What happened to Amina Diaby was a tragedy. We have to do better and we will
The North York bakery where a Star reporter went undercover has been fined $300,000 in the death of a temp worker and hired an auditor to probe its safety and temp agency practices
A Toronto factory that uses temporary workers to churn out millions of bagels and croissants for major grocery stores and fast-food chains has hired an independent auditor to review its use of temp agencies and its health and safety practices.
“We’re committed to the well-being of everyone that comes into our facilities, all workers,” said David Gelbloom, lawyer and human resources manager for Fiera Foods, an industrial bakery where a Star reporter went undercover as a temp worker earlier this year. “We’ve hired an independent, senior HR professional who is going to audit our HR, going to look at our procedures, health and safety, our workplace.”
Gelbloom said Thursday that Fiera Foods had also hired an independent auditing company “to audit our use of temp agencies and to audit the agencies themselves.”
He refused to give the name of the HR professional or the auditing company conducting the internal reviews.
Fiera’s announcement of the internal audit came the same day the company pleaded guilty to Ministry of Labour charges related to the death of 23-year-old temp agency worker Amina Diaby.
The company was fined $300,000 under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, plus a 25-per-cent victim surcharge, following a joint submission with the Crown. (The surcharge does not go directly to the victim’s family, but is added to a general government fund to assist victims of crime.)
The fine is double what the company paid in 2002 following the death of 17-year-old temp Ivan Golyashov.
Diaby, a refugee from Guinea in West Africa, was working at Fiera’s Marmora St. factory Sept. 2, 2016, when her hijab became “entangled” in machinery, strangling her. She was hired through a temporary help agency and had been working at the plant for a little more than two weeks.
Diaby’s husband, Sanunu Jabbi, cried quietly as the facts of the case were read out.
“What happened to Amina Diaby was a tragedy,” Gelbloom told the Star outside court. “She died at our facility and that shouldn’t have happened. We take health and safety very seriously at our company. It is a top priority for us. We have to do better, and we will do better.”
Diaby was the third temp agency worker to die while working at Fiera Foods or one of its affiliated companies since 1999.
Gelbloom said the company is going to do “everything that we can to make sure something like that doesn’t happen again.”
Crown attorney Shantanu Roy told court that Diaby was not wearing a lab coat at the time of her death, and that her hijab was not secured. It got stuck in a conveyor belt that was not adequately guarded and did not have an emergency stop button within reach. There were no witnesses to her death.
Ashley Brown, the lawyer representing Fiera Foods at Thursday’s hearing, said the company recognized the “magnitude of the incident” and had taken measures to improve safety at the factory. Within the last two years, the company has invested $500,000 in health and safety initiatives, she said, while they updated uniform regulations and training following Diaby’s death.
“I think it’s good because at least they will learn,” said Alusine Jabbi, Diaby’s brother-in-law, after the sentencing. “If it saves one person’s life, it’s worth it.”
No representative of Fiera Foods has ever contacted Diaby’s family, according to her husband, Sanunu Jabbi.
Eight months after Diaby’s death, the Star sent a reporter to work undercover at Fiera Foods for a month as part of a yearlong investigation into the rise of temp work in Ontario. Our reporter, who was hired through a temp agency, received about five minutes of safety training, no handson instruction and was paid in cash at a payday lender without any documentation or deductions.
Fiera Foods owners, Boris Serebryany and Alex Garber, have thus far refused interview requests from the Star.
In response to the Star’s investigation, some of the grocery stores that sell products made by Fiera Foods said they planned to meet with the company.
“We’re troubled by what we read in the Toronto Star article,” Sobey’s spokesperson Maureen Hart wrote in an email. “We have contacted Fiera and will meet with them as soon as possible to understand what corrective actions they are taking.”
A coalition of grocery retailers, meanwhile, told the Star they have a Supplier Code of Conduct, which in-
“If companies think there’s a shortcut, they’re fooling themselves. There’s a safe way to do the job, and there’s a not-safe way to do the job.” KEVIN FLYNN ONTARIO LABOUR MINISTER
cludes not only health and safety but also employment standards, and they expect Fiera Foods to follow it.
“Our members expect all suppliers, including Fiera Foods, to adhere to all appropriate regulations and legal requirements governing their business, which includes ensuring food safety and a safe, healthy workplace for employees,” wrote David Wilkes, spokesperson for the Retail Council of Canada, which provided a statement on behalf of Costco, Walmart, Metro and Loblaws.
As a result of the guilty plea, the Crown withdrew charges against Diaby’s supervisor at the factory, as well as charges related to two other unrelated incidents that occurred at Fiera Foods in October 2015 and June 2016, when workers suffered “critical” arm injuries.
“There’s a lot of lessons to be learned out of Fiera Foods,” Ontario Labour Minister Kevin Flynn said following Thursday’s guilty plea. “If companies think there’s a shortcut, they’re fooling themselves. There’s a safe way to do the job, and there’s a not-safe way to do the job.”
Thursday was the first court appearance on the charges related to Diaby’s death, and Roy, the Crown attorney, noted how extraordinary it was for the company to plead guilty so quickly.
“Very rarely do we have resolution on the very first day in court,” he said.
Toronto police are also still investigating Diaby’s death. To date, no charges have been laid.
Diaby was assigned to work at Fiera Foods by OLA Staffing, a temporary help agency based in Woodbridge. The agency was not charged by the Ministry of Labour, but the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board is still investigating the company’s role in Diaby’s death. Geetha Thushyanthan, who runs the agency, has declined the Star’s interview requests.