Western Canada Wilderness Committee

June 16, 2003

Sweeping Changes Put Workers at Risk

The Labour Environmental Alliance (LEAS) is pleased to contribute to the broader discussion on the Western Canada Wilderness Committee's website. LEAS works to find common ground among labour, environmental and social justice activists, so this opportunity created by WCWC to share information about environmental issues of concern to labour is most welcome.

After six years of tripartite negotiations, the WCB enacted regulations in 1998 that strengthened workers' rights to know what carcinogens or reproductive toxins they may exposed to. The regulation also required employers to substitute less toxic materials for all carcinogens in use, and expanded the grounds upon which workers could refuse to work with carcinogens and reproductive toxins.

These are among the strongest pollution prevention regulations in the province.
The reason is that if employers are required to use less toxic materials, and workers refuse to handle products containing harmful substances, those substances won't go into our air, water or soil. Consequently, the decisions employers and workers make about matters on their worksites can affect the environment and everyone's health. This aspect of worker health and safety affects us all.

As part of the Liberal government's crazy scheme to eliminate one out of every three regulations, the WCB now proposes to weaken these worker protections. And union health and safety activists are up in arms.

As I've sat in meetings and heard workers discuss their values and principles, I closed my eyes and imagined I'm amongst environmentalists.

Here's what we've been talking about.

At the core of the right-to-know and right-to-refuse-to-handle rules is a table that designates hazardous chemicals. This table was constructed through a consensus process by a tripartite committee. It reflects the precautionary principle and best practices, and allowed for updating and review from international, national, provincial and jurisdictional research. The WCB proposes to replace this table with one from a US industry group called the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH).

There are many problems with the made-in-America table the WCB plans to ram down our throats.

Some parts of the table provide decent health standards. But many haven't been reviewed for decades and are woefully inadequate regarding contemporary understanding of health risks.

The WCB says it's interested in consensus but this is non-sensus.
It's just another example of "fixing" something that wasn't broken. In this case, as in many regarding sensible environmental regulations, the Liberals are using their "one size fits all" directive and are throwing out years of good work.

Further, many workers will never know what the new regulations are because they'll not be able to afford to buy them. Today the tables are freely available. Under the new regime, BC workers, their organizations and their employers will have to pay up to $12,000 for the CD ROMs and updated lists. This is blatantly undemocratic and denies workers their basic right-to-know what they are exposed to.

The WCB has not done any cost analysis of the sweeping changes that are proposed. Worse, the WCB has not done any analysis on the health impacts on thousands of workers who will be legally exposed to known carcinogens and reproductive toxins at exposure levels up to ten times higher than those in place today.

The Workers Compensation Board is responsible for protecting the health of workers. The Board is supposed to be immune to politics and it should not be susceptible to the current de-regulation craze sweeping the province. If workers are forced to accept these rules, they may be exposed to a ten-fold increase in risk. This would mean that the WCB is not fulfilling its mandate. And it would mean that the precautionary principle is being ignored. And many workers could suffer long term health problems. In the workplace, as in the environment, industry and government have the responsibility to demonstrate that their policies and practices will not cause irreversible damage.

You might have missed the public hearings on these changes. There were only two, they were brief (one in Prince George and one in Richmond), they were poorly advertised, and they were of little apparent interest to the Grasper media. Sound familiar?

But it's not too late for you to contact the WCB, and say that you oppose the changes because worker, community and environmental health are all at stake. Address your letter to the Chair of the WCB Board of Directors, Doug Enns, 6951 Westminster Highway, Richmond, BC V7C 1C6. Or you may want to contact the one labour representative on the WCB BOD, Steve Hunt, United Steelworkers of America, 601-686 West Broadway, Vancouver, BC V52 1G1.

We need to mix this information in with our other environmental campaigns. Inform your friends and neighbors, call in to talk shows, write letters. Draw a parallel between this and other environmental issues.

Visit websites of the BC Federation of Labour (www.bcfed.com) and the Labour Environmental Alliance (www.leas.ca) for briefs on the WCB hearings.

Thanks to Larry Stoffman, Director, Occupational Health and Safety, United Food and Commercial Workers 1518, and Lynn Buerckert, Director, Occupational Health and Safety Director, BC Federation of Labour for background information for this article.

Mae Burrows, Executive Director, LabourEnviornmental Alliance, CAW representative on BC Federation of Labour Occupational health and Safety Committee, and recipient of the Eugene Rogers award.

Posted by Mae Burrows at June 16, 2003 12:35 PM