Be aware, Ontario workers and employers; Ontario’s Ministry of Labour (MoL) is planning another blitz, and this time, they plan to focus on Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs).

This blitz, which is scheduled to run from September 1 to October 31, 2010, will concentrate on  several industries, including the construction and mining sectors.

The term “Musculoskeletal disorders” covers a wide variety of disorders, including repetitive strain injury, cumulative trauma, back strain and tendonitis. According to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board, such injuries represent 43% of all lost-time claims. In 2008, there were more than 33,000 lost-time claims attributed to MSDs, resulting in a loss of more than 1.2 million days and costing the province approximately $142 million. And unlike acute, traumatic or sudden injuries, MSDs tend to be slow and cumulative.

The construction aspect of the blitz will concentrate mainly on home building, and will focus on equipment maintenance and access to excavation sites, in order to make sure there are no obstacles, and that workers are walking while they carry materials.

When it comes to the mining industry, inspectors will examine large vehicle access and whether the equipment has enough clearance to compensate for body parts. They will also check to make sure that roadways in surface mines are well maintained, to minimize the whole-body vibration jarring that workers often suffer.

Last week, a 58-year-old electrical contractor fell to his death in Carman, Manitoba after a hydro pole snapped while he was unhooking power lines.

The man, an electrical contractor whom area residents have identified as Bob Murray, who owned Bob Murray Electric Ltd., had been working at Vanderveens’ Greenhouses Ltd., located in the Rural Municipality of Dufferin, west of the town of Carman.  According to RCMP, they had hired Murray’s company to do electrical work as part of an addition to their facilities.

Murray was apparently in the process of unhooking hydro power lines, and was on a ladder that he had propped up against the pole before it snapped and fell over around shortly before 11:30 a.m., according to Carman RCMP. The pole apparently belonged to the greenhouse and was not owned or maintained by Manitoba Hydro, according to a Hydro spokesperson.

The incident is currently being investigated by Manitoba Workplace Safety and Health.

On August 27, 2010, at 6:00 p.m., injured worker and Paralympics medalist Josh Dueck took to Empire Field and the Pacific National Exhibition in British Columbia to attempt to break a world record for the “most High Fives by any individual in 24 hours.” The record attempt was part of WorkSafeBC’s Raise Your Hand campaign — an annual initiative to increase young workers’ understanding of their safety rights and how to stay safe at work.

Dueck became paralyzed from the waist down in a workplace accident at the age of 23. Since then, he has become a world-champion para-alpine skier. He has won national and international competitions and recently won a silver medal at the 2010 Paralympics Winter Games. And as a member of the WorkSafeBC Paralympics Speaker program, he has shared his experiences with youth across British Columbia for the past several years.

Since 2007,  the Raise Your Hand campaign has used its website at RaiseYourHand.com, street teams that travel to high schools and universities around the province, and other means to raise awareness about workplace safety to the province’s 350,000 young workers.

Last weekend a large number of bad drivers got behind the wheel, and proceeded to smack into guardrails, run into ditches, and smash into other vehicles, because they were being distracted by cell phones and other gadgets. The distractions caused them to fail to stay in their lanes, maintain their speed, and overall, they were pretty reckless.

Thankfully for everyone, these particular drivers were at an Alberta shopping mall, and were merely operating a driving simulator developed by the Insurance Bureau of Canada to demonstrate the risks of distracted driving, so the vehicles were virtual.  But their inability to drive safely surprised a number of them, and encouraged support for a new law that would ban the use of digital devices while driving.

Alberta is one of just two provinces without such a law, but legislation has been introduced that could change that status by this time next year.

Bill 16, which the provincial government introduced in April, which would outlaw the use of phones, music players and most other digital devices while driving, with hands-free devices excluded. The law would also make it illegal to tend to other tasks, such as personal grooming and writing on notepads, while operating a vehicle. The proposed penalty for a violation is a $172 fine.

According to the Transportation Ministry, the bill is scheduled to be debated when the legislature resumes sitting in October. If passed, the law would likely go into effect in 2011.

Based on a survey prepared for the Alberta Motor Association this past spring, fully 76% of Albertans would support such a ban. The survey also found that 61% of respondents felt the law should include hands-free devices.

The Ontario government recently launched an eight-week health and safety awareness campaign designed to enlighten construction workers and their employers.

They unveiled the campaign at Algonquin College, at the site of the school’s  new construction trades building, which will open to about 2,500 construction trades students next year. The new campaign follows a 90-day safety enforcement blitz of more than 2,800 construction sites.

Even though the province’s lost-time injury rate among construction workers is one of the lowest in Canada, the 90-day blitz revealed numerous violations, including improper equipment use and poor supervisor and worker training. As a result, Ontario officials decided that it was time to emphasize the need for the entire construction industry to learn the importance of safety.

The campaign is being run in Canadian cities with the highest construction activity, including Ottawa.  It is sponsored by the Ministry of Labour, the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board and the Infrastructure Health & Safety Coalition, and will feature newspaper advertising in the key ethnic languages spoken in the construction sector, and posters will appear on construction fences.  Tip sheets for workers will be available on the ministry’s website at www.ontario.ca/ConstructionSafety.

Another aspect of the campaign revolves around a hope that the public can become more involved in providing information to ministry officials. To that end, a toll free phone number (1-877-202-0008) has been established for the public to call in and report safety issues they see. If a follow-up visit deems a jobsite unsafe, the province can issue a stop-work order in the interests of safety.

MMFX Steel of Canada Inc. has been fined $120,000 for a violation under the Occupational Health and Safety Act that caused a worker’s death.

The accident occurred on January 20, 2009 at the company’s Welland steel mill and foundry, when a worker was walking across the workplace’s yard. The worker crossed the path of a moving front-end loader, and he fell under the vehicle’s wheel. The loader operator did not see the fallen worker, who was run over and killed by the loader.

The company pleaded guilty to violations of Regulation 851/90, Section 20, failing to install signs, barriers or other safeguards in an area where vehicle or pedestrian traffic may endanger the safety of a worker.

The fine was imposed by Justice of the Peace Bruce Phillips. In addition to the fine, the court imposed a 25% victim fine surcharge, as required by the Provincial Offences Act, an amount that is credited to a special provincial government fund to assist victims of crime.  That makes the total cost to MMFX Steel of Canada Inc.

In the wake of the tragic scaffolding accident that occurred last Christmas Eve  in which four foreign workers plummeted to their deaths, two Ontario companies now face the prospect of paying $17 million in fines for violations of the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA), as well as at least $30 million in lawsuits.

Last December  24, five workers were working from a scaffold on the side of aToronto high-rise, when the scaffolding broke apart, causing the workers to fall 13 storeys to the ground, killing four of them, and leaving the one worker who survived with a broken spine and two broken legs.

After a seven-month investigation, the Ontario Ministry of Labour has announced that it would lay 30 charges against the workers’ employer, Metron Construction, four charges against Swing ‘N’ Scaff, the scaffolding supplier, 19 charges against the directors of each company and eight charges against a supervisor. Among the charges against the companies were; failure to ensure workers used devices to prevent them from falling, failure to ensure the platform wasn’t overloaded, failure to ensure the platform was designed according to safety regulations and failure to ensure the workers were properly trained. The charges against the individuals include improper training of employees.

The companies face possible fines of up to $500,000 for each of the charges, while the individuals potentially face a fine up to $25,000, and up to a year in jail for each charge. In addition to facing the potential fines, 22-year-old Dilshod Marupov, the worker who survived, has also filed a lawsuit against the companies, the building owner and the Ministry of Labour, seeking $16.3 million in damages. The lawsuit claims the workers weren’t trained properly or given safety gear, and alleges the scaffolding was faulty. The ministry is included because the suit claims it allowed the companies to continue operating at the worksite despite two previous stop work orders for safety violations. Marupov’s lawyer has also filed a $14 million lawsuit on behalf of the estate of one of the workers killed.

In addition to the civil fines under OHSA, the employers could also face serious fines and prison sentences based on a criminal investigation under the Criminal Code of Canada. Bill C-45, passed in 2004, expanded the criminal liability of organizations for workplace accidents and broadened the range of individuals who are subject to criminal charges. While there have been previous cases in which Ontario employers in have served jail time as a result of workplace accidents, the Criminal Code has rarely been used since Bill C-45 was passed.

According to the Ontario Federation of Labour, the number of Canadian workers killed on the job has risen over the past 15 years. Altogether, 479 work-related fatalities in Ontario were reported to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board in 2009.

Edmonton-based equipment dealer Finning Canada faces four counts for violations of Alberta’s occupational health and safety code in the wake of a worker’s death two years ago.

On July 8, 2008, a worker was killed on the job at Suncor Energy Inc’s Millennium mine site near Fort McMurray, when he and other Finning workers were moving a disabled hauling truck to the shop for repairs. The worker was run over by the vehicle and fatally injured, and two other workers also sustained minor injuries in the accident. One was treated on-site, while the other was taken to hospital in Grande Prairie, where he was treated and released.  A stop-work order was issued at the time, restricted to the immediate area around the site of the accident.

Finning released a statement on its website calling the worker’s death “truly a tragic incident – one that will forever impact Kevin’s family, all those who worked alongside him in the oil sands and our company as a whole.” The statement goes on to say that “at Finning, safety is a core value that influences everything we do. We remain committed to achieving and sustaining health and safety excellence in all of our business operations.”

The charges the company faces include;

• Failing as an employer to ensure, as far as it is reasonably practicable to do so, the health and safety of workers engaged in the work of that employer, as stipulated under section 2(1)(a)(i) of the provincial Occupational Health & Safety Act;
• Violation of sections 7(4) and 8(1) of the Act. Section 7(4) states that an employer must ensure that a hazard assessment is repeated at reasonably practicable intervals to prevent the development of unsafe and unhealthy working conditions.  Section 8(1) stipulates that an employer must involve affected workers in the hazard assessment and in the control or elimination of the hazards identified.
• Violation of section 15(1) of the Act, which demands that an employer must ensure that a worker is trained in the safe operation of the equipment the worker is required to operate.

The company is scheduled to first appear in Fort McMurray Provincial Court August 30 .

Who could ever have imagined that breaking wind could make the roads safer and the air cleaner?  That’s certainly the hope of the Ontario provincial government.

It is a fact that one of the great difficulties with clearing highways during winter is having to deal with blowing and drifting snow. It’s not unusual for snowplow operators to clear a section of road, only to have to do so again because of snow that has drifted from a nearby field.

To combat this problem, Ontario has developed a special project in the West region to build partnerships with farming agencies and groups to encourage the planting of farm windbreaks, which are lines of trees designed to block drifting snow from blowing onto the highway. But it is also hoped that the project, which is supported in part by the Ontario Public Service Innovation Fund, will also provide environmental benefits.

The effects of blowing and drifting snow accounts for as much as 30% of plowing, salting and sanding costs,  which comes to about $3,000 per two-lane kilometre per year. Combined with the province’s purchase of state-of-the-art, efficient snow removal equipment and technology, it is hoped that the planting of farm windbreaks will result in significant cost savings.

But the benefit is not just about winter highway maintenance. While last winter saw major reductions in snow removal costs in areas where windbreaks already existed, area farmers who plant windbreaks see crop yields increase by 5-25% on average. The windbreaks reduce soil erosion, provide wildlife habitat, improve air quality, and have a cooling effect on climate.

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To help raise awareness, provincial environmental officials launched an advertisement campaign last year designed to attract the attention of farmers, including a brochure featuring the slogan “Break Wind, Make Money” that is currently being distributed at farm shows, grower meetings, conferences and workshops throughout Ontario. .

The Farm Windbreaks project is intended to promote sustainability, reducing the effects of climate change and to reduce the environmental contamination by road chemicals, as well as improve road and transportation safety.

So go ahead, break wind, and keep the roads clear.

Following a recent  90-day safety enforcement blitz of more than 2,800 construction sites that uncovered what the Ontario Labour Ministry considered to be an unacceptable number of safety infractions throughout the province,  the government has launched a new campaign aimed at worker safety education.

The blitz found violations ranging from missing guardrails to inappropriate use of scaffolding, and laid bare a marked lack of worker and supervisor training.  As a result, the ministry has ordered a culture change of sorts, and have made a new commitment to constant prevention and protection.

The new safety campaign will focus on education, and features posters with X-rays of broken bones with the tagline “Don’t let these be the last pictures someone takes of you.” The ministry will also operate a toll-free line, 1-877-202-2008, for anyone to report unsafe conditions on a work site.  To encourage absolutely anyone who sees something unsafe to call the line, all calls will be anonymous, and all will be passed on to inspectors for investigation.

The ministry also intends to pass on the message through its web-site and Twitter, as well as in ethnic newspapers, where it will be delivered in 10 languages.