Killing the Canary

Canadian workers are more likely to die on the job than those in countries like the U.S. and Holland. But the issue is being swept under the rug because Canadians governments no longer publish workplace injury stats.

By: Penney Kome

  Last Friday, April 28, hundreds of people wearing black armbands gathered around statues, memorials and plaques to observe the International Day of Mourning for workers killed or injured on the job.
  These memorials now stand in most cities and towns, although few people notice them. And that's a tragedy, because those monuments - much like the coalminers' canaries - warn about the widespread and persistent problem of hazardous workplaces.
  The carnage is mostly hidden, since statistics on workplace injuries in this country are becoming harder and harder to find. While other countries publish such stats annually, Statistics Canada lost the mandate to collect and report them in 1995. Provincial Workers' Compensation Board (WCB) websites once displayed injury stats - even breaking them down by catagory - but that's also gone by the boards.
 

Close to 800 Canadians died from work-related accidents or illnesses in 1998, while approximately 800,000 were injured. On average, government figures show that three workers are killed every working day.

  It's as if governments are going out of their way to hide the numbers. Anyone who wants current data can either piece it together by ordering publications from all the WCBs (which still use different categories for some reporting purposes) or by paying $60 a year for the Association of Workers' Compensation Boards (AWCB)'s heavily footnoted collation of incompatible statistics.
  Human Resources and Development Canada (HRDC) does release compilations eventually - which is to say, at least a year after the AWCB document. They present a shocking portrait of the Canadian workplace which - if published more quickly and publicized more widely - would surely stir outrage and spur demands for improvement.
  In 1997, for instance, Canada's workplace fatality rate per 100,000 was 6.64. The comparable figure for the US was 4.7. In The Netherlands, the 1991 rate was 2.6.
  Or, as HRDC put it, "In 1998 alone, close to 800 Canadians died as a result of work-related accidents or illnesses and approximately 800,000 were injured. This means, on average, three workers are killed every working day... Between 1994 and 1998 close to 30% of all accident victims compensated for time lost were young Canadians aged 15 to 29."
  The Canadian Labour Congress expresses it another way: "On average, 1 Canadian worker out of 13 is injured at work." That is to say, if you are in the workforce, odds are that you will get hurt every thirteen years - maybe a little, maybe a lot.
  Of all the Workers' Compensation boards, only the BC Board has tried to open a public dialogue on the subject of workplace fatalities. "Every week in B.C.," according to the new Worksafe BC publication, Lost Lives, "three workers, on average, die in work-related accidents or due to work-related disease." Worksafe gives a rate of 1.04 deaths per 10,000 person-years, which translates to 10.4 per 100,000 workers, or more than twice the US rate.
 

Globally, work-related deaths outnumber deaths from traffic accidents, war, violence, or HIV / AIDS

  While jobs such as logging are especially risky, "The idea that work-related deaths occur only in high-risk industries is a myth," says the BC WCB. In fact, about one-third of occupational fatalities involve motor vehicle accidents. Most fatalities are male. When women die on the job, it's usually as a result of violence, such as the twenty-something Calgary woman who was working alone in an all-night sandwich shop when a robber stabbed her to death.
  Globally, there are one million work-related deaths annually, according to the Chief of the International Labor Organization (ILO) occupational health and safety section. Dr Jukka Takala said that deaths in the workplace exceed the average annual deaths from road accidents (999,000), war (502,000), violence (563,000) or HIV / AIDS (312,000). He also warned that work-related diseases are expected to double by the year 2020, many from toxic exposures occuring now.
  Furthermore, as the BC WCB points out, deaths are just the peak of the workplace injury pyramid. According to the BC board, for every accident that results in a worker death, there will be one or two dozen accidents where injured workers require medical treatment, and several dozen more involving injuries not requiring treatment.
  But many of those less serious incidents, Worksafe notes, are "close calls". Tracking them would help prevent further accidents that could be much worse.
  Statistics are an essential first step to controlling workplace safety and health. Reporting even minor incidents helps pinpoint hazardous practices. Reporting toxic exposures helps protect the neighbourhood environment as well, because toxins have a way of leaking out of the workplace into the community.
  Since 1970, in the US, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has required employers to report ALL workplace injuries and fatalities, and to comply with national health and safety standards. In that time, US fatality rates have plummeted from 18 per 100,000 to 4.7 per 100,000.
  Of course, investors prefer locations that don't enforce labour standards too carefully. Here again, Canada seems to have entered the race to the bottom.
  Far from establishing national occupational health and safety standards, Canada's national and most provincial governments are doing their utmost to play down the significance of workplace injuries and deaths.
  That's why unions and injured workers keep erecting monuments in public places: to remind the public that every worker expects to come home safely at the end of the working day, but not all do.

Penney Kome is an award-winning journalist and author based in Calgary.

Get More/Do More
globalcircle.net/oshindex.htm - a noncommercial site for networking and resources for everyone involved in workers comp and safety and health on the job.

European Accident Statistics from the UK Health and Safety Executive:
  www.hse.gov.uk/hsestats.htm

HRDC Canada fact sheet on workplace health & safety:
  www.hrdc-drhc.gc.ca/common/news/labour/00-30.shtml

Lost Lives - Work-related Deaths in British Columbia:
  www.worksafebc.com/priority/lostlives/lostlives.shtml

US 1998 Workplace fatality statistics and analysis:
  stats.bls.gov/news.release/cfoi.nws.htm

Association of Workers' Compensation Boards publications list:
  www.awcbc.org/english/publications2000.htm

Watch your back! Soft tissue injuries - sprains and strains - are the scourge of the modern workplace. Often debilitating, they can also be very expensive to treat. By: Penny Kome   Many employers complain that, although injury rates dropped through the 1980s and 1990s, their premiums stayed the same or increased. This is because of an increase in compensation costs for the most serious injuries, particularly the "soft tissue" injuries which are considered the scourge of the modern workplace.   The impact of these "sprains and strains" can vary dramatically. Low back injuries, for instance, can be self-limiting (as 80% of them are) or become long-term chronic conditions.   Since back sprains are invisible, employers and some members of the public cast doubt on how serious they really are. It's interesting to note that, in the last few years, medical treatment for back pain has quietly reversed direction, from complete bed rest to resuming modified activity. In effect, that means that generations of back patients got the wrong treatment, which might be one reason their conditions were so intractable.   Then there are the upper-extremity injuries affecting arms, shoulders, necks and hands-often related to repetitive assembly work or computer work. Women report two-thirds of these cases. Debilitating, chronically painful and very difficult to treat, strain injuries are among the most expensive work-related injuries for workers, as well as employers.   The European Trade Union Congress is in the midst of a continent-wide campaign to control strain injuries.

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