The Ministry of Labour’s enforcement is not effective enough that employers repeatedly violate safety protections. It is found that employers were forced to fix the same hazard year after year. And only 1 percent of workplaces across Ontario are being inspected proactively to ensure a safe working environment. The violation of safety laws put employees into the risks during working.
The main reason that fails to prevent employers from continuing the same unsafe practices is although employers bear the legal responsibility for workplace safety, the bulk of the ministry’s fines go to individual workers and supervisors. Another reason is that the ministry does not systematically target workplaces with high injury rates for inspection, leaving companies with the highest injury rates uninspected.
The Ministry of Labour’s prevention office budget dropped by $16 million last year. However, the Association of Worker’s Compensation Boards of Canada (AWCBC) reported that there are 59,529 lost-time injuries in 2017, which increase by 21% from an average of 2014-2016 rate.
The Ontario’s Occupational Health & Safety Act (OHSA) addresses the regulations that employers have responsibilities to take all reasonable precautions to protect their workers from illness and/or injury. This means that employers need to do everything they reasonably can to keep employees safe. Moreover, employees have responsibilities to follow the safety policies and ensure that procedures and measures for workplace health and safety are established. (Workplace Safety & Prevention Services) This means that both employers and employees have responsibilities in providing and maintaining safety in the workplace.
“Nobody wants to see people getting injured at work and a lot of injuries are preventable.” said by John McKinnon of the Toronto-based Injured Workers Community Legal Clinic.
Therefore, in my opinion, the prevention of injuries from the workplace is the first step that needs to be done in order to keep employees safe. Therefore, I think that governments, employers and employees all need to take greater actions in order to prevent further safety risks for workers. First of all, the government needs to put money into prevention, but also needs to lay fines targeting employers. The ministry should also improve information systems and identify workplaces for inspection where workers are more likely to get injured. The ministry should increase the number of business inspections and investigations for incidents that have occurred each year. The employer needs to provide information about the hazards in the workplace, and proper safety equipment, training and competent supervision. Lastly, employees should know the hazard in their workplace and ensure that equipment, materials and protective devices required by law and/or provided and used.
Resources:
- Mojtehedzadeh.S (2019) Employers keep breaking safety laws — and government enforcement isn’t stopping them, auditor general finds. Star.com
- Tucker.S & Keefe.A (2019) 2019 Report on Work Fatality and Injury Rates in Canada. University of Regina. Assessed from https://www.uregina.ca/business/faculty-staff/faculty/file_download/2019-Report-on-Workplace-Fatalities-and-Injuries.pdf
- Workplace Safety & Prevention Services. OHSA Ontario and Employers Responsibilities
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