Fighting for Healthy and Safe Workplaces and a Clean
Environment
The United Steelworkers is a leader in the struggle for healthy
and safe workplaces and a clean environment. Our involvement
in the mining, smelting, and refining of minerals, in steelmaking,
and in manufacturing has taught us a lot about what damages
the environment. Our experience in other sectors – the service
industry, education, health care, transportation, security – show
us that the design of work, and how it is planned and supervised,
has a profound effect on the health of workers and the
environment.
We have learned a lot about the occupational diseases and
cancers caused by pollution that affect our members and our
families, friends, and communities. We are committed to
negotiating health and safety provisions in our collective
agreements to reduce the hazards and risks of work. We want to
promote the well-being of our members, our families and our
communities and protect the environment.
Better working conditions and a healthier environment cannot be
won without the support of courageous and committed local
union activists.
Our biggest challenge is holding corporate leadership
responsible to design, plan, and supervise work to be safe,
healthy, and environmentally sustainable. While we have made
major gains, employers still "blame the victim," and offload their
responsibilities, through Behaviour Based Safety (BBS)
programs, on workers, co-workers, and front line supervisors.
Health and Safety since the ‘70s
Since the Ham Commission in 1976, the United Steelworkers
has lobbied for and changed health and safety legislation across
Canada, and gained fundamental rights for all workers, such as:
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The right to know the hazards, physical and
chemical, that we face at work;
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The right to participate in the identification and
removal of those hazards through a Joint
Health and Safety Committee;
The right to refuse unsafe work;
Mandatory labelling of hazardous substances
detailing their toxic properties; and
Input on the design and adoption of regulations.
The explosion at the Westray Mine in 1992, which killed 26
workers, exposed a larger and deeper problem – what happens
when laws are not enforced and when corporate leadership does
not act responsibly.
After considering all the evidence in a special inquiry, Justice
Peter Richard recommended that the Federal government review
the Criminal Code to address corporate killing. Steelworkers took
up the challenge to establish that irresponsible corporate
behaviour that leads to death and bodily harm is criminal and
should be punished as such.
Today all Canadians can celebrate the Steelworkers’
accomplishment in Bill C-45. It is now Chapter 21 of the Statutes
of Canada, amending the Criminal Code of Canada.
What do the amendments represent?
Most Canadians believe that corporations and their leadership
should be held accountable for the damage done to workers and
the public as a result of their activities. Prior to the amendments,
however, corporations would only be held criminally responsible
if high-level officials were directly implicated. This ignored senior
officers’ responsibility to design, plan, and supervise work to be
done safely and without damage to life and health.
What did the amendments do for health and safety?
Corporations can now be held criminally liable for criminal
negligence causing death or bodily harm when senior officers fail
to prevent corporate employees and agents from performing
criminally negligent acts or omissions. Further, corporations can
now be held liable for the combined acts and omissions of their
agents. For example, a corporation might be convicted of a
criminal offence if:
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its senior officers fail to establish an effective
and functioning safety program, and someone
dies or suffers bodily harm as a result;
new technology is introduced in the workplace,
and senior officers do not make sure that it can
be operated safely, and a worker dies or is
injured as a result;
senior officers fail to take reasonable measures
to prevent the corporation from polluting the
environment, and the pollution causes death or
bodily harm to people in the community.
What didn’t change?
The amendments did not change the personal liability of senior
management. The new section 217.1 of the Criminal Code
imposes a duty on everyone who undertakes, or has the
authority, to direct how another person works or performs a task
to take reasonable steps to prevent bodily harm to that person or
any other person arising from the work or task. This new section
does not significantly change the existing law and does not
specifically include senior officers.
However, under existing law it may be possible to hold senior
officers personally liable for criminal negligence if they
demonstrate wanton or reckless disregard for the lives and
safety of others by failing to carry out a duty imposed by other
legislation, such as an occupational health and safety law, and
this omission causes death or bodily harm.
What does this mean for safety and health at work?
The Criminal Code amendments recognize the importance which
Canadians place on their health and safety. Before these
amendments, only provincial laws were applied to workplace
injuries and fatalities. The amendments make it easier for health
and safety authorities to use the Criminal Code to punish the
worst corporate offenders, and use the existing health and safety
laws to regulate management of safety and health performance
more effectively.
What does this mean for us?
We have made substantial progress towards holding
corporations and their leaders responsible for designing,
planning, and supervising work in a way that is safe, healthy, and
environmentally sustainable. What we have to do now is
translate this gain into improvements at work and in the better
enforcement of health and safety laws by bargaining more
effective safety and health programs with our employers and by
encouraging governments to enforce health and safety laws
against those responsible for the organization of work.
Start at the top
Making work safer, healthier, and environmentally sustainable
has to begin at the top when the first decisions are made about
starting the company, how much capital it has and how much
profit it intends to make. These decisions influence how much
money, time and resources are available for health and safety.
Health and safety have to be part of management all the way
through, including the engineers who design processes and the
planners who decide when and how work will be done. Every
step of the way potential hazards must be identified and steps
taken to eliminate and control them. Workers can only work
safely when management makes sure that the conditions are as
safe and healthy as possible.
Management must appoint competent people as supervisors as
required by health and safety legislation. Supervisors must give
effective guidance and direction. Management must provide
workers with the training as well as the conditions to do their
work safely. Workers must be provided the proper tools and
personal protective equipment. Management must follow all the
standards set out in the provincial and/or federal environmental
and health and safety laws and regulations. The legislation is the
minimum requirements of the law.
Training and protecting ourselves is vital. No question. But if
management doesn’t do its job from the start, the best training
and best equipment cannot always protect us from what should
have been properly engineered or planned in the first place.
The BBS scam
Employers across Canada are aggressively attempting to
implement behaviour based safety programs (BBS). These
programs come with many different names and in many different
wrappings, but the basic package is the same. Behavioural
safety is based on the myth that every accident is caused by
worker error. This myth claims that if workers just "remember to
work safety", they will be okay regardless of the hazardous
conditions in which they are requested to work.
Blaming the worker is not a new tactic. With the changes to the
Criminal Code we expect to see employers use it more often to
show their innocence following a tragedy. Employers will argue
they are not at fault and they showed "due diligence" by
implementing a BBS program. It was the worker who "chose" to
work unsafely.
What is happening is that employers are downloading their legal
responsibility onto the backs of workers. Employers get off the
hook because BBS programs focus on worker behaviour instead
of employer-controlled conditions. Workers are killed, get injured
or sick at work as a result of unsafe conditions and hazards to
which they are exposed.
The downloading of liability and responsibility onto workers was
highlighted recently with the conviction of the co-worker of Lewis
Wheelan’s, a 19-year-old who was electrocuted when he was
struck by a falling power line while working for Great Lakes
Power. The co-worker was convicted of not taking reasonable
care to protect his fellow worker. This, despite the fact that the
judge accepted that it was management that created the unsafe
working conditions.
In other words, the liability and responsibility for health and
safety falls on co-workers when the employer fails to protect
them. The co-worker was convicted and the senior officers of
Great Lakes Power got off without any personal penalty.
The United Steelworkers will lobby employers to put in place
health and safety programs that emphasize the identification and
elimination of root causes of workplace hazards. Union input and
involvement promotes programs to safeguard workers instead of
targeting and downloading on them.
Environment
Lack of corporate responsibility has also led to the worsening
situation we face in our environment. Environmental
considerations are a significant and growing factor in the
economic performance of industry. Those industries that reduce
toxic emissions, clean up environmental damage, and reduce
their consumption of energy will survive in the long run, while
those who do not, will not survive.
Despite many public statements to the contrary, corporate
leadership seldom voluntarily take on what is necessary to make
the company sustainable, and, when they do, they are all too
willing to sacrifice our jobs and our communities.
Many of our members’ jobs are threatened because their
employers’ refuse to take adequate steps to reduce their energy
consumption or toxic emissions. Other employers threaten to
leave their toxic legacies behind if our members do not agree to
concessions. This has a long-term impact on the health of our
communities and our families.
Our members, like the majority of Canadians, want good jobs
and a good environment. Building on our union’s experience in
the Unites States with the Apollo Project and the Alliance for
Sustainable Jobs and the Environment, we can build a strategy
for Canadian Steelworkers.
Two challenges
We propose to develop our strategy in response to two important
challenges that our union is facing. Environment Canada is
required to bring forward pollution prevention plans that will set
targets for reduction of emissions from base metal smelters in
Canada.
In seven of the nine smelters, the employees are Steelworkers. It
is important that all smelters reduce their emissions, but some
have not kept current and face a major economic challenge. The
impact on our members and the community could be devastating
if these smelters were to close. And the environmental legacy
would once again become a liability for us, rather than the
company that created it.
In Toronto, industries which have operated for decades are
threatening our members that they will pick up and leave if
concessions are not given. These same companies have
released toxic emissions into the air, water, and ground in such
large quantities that they are required to report to Canada’s
National Pollution Release Inventory (NPRI). Our members know
all about these toxic legacies and how they were created, and
often live in the adjacent communities where property values will
crash if these companies can leave without cleaning up the
environment.
Strengthen health, safety and environmental protections
A major focus of our work has been to improve corporate
responsibility for health and safety. We have successfully lobbied
for changes to the Criminal Code, which affect the liability of
corporations (and other organizations). We need to utilize these
amendments, in conjunction with related issues, in an effective
strategy for improving management’s responsibility for health
and safety and the environment.
Our health and safety committees have to be educated to lobby
their employers for more effective safety management systems,
which do not rely on discipline only.
Our employers make overtures to us when there is pressure from
government to reduce emissions. We should bargain a strategy
which involves implementation of pollution prevention and
protection of jobs. We must examine the potential for
employment of our members in pollution clean up. A pilot project
around these priorities would allow us to develop strategies.
Those employers who are thinking of escaping their
responsibilities would be met with strategic bargaining response
that focuses attention on their environmental legacies.
Healthy and Safe Workplaces and a Clean Environment:
Moving to Action
This Policy Conference proposes the following plan of action:
1. Inform our members of the changes to the Criminal Code and
what they mean;
2. Create educational materials for our officers and activists on
how to use the amendments to the Criminal Code to get
management to take their responsibilities seriously;
3. Develop collective bargaining policies and language to
address concerns about lead hands and safety and health, and
about behaviour based safety programs;
4. Develop bargaining strategies for local unions to address
environmental concerns;
5. Establish two pilot projects around implementation of pollution
prevention, protection of jobs, and examine the potential for
employment of our members in pollution clean up. One will
involve base metal smelter locals across Canada and the other
will involve Toronto industrial locals at locations registered on the
National Pollution Release Inventory;
6. Lobby the Ontario government to hold an inquiry into why
charges were withdrawn against Great Lakes Power in the Lewis
Wheelan case, and to overturn the decision against the coworker, and lobby all provincial governments to develop clear
rules and strategies to put the onus on senior management for
workplace safety;
7. Pressure governments to eliminate the tax deductions which
corporations get for the health and safety fines that they pay;
8. Advocate for governments to pass ergonomic regulations to
protect workers from injury;
9. Advocate for governments to pass regulations to protect
workers from workplace violence;
10. Lobby governments for environmental policies and
regulations that require corporations to reduce toxic emissions,
improve energy efficiency and reduce greenhouse gases, and to
clean up toxic waste;
11. Lobby governments to make job creation, protection, and
transition a major component of all corporate environmental
initiatives;
12. Demand governments involve the union in environment
initiatives that affect our employers and communities, and
establish community right-to-know legislation to make sure that
all citizens can access accurate information about the
environmental performance of corporations.