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.

WebSafety, Inc. has announced the release of a mobile application they call CellSafety, which should go a long way toward making the roadways safer for everyone.  You see, this particular application actually disables texting and emailing from a moving vehicle.

The company recently increased the application’s compatibility to more than 60 smart phones in the United States and has now expanded CellSafety so that it works on the Bell Mobility and Telus networks in Canada.

CellSafety uses proprietary technology to detect when a vehicle is moving at speeds of more than 10 mph and then prohibits the driver from sending or reading text and email messages, or even using the phone’s web browser.

Texting and emailing while driving is considered one of the most dangerous distractions facing drivers today, and new laws have been passed all over as a response to this hazard. More than 30 U.S. states and seven Canadian provinces now have laws to prevent distracted driving, and President Obama signed an Executive Order banning federal employees from texting while operating government vehicles. WebSafety developed CellSafety as a solution to the problem.

The CellSafety mobile application is available starting at $9.99 per month, with substantial discounts available for commercial and governmental accounts, and can be purchased by visiting www.mywebsafety.com.

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.

Nearly two years after three of their workers were killed and two received major brain injuries after being overcome by toxic fumes, the operators of a mushroom farm near Vancouver were finally charged with a series of offences under British Columbia’s labour laws last week.

A total of 29 charges under the Workers Compensation Act and Occupational Health and Safety Regulations were brought against two companies; A-1 Mushroom Substratum Ltd., H.V. Truong Ltd.; and four individuals — Ha Qua Troung, Vy Tri Trong, Van Thi Truong and Thinh Huu Doan — who are either officers or directors of those companies.  Among the charges were; failing to ensure the health and safety of workers;  failing to fix hazardous conditions; failing to ensure workers are aware of safety hazards; inadequate training; and failing to create an adequate safety plan.

The incident that led to the charges occurred on Sept. 5, 2008, when a group of workers at a mushroom farm and composting plant in Langley were overcome by toxic fumes in a shed. What happened inside that shed set off what WorkSafeBC considers to be one the most complex investigations in the agency’s history.

According to investigators, a pipe carrying a compost mixture broke and released a toxic gas. Two men were overcome by the fumes relatively quickly, and when co-workers came to their aid, several of them were also overcome. Three workers died, including one of the rescuers. One worker is still in a coma and another was left unable to speak or hear.

The New Democrats and the British Columbia Federation of Labour, among others, have called for a public inquiry into overall farmworker safety, and also called for changes to the province’s agriculture industry. The Federation claims that the company offered a single pamphlet on working in confined spaces at the work site. Unfortunately, the pamphlet was available only in English, despite the fact that the workers involved were Vietnamese-Canadians, and spoke very little English.

This particular incident isn’t the only case in recent years involving the deaths of British Columbia farmworkers. In March 2007, three farmworkers were killed when a 15-passenger van carrying 17 people flipped onto a concrete median on the Trans-Canada Highway near Abbotsford. In that case, the deaths were ruled accidental, although the coroner’s jury made18 recommendations, including ensuring farmworkers are better informed about their rights.

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.

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.

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.

According to a new research study in Scotland, fully 36% of workplace injuries can be tied to slips, trips and falls, making these types of injuries by far the most common kind of work accident claims.

The good news is that such accidents are commonly caused by circumstances such as untidy work spaces, spillages on floors, uneven floors, obstructions, bad lighting and other things that are relatively easy to fix. Therefore, if regular workplace inspections occur, employers could potentially find these problems and effectively prevent future accidents, thus saving everyone a lot of money.

Workplace accidents caused an estimated 4.7 million sick days in Scotland alone last year, and most of them began as slips, trips and falls and not serious injuries, but resulted in employees seeking workers compensation for bad injuries that could been avoided.

Construction sites are among the workplaces most susceptible to slips, trips and falls. Part of the problem is that building sites naturally provide a number of risks and safety hazards to employees not associated with other professions.