Within the next few weeks, students in Ontario will be heading out to summer jobs, and those concerned with safety would like all of them to come home alive and in one piece at the end of the summer.

Each and every year, 40,000 youth are injured on the job in Ontario – and that’s just the number of injuries that are reported. Often, young people are too intimidated or embarrassed to speak up to a boss when they’re hurt. Young workers should know the importance of reporting workplace accidents, even if the injury seems minor, because it brings a dangerous situation to the employer’s attention.

They should ask their employers questions about safety, and they should not be afraid to demand orientation and training. Above all, young workers should realize they have the right to refuse work that feels unsafe.

One charitable foundation, Our Youth at Work, has come up with a checklist of questions for all young workers to keep handy for their first few days on the job:

• Is orientation and training offered to new hires? When does it start? How long does it last?
• Will I be able to observe coworkers in action during orientation/training?
• Are there potential hazards I should know about?
• Whom do I go to if I have a question, or if I need to say ‘no’ to unsafe work?
• Where is the personal protective equipment kept? Does it fit me properly?
• When was the last time the workplace was safety-inspected? Did everything pass?

The head of the Canadian Auto Workers, Canada’s largest private sector union, is sending out a warning to everyone that a large number of the country’s youngest workers are being asked to work in unsafe conditions. Not only that, but young workers often have no idea of their rights, including the right to refuse unsafe work, according to CAW president Ken Lewenza.

The warning comes in the wake of a $350,000 fine levied last week against retail grocer Metro Ontario for an Occupational Health and Safety Act violation that caused the death of a 17-year-old worker back in August 2009.

According to a Ministry of Labour investigation, the accident occurred at a Mississauga Metro store on Erin Mills Parkway. The young worker, a CAW member, had only been on the job for about three weeks when he was told to remove a box that had been stored on top of a drop ceiling. When the worker climbed up a ladder and stepped onto the ceiling, he fell through and suffered a fatal head injury.

According to statistics from the government of Ontario, each year more than 10,000 workers under the age of 25 are injured on the job and are unable to return to work the next day.

The Government of Canada’s Ministry of Labour has announced the appointment of Stevan Horvath as full-time President of the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, effective April 11, 2011.

Mr. Horvath is currently Vice-President of Operations for Advanced Inc., a leading supplier of audio visual solutions serving Ontario’s corporate, government and education markets. For the past ten years, he has served as Chairman of the Industrial Accident Prevention Association, a not-for-profit health and safety organization operating in Ontario. Throughout his career, Mr. Horvath has also occupied several senior management positions in both private and public corporations.

In addition to being a graduate of the Advanced Management Program at Harvard University, Mr. Horvath holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Queen’s University and an Industrial Hygiene Certificate from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto.

The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, located in Hamilton, Ontario, was created in 1978 to promote the fundamental right of Canadians to a healthy and safe working environment. It is governed by a council representing the federal, provincial and territorial governments, employers and workers.

The Ontario Ministry of Labor has fined the Corporation of the City of Brampton $75,000 for a violation of the Occupational Health and Safety Act after a young worker was injured while working at a snow tube hill.

The incident in question occurred as city workers were preparing the tube hill for use by the public on February 20, 2009. It was a daily practice for workers to test the speed of the hill before opening it up to patrons.  In order to test the speed of the escape lane, a young worker sat in a tube and slid down the lane.

On that day, however, the tube slid in the wrong direction, went over the berm and collided with the tow line lifting device.  As a result, the worker suffered broken bones, a punctured lung, spinal fracture and a concussion.

A Ministry of Labour investigation found that the city failed to take the reasonable precaution of ensuring that the berm was adequate for the protection of the worker, and the Corporation of the City of Brampton pleaded guilty to the charge.

The fine was imposed by Justice of the Peace Michael Barnes.  In addition to the fine, the court imposed a 25% victim fine surcharge, as required by the Provincial Offences Act. That money is credited to a special provincial government fund to assist victims of crime.

The Ontario Ministry of Labour would like everyone to know that inspectors will be spending at least the entire month of February conducting a safety blitz of loading docks at transportation and industrial businesses.

The decision to conduct the safety blitz was made after a report from the Infrastructure Health and Safety Association (IHSA), suggested that hazards in shipping and receiving areas and loading docks may often be overlooked.  Since such areas can often be busy places with a number of inherent hazards, failing to take proper precautions puts workers are at greater risk for injury or death. Provincial officials would like to see the number of injuries and fatalities in loading docks head downward.

Throughout this blitz, inspectors will be looking for a number of things, including how operators enter and exit vehicles; how vehicles are positioned and secured;  and safety precautions taken when loading and unloading vehicles using either mechanical  or manual means.

A  January 18 ruling by the Court of Appeal for Ontario that helps to define “regularly employed” workers under the province’s Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) has serious implications for many employers with regard to the formation of joint health and safety committees (JHSC).

The high court’s three-judge panel unanimously agreed that independent contractors should be considered to be “regularly employed” pursuant to Section 9(2)(a) of the act. Prior to the ruling, employers throughout Ontario did not count independent contractors many of whom do their work largely from home, or who simply don’t work from a particular workplace, as part of their “regular” workforce, and thought themselves exempt from JHSC requirements. Now, they will have to count such independent contractors and off-site employees as part of their workforce and comply.

This case marks the first time the court has had to consider the meaning of “regularly employed” under Section 9(2)(a). The case involved United Independent Operators Ltd, a transportation load broker based in Woodbridge, Ontario. The company contracts truck drivers, who independently own and operate their vehicles, to pick up aggregate from quarries, gravel pits and construction sites and transport it to customer locations.

In July 2004, a United truck driver suffered a broken pelvis and two broken legs after he was crushed between his truck and another United truck at a customer’s worksite. Ontario’s Ministry of Labour (MoL) investigated and found that United had violated the OHSA by failing to maintain a joint committee. They ordered the company to create a JHSC and brought oh&s charges against them.

The company, however, claimed it had no obligation to have a JHSC, since one is only required at workplaces with 20 or more workers who are “regularly employed,” and they only employed 11 full-time staff, not including the independent truck drivers.

The courts agreed with the company during an initial trial and a subsequent appeal to the Ontario Court of Justice. They cited a prior decision from the Ontario Labour Relations Board in which the board determined that “regularly employed” only applied to workers who enjoyed a traditional employment relationship with their employers.

But the high court suggested that only applying Section 9(2)(a) traditional employment relationships “seriously” reduces the section’s scope and limits the number of JHSCs that must be established, which interferes with the intended purpose of the act. “It is clear that JHSCs play a critical role in [the internal oh&s responsibility system]. JHSCs assist by increasing the ability of workers and employers to prevent and respond to dangerous and changing conditions,” the court ruled.

The Northwest Territories and Nunavut have begun the process of making drastic changes to their Occupational Health and Safety Regulations (OHSR), but the proposed draft has many businesses concerned.

In fact, there were so much concern expressed by members of the NWT Construction Association and the NWT Chamber of Commerce, that the Workers’ Safety & Compensation Commission (WSCC) of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut announced an extension of the public consultation period for the OHSR to March 31, a full five months later than had originally been scheduled.  It is hoped that the extension will give businesses time to examine the proposed regulations and provide meaningful feedback to the Safety Regulation Review Committee.

The WSCC and the two territorial governments studied the regulatory framework under the current Safety Acts and found it to be “fragmented, outdated, unclear and difficult to enforce,” according to a WSCC press release. The review committee spent two years developing the draft OHSR, which would replace all regulations under the Safety Acts, including the integration of regulations related to asbestos, workplace smoking, silica and soundblasting, among others, and combine them all into a single set of regulations.

Among some of the other changes included in the draft regulations are:

• Creating an enhanced role for joint occupational health and safety committees;
• Facilitating a partnership between employers and workers for greater safety at work sites;
• Facilitating a greater use of practice guidelines, standards and codes, with employers, workers and other stakeholders taking a much greater role in their development;
• Updating requirements for personal protective equipment;
• More directly addressing unique safety issues for workers in extremely cold weather;
• More provisions for radiation safety, including protection of pregnant workers and;
• More regulations dealing with harassment and violence on the job;

Some business groups, however, have complained about what they refer to as the WSCC’s “misguided approach” to developing the new regulations. They point out that a rewrite of the rules doesn’t necessarily lead to improved safety performance in the workplace.

Some have also expressed concern over the size of the draft, which runs approximately 350 pages, which seems excessive to some. In a business climate in which 97% of businesses fit into the “small” category, they wonder how many business owners will read the whole thing and recognize the regulations that apply to them. They worry about the “one-size-fits-all” nature of the new regulations, their lack of a risk assessment component. There are also cost concerns about regulations relating to internal safety committees, additional training and the shutting down of sites if the combined temperature and wind chill drops to -45 C or lower.  A few businesses indicated that they might as well shut down for the winter under such conditions.

For their part, the WSCC acknowledges the media attention they’ve received over the cold weather regulations, and they are sensitive to many other concerns, as well. When the current consultation period ends, they will decide if more consultation is necessary. They hope to put the new regulations in effect by the spring or summer of 2012.

According to a preliminary report by WorkSafeBC, a worker who died two days after he fell 14 metres while working on the sails at Canada Place on Dec. 2 “was not using a personal fall protection system” at the time of the accident.

Apparently, the 30-year-old worker, Diego Herrera, was wearing a safety harness, but that harness was unattached  when he fell through what the report describes as a “mouse hole” in the sails.

An inspection report taken at the work site also noted a number of violations of safety regulations at the work site, including ropes, straps, webbing, electrical cords and construction debris around the mouse hole in violation of the Occupational Health and Safety Regulation. The report made it clear that there were grounds for imposing an administrative penalty against Birdair Inc. of Amherst, N.Y, the company that was hired to replace the sails at Canada Place by Ledcor Construction Ltd., which is managing the project on behalf of Canada Place Corporation.

The report read, “The employer did not have a fall protection plan for the sealing up of the mouse hole. The mouse hole was not guarded or guard-railed. The area in front of the mouse hole had many slip and trip hazards.”

No further action will be taken, however, until WorkSafeBC’s investigation of the incident is complete.

WorkSafeBC regulations stipulate that an employer must have a fall protection system in place when work is being done at heights of 3 metres or more. The $21-million project to replace the sails — originally erected in 1984 — began in July 2010 and is expected to be completed later this year.

At an annual meeting held on January 16 and 17 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, federal, provincial and territorial labour ministers discussed a number of issues and reaffirmed their continuing commitment to safe workplaces, to protect workers and employers.

The get-together was co-hosted by the Honourable Lisa Raitt, Canada’s Labour Minister, and the Honourable Jennifer Howard, Minister of Labour and Immigration for Manitoba.

Minister Raitt asserted that the Canadian Government’s top priority was the economy and that “safe and healthy workplaces boost productivity and innovation,” and that “the well-being of workers and employers are key to the success and performance of Canada’s economy.”

According to Minister Howard, “Safe and healthy working environments do not just happen, they require a commitment by governments and everyone at the workplace. … Manitoba has long enjoyed a reputation as a leader in workplace health and safety issues and we want to continue to build on our successes.”

The meeting included discussions of Canada’s international labour activities, and endorsed a renewed strategy for Canada’s work as part of the International Labour Organization. They agreed to work together to develop programs that use social media and other tools to enhance the occupational health and safety of young workers.  They also participated in panel discussions regarding the evolution of work and possible long-range labor policy, with an emphasis on labour relations, employment standards, and mental health in the workplace.

The labour ministers’ meeting is an annual event, but ongoing work continues throughout the year, through the Canadian Association of Administrators of Labour Legislation (CAALL). Established in 1938, CAALL is an association of federal-provincial-territorial departments of labour and heads of occupational health and safety agencies.

Last summer, the Ontario Ministry of Transportation (MTO) began testing a fully mobile work zone barrier system during a concrete repair project on Highway 115, southwest of Peterborough.

The new system is fully mobile, consisting of a wheeled unit, which is pulled by a standard truck tractor. The unit can be deployed relatively quickly and, because of its reversible axles, it can easily be reconfigured for either right or left applications in about half an hour.

These new mobile units, which are bright orange to alert drivers that road work is taking place, reduce the need for road crews to set up a Temporary Concrete Barrier (TCB), which means they can finish road work and reopen a lane in less time.  By adding panels, the size of the work zone can be expanded to as much as 31 metres, and the systems are also customizable, including such options as portable message signs, auxiliary lighting and a privacy barrier. The unit meets U.S. National Cooperative Highway Research Program 350 TL-3 crash test requirements, as well.

The mobile work zone barriers increase the safety of maintenance and construction crews, according to a number of test projects, and past use by others. The state of California has been deploying such mobile barriers since 2004, for example, and they have proven to be very time effective and safe. California refers to its mobile barriers as “Balsi Beams,” because they were developed after worker Mark Balsi was killed by a motorist while picking up trash along the highway. California’s Balsi Beam was among those demonstrated to MTO officials at a conference several years ago, which led to last summer’s trial.

Construction crews have so far found it easy to adapt to the devices, and feel very confident working behind them.  The Highway 115 trial project proved the units to be so effective that the contractor’s schedule was advanced, and work was completed ahead of time, because they were able to eliminate the work necessary in placing and removing the TCB.

Due to the success of the initial mobile barrier trial, MTO expects to expand their use for projects such as pothole filling, pavement testing, crack sealing, bridge and guide rail repairs, and even accident scene investigations.

Photos of the mobile work zone barrier system in action can be found here.