News

Construction Safety Initiative Points to a Bigger Set of Problems

British Columbia’s New Democratic Party government, which took power in July 2017, is showing increasing confidence in office. There’s a steady flow of policy decisions to benefit ordinary people – for example, an increased focus on affordable housing and child care, with funding attached.

On workforce development, Premier John Horgan has committed to a public construction strategy that will require contractors – and signatory unions – to promote local hiring, apprentice training and opportunities for under-represented groups.

Allied to this, the Premier met with the Building Trades last week and announced funding to recruit and retain women in the skilled trades. Members of my union, IBEW Local 213, were front and centre at that announcement.

In the field of workplace safety, WorkSafeBC has promised a welcome change of direction. This provincial agency, functioning as an insurance agency, makes payments to injured workers to compensate them for lost earnings. Just as important, WorkSafeBC is in the business of preventing death and injury through education and worksite regulation. Under the previous Liberal government, unfortunately, there was little effort to make the rules meaningful.

Now, with an NDP government in office, WorkSafeBC has announced a three-year “Construction High Risk” strategy, to address the “high risk of serious workplace injury” in the construction sector.

This strategy includes an immediate campaign of practical inspections, taking in the key hazards in the construction workplace – the tools and procedures used in working at heights, the materials that may be involved in fires and explosion, the interplay between work teams and mobile equipment. Another stream of inspections will consider the employer’s duty to implement a health and safety plan.

In a letter to employers, WorksafeBC’s head of prevention services states that inspectors will not give advance notice before they visit worksites. I hope this is true. I also hope the inspectors will be diligent in assessing penalties or shutting down jobs where appropriate.

WorksafeBC statistics show that in the 10-year period from 2007 through 2016, 330 people died of causes related to work in the B.C. construction sector, with 1,440 deaths across the provincial economy. In our experience, that large majority of construction deaths and injuries take place in the non-union sector, especially in residential construction, where fly-by-night contractors make use of untrained and unskilled help.

The WorkSafeBC construction safety initiative is overdue, and we can all hope that it will save lives and eliminate some of the worst operators from the construction business. At the same time, more is needed. In the electrical trades, and in other hazardous or highly skilled trades, this government needs to return to mandatory certification. This simple safeguard, to ensure that tradespeople are qualified, was abolished by the BC Liberals in the early 2000s. Government can also do more to make contractors accountable to workers and consumers – by ensuring that they are bonded, and registered as tax-paying entities, and not part of the underground economy.

One construction death is too many. The fact of 330 construction deaths over 10 years is deplorable. We need to do better.

-- Adam Van Steinburg, Business Manager & Financial Secretary