DR. GORDON ATHERLEY

A BETTER INFORMED
WORKPLACE

By DR. GORDON ATHERLEY,
MD, MFCM, MFDM, OSEJ, FRSA

“... to promote health and safety in the
workplace in Canada and the physical
and mental health of working people in
Canada...”
—from the Act to establish the
Canadian Centre for Occupa-
tional Health and Safety (1978)

The dictionary tells us that the word
information means a “thing told, knowl-
edge.” It’s an abstraction lacking the real
value of oil, gold or silver, but modern
soothsayers predict that before long infor-
mation will be our most important commod-
ity. We who want to make workplaces safer
and healthier know that this is nota
prediction, information is our most valuable
commodity.

The very nature of occupational injuries
and diseases makes information about them
indispensable. They catch you unawares,
sometimes inflicting sudden pain and suf-
fering, or attacking slowly but insidiously
over longer periods. Clearly, we need early-
warning systems in occupational health
and safety.

Yet when we look at the appalling toll of
occupationally induced injury and disease
in Canada (and indeed in most other indus-
trial countries), we realize that such systems

are either not in place or not working, or
both.

The information seems to be there — often
in great abundance — but somehow it
doesn’t get used effectively. Nor does it get to
the people who need it most — those exposed
to the risk of occupational injury or disease.

There are likely many reasons for this.

Bearers of information are often suspect
and thus what they say is disregarded.
Labour suspects management-promoted
studies and vice-versa. Both suspect govern-
ment studies. Stalemates result.

Another probable reason for this sort of
information blockage is the very abundance
of data in occupational health and safety.
It’s hard to keep up with, even for scholars,

but every much harder to master if you can
only give it a small fraction of your time.
Information abounds in the journals,
reports and books, but little attempt is ever
made to synthesize it so that it can be used
quickly and effectively.

But, perhaps most importantly, there is a
pervasive attitude that information in
occupational health and safety is not fit for
public consumption. It must be gathered
and dispensed by “experts” or “profession-

als”, we are told. Just as doctors mediate™

between the patient and medical knowledge,
it’s expected that experts (many of whom
are also doctors, by the way) must mediate
between information and the workplace.
And they do, of course.

But present trends suggest this attitude
must be overcome. In the last decade or so,
there has been a general recognition that a
better informed workplace will be a safer
and healthier one. The right to refuse
dangerous work, joint health and safety
committees, the concept of ‘‘as low as is
reasonably achievable’ (ALARA) for
hazardous exposures — these ideas derive
from the notion that there should be more
local control over the workplace.

Directives from on high are fine, but they
must be carried out at the local level. And
with this local decision-making, we feel,
there is an obligation to make sure that
those who are making the decisions should
be well informed. They have a “right to
know”.

At the Centre we have addressed the
problem of information in occupational
health and safety, and have madeit our goal
to bring effective, intelligible data on
workplace hazards and problems to the
people involved. We see this task asa way of
fulfilling our essential legislated mandate
quoted above.

This is a huge undertaking. Before going
ahead with it we had to make an important
decision — to fully utilize computers in
mastering the great mass of information
that we propose to gather, synthesize and
disseminate. Our system is to bemore thana
library; it must be made available quickly
and cheaply the length and breadth of
Canada. No conventional library can do
that.

We call our service an information utility.
Basically it is an information and retrieval
system — the information stored and organ-
ized in a central computer in Hamilton and
retrieved and disseminated through termi-
nals located in every province and in the
territories.

At present, we think 100 terminals, stra-
tegically located, should give us the cover-
age we need. These will be purchased
(present price $2,000 each) by the “‘custodi-
ans” of the system. Custodians may be a
government department, a union, a busi-
ness, or other interested party.

Having a terminal, the custodian will of
course have access to our data; but no
terminal will be allocated unless the would-
be custodian can give the Centre a guaran-
tee that it will be made freely available to
anyone who asks to use it.

To emphasize that distance will not deter
us in getting our system to Canadians, the
Centre recently signed an agreement with
the government of the Northwest Territories
to locate a terminal in Yellowknife after a
successful demonstration of computerized
data retrieval in that city by Centre staff.
Installation is slated for the fall. N.W.T.
government employees will travel to Hamil-
ton to learn how to gain access to informa-
tion already accessible to the Centre.

We now have our own data base in Eng-
lish and French, which was _ recently
acquired from the International Labour
Organization’s occupational healthand
safety information service. In addition, we
have access, through a terminal in our
Hamilton office, to about 150 U.S. data
bases which contain varying amounts of

workplace hazard data. And, with the help
of a computer in McMaster University, we
are carrying out the necessary experiments
to develop our own all-Canadian data base
which we hope will be at least partially
operational in about a year when we will
acquire our own computer.

We need the widest cooperation to succeed
in these endeavours. We need the experience
and advice of unions, business, and govern-
ment — our main “client groups”. Ours will
be a two-way system.

This leads me to add, in closing, a word
about the Centre’s make-up. We are a crown
corporation, governed by a Council of
Governors made up of 39 representatives of
labour, business, and the federal, provincial
and territorial governments. This “tripar-
tite’ way of governing the Centre was
deliberate. It was a way of ensuring that we
would beindependent and thus be trusted by
Canadian working people. We know that
this trust must be earned, and our every
effort will be bent to do just that in the
weeks and months ahead.

Dr. Gordon Atherley, the first presi-
dent of the Canadian Centre for Occu-
pational Health and Safety, has had a
varied career as a physician, research-
er, teacher and civil servant. He has
written prolifically on workplace
hazards, particularly in this specialty,
occupational hearing loss. He assumed
his latest post last December.

LOCAL 1-424
REPORT

By IRENE CLEAVE
Safety Director, Local 1-424

There has been one fatal industrial acci-
dent in Local 1-424. On October 26, 1979 Bro.
Dick Kelly, a twenty-seven year old forklift
operator, was fatally injured when crushed
between a load of lumber and a support
beam at the sawmill. Bro. Kelly was
employed at Houston Forest Products.

This is a vast improvement over last year
but we still consider one too many.

Traffic accidents have taken their toll
with four members losing their lives. There
have been many crippling injuries in both
industrial and traffic accidents.

The Local Union Safety Director has
visited nearly all of the operations in the
Local Union and has had discussions with
management and Safety Committees on
methods to resolve safety problems.

The Local Union has used the services of
the Workers’ Compensation Board Accident
Prevention Department on many occasions
in the past year. Their investigators have
uncovered many serious violations of the
Accident Prevention Regulations and cor-
rective action has been ordered by this
department.

The Local Union hosted the Regional
Council No. 1’s Spring Health and Safety
Conference, April 11th and 12th, 1980. The
second annual IWA Local 1-424 Health and
Safety Committee Seminar was held
November 38rd and 4th, 1979. We thank Sis.
Verna Ledger, Regional Council No. 1’s
Health and Safety Director, for her partici-
pation to make this a successful seminar.

The Local Union’s Safety Bulletin has
been printed on a monthly basis and the
Cariboo Logger also features a page for
reports and articles on Safety.

Bro. Jack Higgins resigned as Safety
Director to devote his time to being a
full-time officer of Local 1-424. Bro. Bill Watt
was hired as Safety Director March 10, 1980,

and resigned becoming a full-time Business

Agent. I was hired as Safety Director June
16th, 1980.

Lumber Worker/August, 1980/5