-
dards to be implemented over the
next few years, and that management
should pay for safety training to meet
those standards. Qualified instruc-
tors are required to train workers in
specific job tasks.

One suggestion was made that
“train the trainer” schools be intro-
duced for various phases of the log-
ging industry.

Training is also required for man-
agement in the recruitment of skilled
workers and the maintenance of bet-
ter safety programs.

Most importantly, those union
members in attendance called for the
enforcement of existing WCB regula-
tions and training for safety commit-
tees, supervisors, and workers. WCB
inspections need to be done on a more
regular basis.

It was also suggested that logging
equipment be reviewed for their safety
features.

Addressing a meeting of the Log-
ging Industry Safety Forum in Ter-
race, B.C. on May 24, IWA-CANADA
President, Jack Munro, said that
despite the province’s sophisticated
forest industry, in both logging and
milling, worker accidents and deaths
have been on the increase when com-
pared to the number of hours worked
by everyone in the industry.

“When we talk about safety, our
scope must be broad because evi-
dence shows that fatalities and seri-
ous injuries are just as much tied to
the economic structure of the indus-
try as they are to specific work site
conditions and procedures,” said
Brother Munro.

Munro sited a 1987 Study of log-
ging injuries in Washington State
where the mortality rates in the small-
est companies surveyed were ten
times higher than was the rate in the
largest company.

A survey of fatalities between
1972-89, conducted by IWA - CANADA
Loggers Local 1-71 in its own jurisdic-
tion, revealed that 62% of 129 fatali-
ties occurred in small contractor oper-
ations while close to 35% occurred in
major tree farm licence operations.

Munro said that a big chunk of
dependent, smaller-sized contractors
are non-union.

“As small operators they depend on
the licence for their livelihood, but
they cannot look to union certifica-
tion as a way to resolve their problems
because they are owner-operators.”

Munro said that at a recent Inter-
national Labour Organization confer-
ence on the forest industry, interna-
tional labour, government and em-
ployer delegates were told by I.L.0.
research staff that, in most cases,
contracting out leads to a deteriora-
tion of working conditions and of
occupational health and safety.

Delegates to the conference adopted
a resolution which would require a
licence or a prime contractor to ensure
that all sub-contractors employed
maintain the standards (safety, envi-
ronmental, wages and working condi-
tions) that apply to the licence.

Munro told the forum that the TWA
is concerned about accident rates on
non-standard shifts. In-house research
done by Local 1-71 revealed that,
between 1972-89, 70% of logging fatal-
ities in that Local occurred in opera-
tions that worked non-standard (5
and 2) shifts. “Longer hours and more
consecutive days of work in an indus-
try are a prescription for disaster,”
said Munro.

Munro said that there is very little
being done in the workplace in the
way of worker training.

“Go to any typical logging opera-
tion these days and not only is the
equipment a lot different than it was
10 years ago, the manning at the work
site has also changed drastically,”
said Munro.

“Tech change has reduced the num-
ber of positions, and cost-cutting has
virtually eliminated the use of spares.
There is no backup to a machine
operator. There is no opportunity to
‘learn-the-ropes’ other than working
the position full-time.”

He also said that because of shorter
work seasons, training opportunities
are diminishing and accidents are
becoming more commonplace.

Munro said that new strategies
must be adopted. He said that employ-
ers must begin to show more collec-
tive resolve on broad issues like safety.

“That will be difficult to accom-
plish because employers in this indus-
try have a great reluctance to do
anything collectively,” said Brother
Munro.

In the future he said that “new
forestry” issues and logging tech-
niques (ie. snag retention) are going
to have to be resolved.

“Logging crews will also have to
become more familiar with assessing
site conditions during active Jogging:
It is not enough that individuals in
the crew understand the particular
function of a machine, they have to
become more aware of how the entire
operation works and how separate
activities fit together.”

Munro said the awareness has to
focus not only on log values and pro-
duction, but also on such variables as
ground conditions, soil and slope sta-
bility, erosion potential, etc.

The Union president said that the
response time of the government and
the Workers’ Compensation Board to
the needs of working loggers has been
painfully slow.

“The drafting, distribution and
enforcement of specific regulations
governing the safe operating proce-
dures for various pieces of logging
equipment, for example, has taken

acy
“In the case of grapple yarding, for
example, which ie a very com-
mon piece of any Coast logging show
in the early- to mid-1980's, it was not
until 1988-90 that a WCB guide book
on grapple yarding was produced.
That’s a shocking testament to the
responsiveness of the government to
some fairly basic safety issues.

eee

6/LUMBERWORKER/AUGUST, 1991