We need to commit to stopping negligent workplace deaths and injuries
April 28 is the International Day of Mourning. This date was chosen by the Canadian Labour Congress in 1984 by convention because it was this date in 1914 when Ontario proclaimed the first real Workers’ Compensation Act in Canada. Over time it has been adopted by labour organizations around the world.
So on Saturday, workers around the world will gather to remember and commemorate those workers injured or killed on the job. In doing so there is much to remember.
In 2018 we still have too many workers who do not return home from work as a result of workplace accidents. We still have too many workers dying on the job. Occupational disease, which is often not detected until well beyond retirement, is still too prevalent and too many families searching for answers.
But what is really alarming is the indifference of the industries we work in.
Whether it’s a steelworker being crushed, a miner with silicosis, a firefighter with cancer, a window washer being hung from a platform, it doesn’t matter. On the job injuries and deaths are violent, and each and every year we say that it has to stop, yet it continues.
Companies have for far too long looked at these events and associated court fines as the cost of doing business and that is not only unacceptable it should be criminal.
According to the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety “the most recent statistics from the Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada (AWCBC) tell us
that in 2016, 905 workplace deaths were recorded in Canada.
Among those dead were six young workers aged 15-19; and another 20 workers aged 20-24.
Add to these fatalities the 241,508 claims accepted for lost time due to a workrelated injury or disease, including 29,588 from workers aged 15-24, and the fact that these statistics only include what is reported and accepted by the compensation boards, and it is safe to say that the total number of workers impacted is even higher.
What these numbers don’t show is just how many people are directly affected by these workplace tragedies. Each worker death impacts the loved ones, families, friends and coworkers they leave behind, changing all of their
lives forever.
As a result of a lengthy lobbying campaign launched by the United Steelworkers union after the explosion at the Westray mine in Pictou County N.S. in 1992 where 26 miners were killed, the federal government passed Bill C-45 which held owners, managers and supervisors accountable for workplace fatalities in Canada if they knew of an unsafe situation and failed to address it and a worker was killed as a result of that negligence. Yet the number of charges laid has been negligible.
In recent years steelworkers have been meeting with municipal governments across the country asking them to encourage, even demand that their provincial counterparts direct their Attorneys General train police forces
to investigate each and every fatality as a crime scene before handing it over to the Ministry of Labour.
Hamilton city council passed this unanimously as did the Hamilton Police Association and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. Yet we are still waiting.
So as we commemorate the International Day of Mourning and we remember those who have been injured or killed as a result of a workplace accident or exposure, let’s recommit to fight like hell for those still living. Stop the killing. Enforce the law.
Kill a worker, go to jail! For more information visit stopthekilling.ca.