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New Canadian Criminal Law to Enforce Worker Safety

Safety concerns were raised about the Westray coal mine in Nova Scotia in 1991, even before it opened. The most salient warnings - that coal dust and gas were building up - were ignored. And then, in 1992, a spark more than a kilometer below the earth ignited methane gas, causing a huge explosion that killed 26 miners.

Two onsite managers were charged, but the charges were dropped in 1998. There was no law holding senior company executives criminally responsible for ignoring safety warnings.

Fast forward to 2003. The law forces employers, under penalty of criminal charges and jail time, to take reasonable steps to protect workers from injury and death. Bill C-45 was passed in Parliament before it recessed in November and given Royal Assent in Halifax in a ceremony that included family members of the Westray miners.

"We have taken a major step toward ensuring employers will be held responsible for criminally negligent acts in the workplace," said federal justice minister Martin Cauchon.

The law, which is expected to come into force in 2004, will still have to be tested in enforcement and the courts.

"Time will tell as to how effective this legislation is. But I think the fact that it makes it criminally liable, possibly with jail time, (to ensure worker health and safety) will, I think, force and push employers to be more diligent," Hassan Yussuff, Executive Vice President of the Canadian Labour Congress and a member of the CCOHS Council of Governors told The Health and Safety Report.

"This represents a powerful step in the right direction."

According to a news release from the Department of Justice, Bill C-45 would bring criminal negligence charges against "employers and those who undertake, or have the authority to direct, how others work or perform tasks who failed to take reasonable measures to protect employee and public safety."

The new rules, similar to legislation in Britain and Australia, also cover crimes against the environment and fraud, whether executives commit them or look the other way as employees commit offences.

"Corporate Canada would be well advised to assess their current OHS programs, training budgets and real commitment to workplace health and safety," Norm Keith, a partner with Gowlings Lafleur Henderson LLP and head of its National Occupational Health and Safety Training, Consulting and Legal Services practice, wrote in an article with Yvonne O'Reilly, the team's Senior OHS Consultant. "An effective program with demonstrated clear communication throughout the organization is not only the way to ensure compliance with your legal obligations, but more importantly it helps to ensure the health and safety of your employees."

A report on the Westray disaster by Mr. Justice Peter Richard, said the sequence of events was filled with "actions, omissions, mistakes, incompetence, apathy, cynicism, stupidity and neglect."

The corporation and the managers involved were never charged in that case. Under the new law, they would be.

"This sends a clear message to boardrooms. This is not to be taken lightly," says Yussuff.

"It's like drinking and driving - there's nothing like forcing people to take personal responsibility."

Hazard Alerts

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Working Around Energized Power Lines

An excavation team, relying on faulty drawings, cut into an underground electrical duct bank, severing power lines and causing a power failure in British Columbia's Lower Mainland this year. It was just one of a number of power line incidents involving excavation teams.

In the province's Central Mainland, a 58-year-old gravel truck driver had to leap from his vehicle after his elevated truck box touched an overhead power line. All 10 tires had burn marks where the power went to ground and one tire actually exploded, shooting pieces of the wheel, bearings and brakes up to 12 metres.

In both incidents reported by Workers' Compensation Board BC, there were no injuries.

Contractors on the East Coast also avoided injury this summer when equipment contacted energized power lines. But, as noted in a letter of caution sent to employers by Newfoundland & Labrador Hydro and the province's Occupational Health & Safety Division and Construction Safety Association, the accidents "could have resulted in fatalities under slightly different circumstances."

Indeed, the excavation team was lucky and in fact, didn't realize they had contacted the underground lines as they relied on "as built" drawings to install anchors for a shoring system to support a water main.

It could have been much worse for the gravel truck driver, too. He dumped his load at a farm and moved the truck forward with the box still raised. It contacted an overhead high-voltage power line. The driver saw sparks, stopped the truck and jumped. Fortunately for him, the contact between the truck and power line had been broken and he was not injured.

The incidents have raised the call for contractors and employees to follow safe work practices, including keeping minimum distances from power lines, with distances depending on the line voltages.

OSH Answers

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Fighting the fluorescent flicker

Headaches, eyestrain and general eye discomfort - these are three common workplace issues with fluorescent lights, and more specifically, the flicker of the lights.

The health effects of fluorescent lights may not be the top priority of every health and safety manager, but a little attention and knowledge could go a long way to a healthier workforce.

A little background: North American electrical current runs at 60 cycles per second. In essence, the power is turning on and off 120 times per second, which, in turn, flashes lights 120 times each second.

Almost all people can see lights flashing on and off up to about 50 flashes per second. The flicker usually blends into a continuous light at 60 flashes per second. That's especially true with incandescent lights because the filament inside the light bulb doesn't cool quickly enough to produce the flicker. But fluorescent lights, which use ballasts to control its electrical supply, are more of a problem. Although humans cannot see fluorescent lights flicker, the sensory system in some individuals can somehow detect the flicker, leading to headaches, eyestrain and discomfort.

Some types of ballasts reduce flicker considerably. New, energy-efficient electronic ballasts take the regular power supply and convert it to a much higher frequency. The resulting flicker frequency is so high that the human eye cannot detect any fluctuation in the light intensity - essentially making the lights flicker-free. An added benefit is that electronic ballasts produce less hum than that emitted by other kinds of ballasts.

According to a study in Lighting Research and Technology, the use of high frequency electronic ballasts (20,000 Hz or higher) dropped complaints of eyestrain and headaches by more than 50 per cent compared to regular fluorescent lights with magnetic ballasts. The study also found that there tended to be fewer complaints of headaches among workers on higher floors compared to those closer to ground level suggesting that workers exposed to more natural light experienced fewer health effects.

There are more options.

• Replace bulbs on a scheduled basis. Old bulbs tend to flicker more and they are not as bright
• Ensure that all parts of the light fixture, especially the ballast, are functioning properly
• When replacements are needed, upgrade to fluorescent lighting that uses electronic ballasts

Partner News

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Workplace Stress: CUPE creates tool for action

Canada's largest union, The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), recently released a publication entitled Enough Workplace Stress: Organizing for Change. The 45-page guideline written by CUPE's National Health and Safety Branch and published September 30, 2003, is mainly based on ideas developed by attendees of a workshop of the same name at CUPE's 8th National Health and Safety Conference.

CUPE describes the guideline as part of the union's "broader efforts to eliminate workplace stress" and that it "is designed for CUPE members to help address and solve workplace stress problems as health and safety hazards." It has two main sections:

• Background information on workplace stress: what the problem is, what the causes are, who is affected, and what the hazards are.
• Actions, solutions and strategies to eliminate workplace stress and the health and safety hazards associated with stress.

Described by CUPE as a tool for action, Enough Workplace Stress: Organizing for Change contains concepts, solutions and strategies that the union hopes can effect meaningful change in CUPE workplaces across the country. The union maintains that with this guideline, their members will be able to identify and eliminate workplace stress hazards.

CCOHS' OSH Answers is listed as an online reference for this publication.

CCOHS News

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New building, new challenges as CCOHS turns 25

Twenty-five years ago, one of the key issues for the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety was raising awareness of the need for workplace health and safety.

Today, it has established itself as the national resource for health and safety information and as an active international liaison. Its focus has reached far beyond general awareness to address specific and emerging trends in workplace health and safety.

In a recent survey, more than 75 per cent of users said they had changed their workplaces based on information and education received from CCOHS.

CCOHS marked its 25th anniversary in November with the opening of its new Hamilton, Ontario headquarters, and a celebration that included the federal Minister of Labour, Claudette Bradshaw, Canadian Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, Members of Parliament Stan Keyes and John Bryden, as well as a number of other dignitaries.

Bradshaw made a heartfelt speech extolling the CCOHS staff as the "greatest champions" for health and safety in Canada and the organization as a "leader" in making it a national cause.

"Health and safety will not die in this country, because you're there," she said.

Amid the celebrations was the realization of new health and safety challenges confronting workers, employers and government in Canada.

CCOHS President and Chief Executive Officer S. Len Hong, said CCOHS remains as relevant as ever as it addresses emerging trends, such as:

• The injury rate among young workers
• The needs of an aging workforce
• The greater use of outsourcing, part-time and contract workers
• The challenge of on-the-job stress

There is a job explosion in small businesses, particularly in the service sector, which accounts for nearly 80 per cent of all new jobs in small enterprises. But small business, he noted, is precisely where health and safety practices need significant improvement.

The growing percentage of older workers, on the other hand, has created the need to plan better for employees whose eyesight, reaction times and physical strength may not always be at the level of their younger years.

"The good news is that increasingly, employers are realizing that good health management can help lower or prevent the huge expense of downtime, and it is thus a cost-reducing investment, not a law-mandated overhead. As well, more employees understand that a healthy workplace is a legal right," said Hong.

He added that CCOHS' early embrace of the Internet, as a high impact, low cost, vehicle to deliver OH&S information would grow in the years to come.

"This is the direction in which we will continue in the next quarter century," he said.

While new technologies may be used, the CCOHS vision - to eliminate death and injury from workplaces - has not changed in its first quarter century. Hong said it would remain a Centre of initiatives and a place to gather, analyze, redesign and disseminate information about health and safety.