Introduction

It is our conviction that the people who suffer the consequences of poorly framed health and safety policies and practices have far too little to say in the management of the workplace.  The accreditation of employers will, if done properly, be a positive step forward both in reducing the deaths, injuries and illnesses which continue to occur at alarming rates and in enhancing the Internal Responsibility System.  This enhancement could be achieved by recognizing the legitimate role workers and their representatives have in influencing the occupational health and safety and the return to work practices of the employer.  If accreditation standards are developed poorly, it will provide a false sense of the employers’ true health and safety practices and erode the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board’s (WSIB) credibility on prevention issues.

Labour knows only too well how meaningless some health and safety recognition programs can be.  The experience of Westray is a worst case example of this.  On May 9, 1992, just 11 days after the employer received an award for having the industry’s safest mine, an explosion killed 26 workers and bankrupted the company.  It was the second year in a row they had received the award.  Just 15 bodies were removed, the remaining 11 will remain forever entombed in their former workplace.

The Nova Scotia government launched a commission to investigate what went wrong at the mine.  The commission1 found that despite what the employer had put to paper, “management at Westray displayed a certain disdain for safety and appeared to regard safety-conscious workers as the wimps in the organization.”

The commission went on to report: 

“Regardless of the theories, philosophies and procedures management espoused on paper, most notably in its employee handbook, it clearly rejected industry standards, provincial regulations, codes of safe practice and common sense in the Westray mine.

Instead, management, through its actions and attitudes, sent a different message – that Westray was to produce coal at the expense of worker safety...”

Labour says – No More Westrays.  The WSIB’s accreditation program must be a comprehensive audit system that looks at more than just what the employer has on paper or in the employee handbook.