Do your employees know their three rights? Provincial Occupational Health and Safety Acts exist to prevent worksite incidents that can result in injury, illnesses, and death. These Acts specify that all workers have three rights: the Right to Know, the Right to Participate, and the Right to Refuse.
All employers are required to inform their workers of any jobsite risks and hazards, and provide appropriate mitigation to prevent employee harm. An orientation to their company is one way to introduce new employees to the organization. But it’s also an opportunity to inform new workers of the general risks and hazards at the worksite and covers their right to know. In the Oil and Gas Industry, employers will require specialized training such as the Construction Safety Training Systems (CSTS), or Pipeline Construction Safety Training (PCST). For the Hospitality industry, housekeeping staff may be required to participate in WHMIS so they are aware of the properties of cleaning products they will use daily.
Many employers and individual work teams hold daily safety meetings at the beginning of a shift to address specific tasks and potential risks and hazards. These meetings are under different titles such as safety meeting, toolbox talk, shift meeting, etc but they are all for the same purpose – to identify risks and hazards and to ensure employees can eliminate or minimize dangers to themselves.
Employees, regardless of their job location, have a Right to Participate in the well-being of themself and their co-workers. The most efficient way to participate is through safety dialogue with supervision or through safety meetings. An employee may identify a hazard or risk on the job and can speak to their supervisor to have it addressed. An example may be that there’s a more efficient and safer way to load and unload materials coming into a warehouse. Instead of workers manually moving materials, the company could purchase a wheeled trolly or forklift to move heavy items. In large companies with many employees, management isn’t always aware of every worker’s tasks and needs to be informed. A tool or piece of equipment would save money long term vs increased worker’s compensation rates for an injured or disabled employee. Workers can improve their health and safety through diaglogue with supervision. If they feel uncomfortable to address this directly, they can speak through their representative who attends company safety meetings.
No worker should ever feel unsafe doing a task at work. If they feel unsafe, they likely are and rather than create a situation for injury and/or death, all workers have the Right to Refuse. Federal and Provincial law protects workers in this case whereas, no worker can be fired or disciplined for a refusal to unsafe work. It can be as simple as an employee being asked to do a task they are not properly trained for, such as equipment operator. Perhaps they are only competent to operate a bobcat so when asked to operate an excavator, they refuse. In that case, the employer would replace them with an experienced excavator operator.
A more extreme (and hopefully unlikely) case may be an employee asked to open a hatch and go into a length of piping to retrieve some tools left behind from a completed job where the work permit has been signed off. The worker should refuse until they are certain that valves haven’t been opened to allow gas, steam, or hot water etc. to flow through; and proper tests have been completed. Seconds could kill in this circumstance! Every time an employee is asked to go into this type of confined space, an air quality test should be performed to ensure the employee can safety enter while wearing proper personal protective equipment (PPE) that may include a respirator and gas monitor. If this employee refused to enter without the air test or PPE law prevents them from being fired.
How safe are your workers? Do you encourage them to follow their three Rights? Does production outweigh safety? In the end, workplace injury/death also affects the bottom line of the financial statement.
