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 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.

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.

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.

A new report from the Conference Board of Canada, entitled “What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You: Literacy’s Impact on Workplace Health and Safety,” suggests that workers are being put at serious risk due to many employers’ overreliance on written manuals and policies and a serious lack of attention to building and maintaining workers’ literacy skills.

The report, which was released July 21, is the culmination of a two-year study for Human Resources and Skills Development Canada. The purpose of the study was to examine the health and safety aspects of literacy skills development in the workplace.

The study found that employers often assume that because they set a minimum recruitment standard of a Grade 12 education level, that all workers are fully literate, and no literacy issues could possibly exist in their workplaces.  According to the report,  64% of employers felt that employees understood their health and safety policies to a large extent or fully, while only 40% of workers themselves agreed with that assessment. At the same time, only 5% of immigrant service agency respondents said they believed workers understood health and safety policies to a large extent or fully.

The report also noted that because literacy is an essential skill in terms of understanding health and safety policies, such as a worker’s right to refuse unsafe work, safe work procedures, safe handling of materials and comprehension of WHMIS information, employers should be more proactive in assessing their workers’ literacy levels by reviewing past incidents. It recommends that employers take a close look at their current  OH&S policies from the perspective of a low-literacy worker. It suggests that all workplaces work towards putting their OH&S policies into plain language to minimize communication difficulties between employers and workers.

Employers are also encouraged to address the stigma surrounding literacy, and recognize that some workers who may be struggling with literacy or communications skills will be reluctant to admit it for fear of reprisal, job loss or even just because of fear that other workers might make fun of them. Therefore, a good practice might be to integrate literacy and essential skills training into regular technical and safety training.

Review the entire report here.

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.