Farm deaths and injuries mount while Ontario backtracks on safety regulations:Extension of Occupational Health and Safety Act to cover farm workers exempts farms from most of the OHSA regulations
TORONTO, March 10, 2006 – The recent accidental death of another Ontario agricultural worker is one more tragic reason agricultural workers need the fullest protection of the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA), not the watered-down version the government is planning to extend to the sector in June 2006.
On March 4, 2006 near Thamesford, Ontario, 50-year-old Wilf Kuipers was killed in an explosion in a mushroom growing facility. Along with the police and fire marshal, the Ontario Ministry of Labour, under Ontario’s Occupational Safety and Health Act, would typically investigate a workplace explosion.
But currently Ontario agricultural operations are wholly exempted from OHSA and a promise by the Ontario government to bring farms under the Act in June 2006 is starting to look more like window dressing than action to regulate Ontario’s most dangerous occupation.
For the last twenty years, UFCW Canada (the United Food and Commercial Workers Canada union) and the Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) have argued that agricultural workers and the industry should be covered under OHSA. Most other industries in Ontario have been covered since 1990.
UFCW Canada launched a legal challenge in 2003 against the Ontario McGuinty government for not including the agricultural sector under OHSA. In June 2005 the government relented, committing itself to extending OHSA regulations in June 2006 to cover agricultural workers but that commitment has now wavered.
According to UFCW Canada’s agricultural organizer Stan Raper, “the Ministry has now caved under pressure from farm industry lobby groups, so come this June Ontario farms will continue to be exempt from almost all the regulations of OHSA. Instead, farm worker safety will mostly be covered not by regulations but by guidelines worked out between the farmers and the government with no input from the workers who are at risk.”
Agriculture is Ontario's most dangerous industry, yet the government's June plan would still omit specific regulations on: unguarded equipment, heat stress; confined space; pesticide exposure; heavy equipment training. Even a WHMIS program (Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System), see http://www.ccohs.ca/headlines/text51.html, is missing in spite of agriculture’s regular use of pesticides, herbicides and other toxic chemicals.
“This is a huge concern to agricultural workers,” says Michael J. Fraser, national director of UFCW Canada. “They will remain untrained with only guidelines worked out by their employers to determine if their work location is unsafe. If they refuse to work in an unsafe environment with undefined regulations more confusion will follow.”
“In light of the numerous deaths on agricultural operations this year, on average 20 agricultural worker deaths in Ontario a year” said Fraser, “and the numerous coroners’ inquests into the deaths of agricultural workers and farmers it is time to implement specific agricultural regulations and have them implemented with the rest of the legislation on June 30, 2006.”
“I’m calling on Premier McGuinty and the Minister of Labour to ensure that industry specific regulations and WHMIS are part of their promise to deliver real protection to farm workers this June,” said Fraser. “Guidelines fail to do that and it is unfortunate and in fact tragic that more workers and farmers will be killed and injured in their workplace unless the Minister of Labour and the Premier act to make OHSA as strong on the farm as it is in other Ontario workplaces.”
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For more information or to arrange an interview:
Michael Forman, UFCW Canada Communications
416-675-1104, [email protected] www.ufcw.ca