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.

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 .

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.

Alberta’s provincial government has decided it’s time to get tough in its approach to occupational health and safety.

In a decision intended to send a message to every company that fails to comply with health and safety rules, Employment Minister Thomas Lukaszuk has announced that “the hammer is coming down,” so beginning this September,  the safety records of Alberta’s scofflaw companies will be posted online.

The announcement comes in the wake of increased criticism for what many consider to be its lax enforcement of occupational health requirements. Over the next several months, the province will make procedural changes designed to step up enforcement, and ensure that workplace safety directives are more effectively enforced.

The overall objective is to make sure all employers in Alberta understand the consequences of non-compliance with occupational health and safety rules. In addition to the online publication of the names of non-compliant companies, the province will also hire eight more workplace safety officers, and has started a pilot project to inspect workplaces at night and on weekends. It will now be tougher to ignore the rules.

Eight years ago, the government promised to publicize businesses’ workplace safety records, but decided privacy rules prevented it from doing so. Lukaszuk, however, claims that he recently checked with experts and found that to be untrue.

In April, the Auditor General’s office lambasted the government for allowing a relatively small group of employers to routinely violate occupational health and safety orders. Those companies were found to have had worker injury rates three to four times higher than the provincial average.

Ontario courts continue to slam companies with huge fines for violations of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

Wal-Mart Canada Corp., for example, was hit with two fines totaling $120,000 in less than a month; a $45,000 fine on June 23 and a $75,000 fine on July 16.

The $45,000 fine resulted from an incident that occurred on September 27, 2008. A worker was operating a forklift outside a Wal-Mart store in Barrie, to place skids of bottled water near the main entrance. While doing so, the forklift struck and injured a customer’s feet.

A Ministry of Labour investigation found that the worker did not have full view of the forklift path of travel and its load.

In that case, the company pleaded guilty to failing to ensure that the operator of material handling equipment has a full view of the intended path of travel of the equipment or its load, and to failing to make sure material handling equipment is only operated as directed by a competent signaler who is stationed in full view of the operator with a full view of the intended path of travel of the vehicle and its load.

The $75,000 fine resulted from an incident that occurred on January 19, 2009, when a worker employed by a Wal-Mart store in Welland climbed a ladder to get five boxes of toys from a shelf. As the worker began to climb back down with the boxes held in one arm, he missed a step at the bottom of the ladder and fell, injuring his arm.

A Ministry of Labour investigation found that the worker carried the boxes in such a way that his or her safety was endangered by not keeping the required level of contact with the ladder.

Wal-Mart Canada Corp. pleaded guilty to failing to ensure that materials required to be lifted, carried or moved were lifted, carried or moved in a way that did not endanger the safety of any worker.

Also on July 16, Concord-based Welded Tube of Canada was fined $140,000 for an incident that occurred on July 31, 2008, in which a worker was injured as he prepared a two-and-a-half ton bundle of steel tubes and sent them down a conveyor to be processed for shipping. That worker and a co-worker then began to make a mechanical adjustment in the path of the conveyor. The bundle of tubes needed to be rearranged, so it was sent back on the same conveyor, where it struck the worker and injured his leg.

A Ministry of Labour investigation found that the conveyor was not protected by a guard to prevent access to the path of travel while it was in motion.

Welded Tube of Canada pleaded guilty to failing to ensure that a machine with moving parts that may endanger a worker is equipped with a guard or other device which prevents access to the moving parts.

And on July 9, 2010, grocery store operator Metro Ontario Inc. was fined $100,000 for an incident that occurred on January 18, 2009. A worker at the company’s North Bay location was using a band saw to cut beef in the meat department, when his hand slipped, and the saw’s blade partially amputated some of his fingers.

That Ministry of Labour investigation found that the machine’s blade was improperly guarded, and Metro Ontario Inc. pleaded guilty to failing to ensure the saw was equipped with a guard that prevented access to its moving blade.

In addition to the huge fines levied in the cases above, in each case the court imposed a 25% victim fine surcharge, as required by the Provincial Offences Act, which is credited to a special provincial government fund to assist victims of crime.

Staffers at Alberta’s Workers Compensation Board (WCB) apparently receive annual bonuses for meeting corporate goals such as getting more injured workers back to work and off benefit payments, and the discovery of this development has some Alberta Liberals hopping mad.

It is feared that such a bonus system, which paid about $8 million to all 1,500 Workers Compensation Board employees for their performance in 2009, could have a negative effect on the decision-making process, because case workers have a financial incentive to reduce the length of benefits to some injured workers.

Labour Critic Hugh MacDonald obtained several letters sent to WCB staff outlining their bonuses, and the content of those letters disturbed him. He said he became suspicious when many of the injured workers who approached him and asked for his help with their cases had their benefits cut off in December, at the end of the year. He has expressed concern that workers are being pushed into “modified work,” in which injured workers return to the job site to take on less-rigorous jobs, when they are still recovering and should be at home.  By returning workers to the job before they’re ready, he says, they are trying to reduce claim costs by shortening the duration of some of their WCB files.

For its part, the WCB asserts that there is nothing wrong with the bonuses, and that all decisions regarding workers returning to work are based on the advice of medical professionals. They also note that, if they were sending workers back to work before they were ready and they were performing badly, it would come back to them during regular audits. They also note that the “Goal Sharing” bonus program, which pays bonuses of up to 8% to all WCB employees if overall corporate objectives are met, has been in place since 1999.

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.

The Ontario courts were busy last week, and in the space of four days, worker accidents cost three companies a lot of money.  Take a look at the details of each accident; every one of them was easily preventable with just some basic safety training and worker awareness.

1. In one case, elevator and escalator manufacturer Kone Inc. was fined $90,000 for a violation of the Occupational Health and Safety Act that caused a worker to be injured.

The fine was for an incident that occurred on September 11, 2008, when a worker was repairing an elevator circuit board at the University of Western Ontario. The worker stood on a ladder in the pit and shaft area of the elevator while the elevator’s power was still on. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the worker wasn’t using rubber gloves, mats, shields, or other equipment to protect against electrical shock. Of course, when the worker touched the back of the circuit board, the resultant electric shock caused him to fall to the concrete floor of the pit, resulting in wrist and facial fractures.

Kone Inc. pleaded guilty to failing to ensure the worker used rubber gloves, mats, shields and other protective equipment and procedures adequate to ensure protection from electrical shock and burns.

2.  In another case, a $60,000 fine was imposed on Tri City Materials Ltd., a company that works with aggregates, after it, too, pleaded guilty for a violation of the Occupational Health and Safety Act that caused an injury to a worker.

The incident that led to this fine occurred on December 30, 2008. A worker was cleaning out a trailer that acted as a hopper for various materials. Because the hopper’s chute needed power to stay open, the truck attached to the trailer was left running.  Unfortunately, when another worker shut off the truck during the cleaning process, the chute gate immediately closed and caught the worker’s leg.

A Ministry of Labour investigation found that the company’s procedure for safely cleaning the trailer required that it be locked out with its chute gate manually wedged open. They determined that the worker was improperly trained, and was unfamiliar with this procedure or the hazards associated with cleaning out the trailer.

Tri City Materials Ltd. pleaded guilty to failing to acquaint the worker with the hazards associated with cleaning out the trailer.

3. Within days of the above fines, Abitibi Consolidated Company of Canada, owner and operator of a paper mill in Fort Frances, was slapped with a $125,000 fine for their violation of the Occupational Health and Safety Act for an accident that injured two workers and a student.

That incident occurred on August 20, 2008, when two of the paper mill’s electricians were changing the power box for part of a paper machine. In this case, the power to the box itself was locked out, but the power to the cabinet containing the box was not shut off or locked out. As the electricians removed the power box, they noticed a cable inside the cabinet that needed to be moved, so one of them reached into the cabinet with a metal tool to remove a clamp holding the cable in place. In doing so, the tool made electrical contact with a live conductor inside the cabinet, creating an arc flash, which in turn caused another arc flash from the live conductors overhead.

The accident caused both electricians to suffer first, second and third degree burns. At the same time, a student who was standing nearby and watching them suffered first degree burns.

Abitibi Consolidated Company of Canada pleaded guilty to failing to ensure that a tool was not used near a live electrical installation to prevent electrical contact with a live conductor.

In addition to the $275,000 in fines in the three cases above, the court also imposed a 25% victim fine surcharge, as required by the Provincial Offences Act. The surcharge is credited to a special provincial government fund to assist victims of crime. That puts the total cost to these three companies at more than $343,000, all for accidents that could have been prevented with a little health and safety awareness.

Proper health and safety training doesn’t cost. It pays.