Harsh lessons in health and safety (editorial)

Is this nation’s health and safety record so poor that we can’t take our children to work? Tragically, this year’s National Take Our Kids to Work Day will not be remembered for assisting nearly 400,000 children to prepare for work, but for the workplace deaths that occurred — two 14-year-olds in Ontario and a grandfather days away from retirement in Edmonton.

Hours earlier that same day, November 1, a monument to those who have lost lives and suffered illness because of work was being dedicated in downtown Toronto by Ontario’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board. For those gathered at the dedication that morning, the evening news further brought home the need to change attitudes about workplace safety.

Annually, about three people a day die at work. Paul Kells, founder of the Safe Communities Foundation, bristles when the word accident is used to describe these deaths.

The foundation helps communities develop health and safety programs, and was created by Kells following the workplace death of his 19-year-old son Sean who was killed just three days after starting a part-time job in 1994.

“They’re not accidents, they’re preventable deaths,” says Kells. “Accident implies that somehow fate was involved, it’s a word that dulls our senses to that fact this devastation is unnecessary. When someone speeds drunk through a school zone and kills a child we don’t call it an accident.”

Canada has a lax attitude about the safety of young people at work, Kells says. Anytime someone changes a job, even after having worked at the same firm for years, there is an increased risk because of lack of experience, and companies must be extra vigilant about these people’s safety, he says. Young workers have the added risk of lacking experience in general.

If lives are to be saved, safety has to become a part of culture, in workplaces and throughout society. As a nation, how will we get there?

More can be done in school systems to encourage children to adopt a culture of health and safety. Governments must severely punish those responsible for deaths, injuries and illnesses in the workplace. Employers must instill the right attitudes and discipline those who fail to put safety first. And, unions and workers have to help combat macho attitudes that create obstacles to safe work environments.

There are signs of encouragement. Dangerous manufacturing environments such as DuPont and Imperial Oil have sterling health and safety records. And the acceptance of recycling for the environment and zero tolerance for drunk driving are examples of how collective thinking does change. Kells looks towards the day when Canadians are also unwilling to accept three workplace deaths every day.

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