Young people aged 14 and 15 in Saskatchewan who are looking for a summer job should be aware that they must complete the Young Worker Readiness Certificate Course (YWRCC) and print out a certificate before taking any job.

Such young workers can apply for and interview for jobs before completing the certificate, but the certificate must be presented to their boss by their first day of work. Employers are required to keep a copy of the certificate in their files for every one of their employees in that age group.

Young workers under 16 must also have the consent of their parent or guardian, are not allowed to work after 10 p.m. on a school night, and cannot work more than 16 hours during a school week.

The YWRCC, which was launched in February 2010, has been completed by more than 5,600 young people to date. A number of schools throughout the province have incorporated the YWRCC materials into their curriculum. The purpose of the YWRCC course materials is to make young workers aware of their rights and responsibilities in the workplace.

The YWRCC course materials are available in French and English at www.lrws.gov.sk.ca/ywrcc. The English version of the test can be completed and submitted online. The French version, however, can be requested from Labour Standards to be completed on paper.

The owner of a Manitoba paving company where 15-year-old worker Andrew James was killed when he was buried in burning asphalt two years ago is facing more than two dozen new charges under provincial workplace health and safety laws. Including the charges his company already faces under the Employment Standards Code for employing a person under the age of 16, Gerald Shepell now faces a total of 29 separate charges in the July 25, 2008 accident.

According to court documents, the new charges include eight counts of failing to ensure the safety, health, and welfare of the workers he employed on that date.

According to reports, Shepell has pleaded not guilty and is scheduled to stand trial on October 7. In an interview, he stated that he didn’t know it was against Manitoba law to employ people younger than 16 at construction sites. He stated that he had the permission of the boy’s parents and thought that was good enough.

For the record, people under the age of 16 are allowed to work in Manitoba, but they must have a permit from the provincial employment standards branch. They are not allowed to work between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m., and they are specifically forbidden from working at construction sites, manufacturing plants, on drilling or servicing rigs or on scaffolding.

As has been promised, Albertans will soon have a new website to check out; one designed to provide them with greater access to employers’ injury and fatality records.

Of course, as usual some folks still have no plans to be satisfied. Some feel that the information will be too limited, and won’t offer an adequate picture of most companies’ safety records. The Alberta Federation of Labour, for example, has issued a statement saying that the government’s “watered-down” website falls short of what they promised eight years ago, and that it doesn’t hold employers accountable.  They would like to see more information on the site, such as specific work site inspection reports, safety violations and enforcement orders

Overall, the provincial government plans to publish partial safety records covering 2005-2009 for roughly 125,000 employers covered by the Workers’ Compensation Board.  Nearly 12,000 businesses that carry voluntary insurance coverage, such as farms, advertising agencies and flyer distributors, won’t be included.

The new site, which should be up and running by the end of September, will include the following information:

• The number of recorded lost-time work injury and illness claims by a company;
• Each company’s lost-time claim rate, which helps measure the likelihood of an occupational injury or disease. The claim rate will then be compared with industry and provincial averages. This number will not be included for employers with fewer than 40 full-time equivalent workers.
• The number of fatalities recorded by each company;
• Whether a business holds a certificate of recognition, which acknowledges an employer has an audited safety program.

The creation of this web site comes as the province faces greater scrutiny of its efforts to protect workers. Last spring, the province received scathing criticism after an Auditor General’s investigation found Alberta Employment wasn’t sufficiently going after employers with poor safety records. That report also voiced concerns about Alberta’s safety certificate program.

Over the past decade, 1,285 Alberta workers have been killed on the job. In 2008 alone, the province had the second-highest worker fatality rate, with a 26-year high 166 workers killed on the job that year alone. Every year, more Albertans die from workplace accidents than from murder.

Ontario inspected a bunch of trucks on their busiest highways between 6:00 a.m. on Wednesday, August 18 and 6:00 a.m. on Thursday, August 19, 2010 and, in the process, they caught a lot of potentially dangerous drivers.

Operation Corridor is an annual highway safety initiative that focuses on high police visibility, enforcement and education opportunities on all major provincial highways. It targets aggressive commercial vehicle drivers and/or unsafe commercial vehicles.

The operation is conducted by Ontario Provincial Police, as well as inspectors from the Ministry of Transportation and Ministry of the Environment. During the operation, they stopped and checked 1,431 commercial vehicles and laid 355 commercial motor vehicle-related charges.  In addition, 31 commercial vehicles were taken out of service due to various equipment issues or hours of service violations.

The charges laid during Operation Corridor included 131 charges for speeding; 10 charges for following too closely; 17 charges for not wearing a seatbelt; 43 charges for “other” hazardous moving violations; 82 equipment-related violations; and three charges for being impaired behind the wheel.

During last year’s blitz, they stopped 1,532 vehicles and laid 285 charges.

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.

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.

A Calgary construction worker who became a YouTube sensation when he made a joke out of high rise construction safety has been terminated by his employer.

Last week, the president and CEO of Skyway Canada, Gary Carey, confirmed that, after an internal investigation of the incident, one employee was fired.

The video, which was posted on YouTube in October 2009, shows a number of construction workers as they worked from scaffolding on the 29th storey of a condo development under construction. One worker could be seen tossing a metal clamp and passing a co-worker a metal rod. The worker who tossed the tool was fired for violating company policies. Another worker was suspended, but allowed to return to work after the investigation, after it was determined that he wasn’t involved in the prank, and had actually voiced his objections to the other workers. A third worker involved in the video is no longer with the company.

When the video was discovered online, it was passed to company and government officials, all of whom saw the behaviour as offensive, especially since it came approximately two months after the tragic death of three-year-old Michelle Krsek, who was killed by metal roofing material that fell from a downtown Calgary high rise construction site.

Skyway still has to submit a report to Occupational Health and Safety officials.

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.

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 criticism that the provincial government has been lax with its investigations of problem employers, Alberta is shaking up its occupational health and safety department.

The shake-up began earlier this month, when executive director Dan Clarke left his post. The government is now advertising for a replacement, and it sees the replacement as part of a structural overhaul of occupational health to make it focus more on compliance and enforcement of safety rules in the workplace.  It hopes to have a new executive director by the end of the summer.

There are many who would say it’s about time. Alberta currently has one of the highest rates of worker deaths in Canada with 166 deaths in 2008 alone. This past April, an auditor general’s report said the department was lax on enforcement and even suggested they had hidden the true number of companies that refused to make safety improvements.  The review showed that the department had suspended compliance orders filed against dozens of companies with high injury rate for no apparent reason. But when they looked more closely, they discovered that many of them were suspended just to make its own statistics look better, and in a number of cases, the compliance orders were reopened in the next fiscal year with no evidence that the companies took any action to improve worker safety.

The auditor general also found that in many cases, companies that ignored safety violations were still getting rebates from the province under a program that rewards firms with good worker safety records. Violations that went unchecked for years ran the gamut, ranging from a lack of hearing and eye protection to fire and explosion hazards.

Alberta Employment Minister Thomas Lukaszuk  has promised to announce more details with regard to the overhaul in the coming weeks.