Government safety blitz targets youth

Helping to eliminate workplace injuries especially among younger and inexperienced workers is the focus of a provincial government safety blitz happening throughout the month of June.

Peter Fonseca, the provincial Minister of Labour, along with two of his London colleagues, MPP Khalil Ramal and MPP Deb Matthews, paid a visit to the culinary arts kitchen at Fanshawe College to help launch the blitz, which is also a part of the Safe at Work Ontario strategy announced last July to help reduce workplace injuries. The government is sending out 430 inspectors specifically targeting a wide range of employers in the service and manufacturing sectors. Especially young workers from 14-24 years old and new workers who are 25 and older who have been on the job less than six months, or who have been reassigned to a new job. During the blitz safety inspectors will make sure that young and new workers are being trained properly, supervised, meet the minimum age requirements for their particular line of work, and that their workplace is following “best practices” to ensure that everything is done in a proper and safe manner. Inspectors will be also checking to see if any personal protective equipment and machinery safeguards are working properly, and also being on the look out for hazards that could cause falls or musculoskeletal disorders.

Fonseca said they are focusing on young and inexperienced workers for a reason.

(Young workers) are four times more likely to be injured in that first month of work then at any other time in their career. We want to ensure that their employers have the right health and safety standards in place, are providing the orientation, the training, the supervision that those young workers need so that they can be productive employees and be healthy and safe,” he said noting the need for workers to ask the right questions and be aware of their rights and that information is provided through the Ministry of Labour website.

Cameron Anderson is the manager for the school of tourism and hospitality and said that their facilities follow very stringent standards when it comes to safety.

“Every lab starts off and there's a checklist by which the students and technicians working through the course of the day will follow and check the equipment for the refrigeration, its sanitation, cleanliness, they'll go through and if equipment's not working they'll log it as such, tag it, set-it aside and then it's repaired as soon as possible,” said Anderson. “These are the types of the things that are done everyday in every lab. The worst I think I've seen is probably a deep-cut. That's probably the highest accident incident rate is in the cuts, very few burns, but within the college it's very low. For what I've seen in 20-odd years of practice in the industry, the college is very low.”

Important worker facts:

- According to a Ministry of Labour, between 2001 and 2008, workers aged 15-24 sustained 573 critical injuries, and there were 27 fatalities during this period, and the average cost to employers both direct and indirect due to lost-time workplace injury was $106,500.

- Between April 2004, and March 31, 2008, declining rates of lost-time workplace injuries have saved employers more than $5 billion in direct and indirect costs.

The provincial government has also jumped on the social-media bandwagon with worker information now on: www.twitter.com/workinsummer, and more information can also be found on the Safe Work Ontario initiative website at www.ontario.ca/safeatworkontario. The most important thing about workplace injuries is to ensure they are prevented before they happen, as Minister Fonseca said: “if you help us reach zero, you'll be a hero.”