Irving Shipbuilding Inc. is scheduled to stand trial in March 2012 on Occupational Health and Safety Act charges stemming from an industrial accident that injured a worker at the Halifax Shipyard three years ago.

The accident that led to the charges occurred on March 4, 2008, when a 50-year-old worker who was performing maintenance on the dry dock fell about six metres. Emergency personnel were called, and the worker was taken to hospital with unspecified injuries. The Nova Scotia Labour Department immediately launched an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the fall.

The result of that investigation led to the Labour department charging Irving Shipbuilding with four offences under the Occupational Health and Safety Act: failing to protect employees from a hazard of falling, failing to ensure there were adequate guardrails, failing to make sure workers entering a confined space wore full body harnesses; and failing to ensure the worker who fell had been provided with confined-space training.

The company had originally scheduled to go to trial in Halifax provincial court this coming September, but lawyers appeared before Judge Anne Derrick last week to ask for postponement, and she rescheduled the trial for 10 days, beginning March 5.

Halifax Shipyard is one of four yards, along with Seaspan Marine Inc. in Vancouver, Seaway Marine and Industrial in Ontario, and the Davie Yards in Quebec, who are bidding on Ottawa’s $35-billion national shipbuilding program. Irving Shipbuilding Inc. hopes to land the bulk of the contract, about $25 billion worth of work building 20 navy vessels.

According to an economic impact study done by the Conference Board of Canada, if they win the combat vessel contract, it could mean more than 11,000 new jobs in Nova Scotia by 2020, the height of construction. The deadline for bids is July 21, with a decision expected in September.

Canada is on the verge of becoming the first country in the world to develop a national set of standards designed to protect workers from what they consider to be mental health injury in the workplace.

Mental health issues have been cited as the leading cause of short and long-term disability, affecting one in five workers. Nearly a quarter of Canadian workplaces have been deemed “psychologically perilous,” and a number of federal and corporate officials have provided up to $470,000 in funding to the Mental Health Commission to establish a voluntary set of best practices that could lead to improvements in workplace mental health.

The loss of work days and other disruptions to workplaces caused by mental health issues are estimated to cost the Canadian economy more than $50 billion a year. In the last five years alone, there has been a 700% increase in court-ordered damages awarded for workplace mental health injury. The recognition by the courts of a serious problem coincides with studies characterizing between 10 to 25% of workplaces as “mentally injurious.”

The National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety will be voluntary for employers to adopt, and will provide them with tools to help with implementation.
The federal funds are being provided by Human Resources, Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada. Beginning this fall, there will be a 60-day public consultation and it is hoped that standards will be ready for employers sometime next year.

A business consortium from India has expressed a desire to reopen the Jeffrey asbestos mine in Asbestos, Quebec, and an anti-asbestos advocacy group, the Rideau Institute, is upset about the government’s reaction to the overture.

The provincial government is considering a $58-million loan guarantee to the Indian consortium, which is led by Balcorp Inc. The lure of jobs in a down economy is cited as a major reason for even contemplating the deal. The Quebec government is considering paying for routine inspections in India to make sure the asbestos is used safely.

The Rideau Institute, however, believes it would be impossible to regulate safe use of asbestos throughout India because of the generally poor working conditions in that country. For example, when asbestos cement products are dispersed, they will end up in thousands and thousands of poor villages and slums.

The Institute also objects to the fact that Quebec’s Commission de la santé et de la sécurité du travail du Québec (CSST), their workplace health and safety board, is part of an economic mission to India next week to promote the safe use of asbestos. They say the Quebec government should not be helping to export asbestos to India, or anywhere else, for that matter.

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.

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.

It’s been a pretty hot summer so far, and we’re not even halfway through, so perhaps this is would be a good time to remind you to take special precautions on scorching hot summer days, in order to keep your workers safe and productive.  The higher the temperature goes, the less comfortable workers feel, which makes them more prone to accidents and also causes them to slow down a bit. But just as importantly, excessive heat can be extremely dangerous, and building a culture of safety requires that you keep your workers as safe as possible.

If possible, try to reduce the demand on each worker by reducing  the level of physical exertion such as excessive lifting, climbing, or digging. If possible, try to use relief workers or assign extra workers.  Try to reschedule the most strenuous activities jobs for the cooler part of the day and reserve the hottest part of the day for routine maintenance and repair work.

For those workers who must work outside during the hot part of the day, they should wear light, very loose-fitting clothing, with long sleeves and long pants, in order to avoid serious UV damage from the sun.  For areas of the body that are still exposed, such as faces, hands and necks, be sure to have adequate supplies of good quality sunscreen on hand as well.

Make sure all outside workers are provided with plenty of water. And that should be water, as sugary drinks and drinks with caffeine actually cause faster dehydration. They should also be given plenty of breaks during which they can drink the water. It is far more beneficial to drink small amounts of water at frequent intervals than to drink a lot of water all at once. If the work is particularly strenuous and is performed in direct sunlight, try to provide a shady area or tent, where workers can sit down, drink some water and recharge.

If your workers are toiling away in an area with a combination of high temperature and high humidity,  be aware of the increased risk to such workers of heat stroke or heat exhaustion. In addition to workers who don’t take adequate breaks or drink enough water, pay close attention to workers who take certain medications, older workers or workers who are not in peak physical condition, as they are especially susceptible to complications from heat-related stress.

Some of the warning signs for heat-related illness include headaches, lightheadedness, confusion, irrational behavior, loss of consciousness, abnormally high body temperature and hot, dry skin.  When a worker starts to complain that he or she isn’t feeling well, you would do well to take the complain seriously and sit that worker down in the shade with a cup of water and let them recover.

Other potential risks to the health of workers toiling outdoors in summer aren’t necessarily heat-related. It might be a good idea to have workers regularly check for ticks, which sometimes carry Lyme Disease. Be sure to watch out for mosquitoes, which can carry West Nile Virus, and plants, such as poison oak and poison ivy, that can cause skin rashes and make it difficult to work.

If you do business in Alberta and you have a poor safety record, you’d do well to take steps to improve it, and do so quickly. It seems your days of hiding from it may be numbered.

After a bloody Tuesday last week in which two Edmonton-area workers died at work sites and another was seriously injured in an elevator accident, Alberta Employment Minister Thomas Lukaszuk was livid, and took to the airwaves to vow that this fall would see the public release of the identities of those provincial employers with the worst safety records.

In a radio interview in which he was asked about those recent deaths, Lukaszuk revealed that Albertans will learn the names of the province’s worst safety performers within 3-4 months. The Conservative government had first promised to release such list eight years ago, but at that time the idea was shelved.

Lukaszuk said his staff is working on the list with the help of the Workers Compensation Board (WCB). When the list is complete, anyone will be able to look up the name of a company and see the number of man-work hours they have, see how many accidents they had, and determine how they compare to industry and provincial averages.

If Alberta actually follows through with its promise and releases such a list of poor safety performers, it will become just the second province to do so. Nova Scotia began publishing the names of companies with substandard safety record after their Supreme Court ruled in favour of their release in December 2008.

This type of list could have a negative effect in two ways. The obvious impact will be with prospective employees. How many of the best workers will want to come work for you if you have a lousy safety record? And how many of your customers will take their business to another company that takes the safety of its workers more seriously?

This might be a good time to look at your safety record and look at ways to improve. The impact to your bottom line could be enormous.