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I
move in the world of workers’ compensation. Workers get injured on the
job, I assist their employers in finding ways to help them return to
appropriate work, as early and safely as possible. I work in Canada, where
a hodgepodge of provincial legislation from coast to coast to coast (as we
say in the Great White North) is designed to protect workers from injury,
to look after them when that protection fails, and sometimes to punish
their employers for egregious carelessness or neglect for not providing an
environment as safe as safe can be.
It
is far from a perfect system. And in the various Canadian provinces and
territories there are varying degrees of success in the area of
prevention, and in how well injured workers are treated. Although it is an
allegedly faultless system, employers can still face stiff penalties and
jail time for health and safety infractions; and workers are still
considered to be, more often than not, the authors of their own injuries.
There is certainly a mindset that workers can be very creative about
finding ways to hurt themselves.
But
almost everyone would agree that it is a rare individual who shows up for
work in the morning hoping to be carried out in a body bag at the end of
the day. Still, it happens. Far too often.
The
truth bites
This
is a tale about one such death. It involves Canada and the United States,
it involves the different perception of health and safety in the two
countries, it involves the most obscene use of statistics to justify
carelessness or deny responsibility. It is not meant to suggest that
Canada or the United States is either right or wrong in the approach taken
to health and safety, it is meant to highlight the flippant approach that
both take regarding death in the workplace.
The
story is accurate, as told here, but for reasons that will be obvious to
you, I have had to disguise the players.
The
story begins one cold and blustery evening at the beginning of winter. It
is late, there is not much lighting except for nearby street lamps, which
aren’t having much luck piercing the veil of blowing snow. A lone
security guard is patrolling the company’s vast property. He’s not the
only security guard on the job that night, there’s a whole phalanx of
them. But he’s the only one outside braving the cold to make sure no one
is stealing company secrets or dismantling one of the outbuildings.
This
is a large manufacturer, based in the United States, and with
manufacturing facilities and product distribution worldwide. The Canadian
location is the second largest worldwide and, by far, the most productive
and profitable. So there are three shifts, the plant never sleeps, and it
receives deliveries from suppliers round the clock.
And
on this cold winter night, a semi-trailer is in the yard with its diesel
running. As the security guard makes his rounds, the diesel begins to back
up and runs over the guard, killing him instantly. Investigation reveals
that the diesel was operating properly, the reverse direction signal did
sound repeatedly, the reverse lights did turn on as expected. For whatever
reason, the guard did not get out of the way.
We
cannot know if the wind made it too difficult for him to hear the reverse
signal, or if his hearing was obscured by the bulky winter hat pulled over
his ears. We cannot know why he didn’t see the reverse taillights. Maybe
he was just too close to the back of the trailer to escape when the unit
started moving backward.
The
diesel driver claimed he did not see the security guard and there is no
reason to doubt that. And, in the end, the employer was found partly
liable for the accident because the security guard had no reflective
badges or stripes on his uniform that might have alerted the driver.
This
is a sad story, and one that probably had no need to occur. But there was
another victim, although that victim is at least still alive.
The
second victim is the health and safety official in charge of the Canadian
plant. He accepted that the company might have been able to prevent this
death, but he was not prepared for the position taken by the corporation.
The accident was duly reported to headquarters in the US where word was
sent back that this was to be a ‘non-recordable’, there was to be no
statistical record kept. The corporation chose to argue that no medical
attention was sought, so the accident wasn’t recordable. They reasoned
that since the accident occurred in Canada, outside the gaze of the
America’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, no one would
notice.
Now,
I’m Canadian-based so I am certainly no authority on reporting
requirements under OSHA. But I expect that calling a fatal accident a
‘non-recordable’ is not what they have in mind. The employer argued
that a pronouncement of death and the completion of a death certificate
didn’t constitute ‘medical treatment’. If that is what OSHA deems to
be appropriate, then OSHA should cease to exist. Immediately.
The
Canadian health and safety director could not accept this nonsense. There
was a period of mourning, then anger, then frustration, and finally
resignation — literally. He could no longer continue to work for a
company that considered a dead worker wasn’t even a statistic.
April
28 is coming
Canadian
soldiers gave their lives in World War II in numbers that were far out of
proportion with our population. Despite that, over the past forty years,
Canadian workplace deaths are roughly equivalent to the number of
fatalities we suffered during that war. On average, three workers die on
the job every day in Canada, or approximately 1,000 every year. In the
United States, with roughly ten times the population of Canada, annual
deaths are in the range of 5,000 or so, five times as many. Imagine what
it is like in countries where there is no effort to protect workers on the
job.
The
Workers Mourning Day Act became effective in Canada in 1991 and since
then, slightly more than 11,000 people have died on the job. In fact, just
last week in western Canada, four federal police officers were killed in a
single event, the worst such even in the 130 year history of the force.
But
what is disturbing is that it is only the horrific events, like the
killing of the police officers or mine explosions or plane crashes, that
generate any interest in the public or in the eyes of the authorities who
have responsibility for safe workplaces.
The
Workers Mourning Day Act is tokenism. Every day should be a day of
mourning until no further workplace deaths occur. Then, we will have
reason to rejoice and reason to feel smug. Until then, April 28 is not
good enough.
Paul
Harris
The
Working Solutions Company
www.working-solutions.ca
The
Writer’s Desk
www.escritoire.ca
USMWF
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