Eight years have passed since delegates to the 1989 Annual Convention of the Alberta Federation of Labour approved a policy paper entitled Back-to-the-Basics, which took stock of the progress we had made since 1976, the year the Province passed its first omnibus Occupational Health and Safety Act. Few delegates at that time could have guessed at the tremendous changes that would take place in the following years, especially in the four years since 1993 during which the Klein Government has pursued a single-minded intention to restructure the Province according to "Business Plans" modelled on the New Zealand experience.

In the process, the Alberta Government has drastically changed its whole approach to occupational health and safety. Whereas in 1989, unions complained about a lack of progress in achieving the stated objectives of the Gale Commission Report, today we realize that these objectives have been abandoned completely by a government determined to turn over all services, programs, standard-setting and enforcement to the private sector.

Today, in place of the regulatory and interventionist role adopted by governments since the days of the first Factory Acts, the central direction of the government is now towards internal responsibility, which is simply deregulation by another name. "Internal responsibility" and associated buzz-words mean that health and safety standards and enforcement by Government field staff are now being set aside and replaced by a so-called "Partnership Program". Employers agree to submit to a voluntary workplace audit, in which they file reports as a way of demonstrating compliance in the field of health and safety. Today, this is replacing more meaningful and effective worker participation through strong joint worksite health and safety committees.

Changes in the benefit and administration structure of Workers Compensation, meanwhile, have made it much more difficult for workers to win just compensation and, as a result, employers are being rewarded with massive breaks in assessment rates and rebates. All of these changes are being introduced under the flag of the "Alberta Advantage".

Reasserting the basics

In organizing a response to the Business Plans, we must remember that basic workers' rights in the area of occupational health and safety were first won in hard-fought battles by the trade union movement. The Right to Know, the Right to Participate, and the Right to Refuse, all formed the focus of the Gale Commission when it reported in 1975. All three are now being severely compromised by developments in Alberta.

1. Demanding the Right to Know:
   Throughout most of history, workers have been denied the basic information they require to protect themselves. We have had to fight for information regarding the hazards we face, the effect of exposure, and the best methods of control. The manner in which the Alberta government has implemented the Workplace Hazardous Information System (WHMIS) probably best illustrates its attitude towards health and safety. Based on federal legislation passed in 1987, WHMIS was supposed to guarantee the worker's Right-to-Know about hazardous materials on the worksite, and was to be implemented in a uniform fashion across Canada.

   Chemical hazards regulations passed in Alberta, however, have severely detracted from the central focus of WHMIS, a serious matter in light of the estimated 3,000 new hazardous chemicals which enter the workplace annually, many of which are introduced with little or no testing, information, or guidelines for safe handling. As well, the Alberta version of WHMIS lacked adequate provisions for education or worker information and involvement. Neither did it control biohazards, radiation, dusts or physical hazards such as heat, vibration etc, and statistics show that diseases and ill-effects suffered by workers from exposure to these hazards for outweigh traumatic injuries in both frequency and severity. Finally, the enforcement of WHMIS was left to a government office severely depleted by cutbacks and privatization.

2. Demanding the Right to Participate
   Alberta remains the only province in Canada that does not have some form of mandatory regulation requiring joint health and safety committees. On numerous occasions, Alberta government spokesmen have stated a preference for voluntary committees, arguing that these committees are more effective because employers are responsible for their creation and control.

   However, bitter experience has taught the labour movement that the only meaningful gains workers have made in health and safety are the ones they have fought for and won from reluctant employers and governments. Joint worksite committees are structures that are based on the understanding that workers have a clear interest in a health and safe workplace which only their representatives can be trusted to uphold.

   This premise was clearly affirmed by the Gale Commission Report in 1975, which formed the basis for the Province's 1976 Act. It repeatedly argued for joint health and safety committees as an "absolute necessity for all worksites", providing unequivocal support for the long-standing position of the labour movement.

   Since 1976, however, the government has done everything in its power to avoid the kind of committees contemplated by Gale. As well, the WCB has consistently refused to provide the statistical proof of fewer injuries and deaths at worksites with strong meaningful committees, even though we rely on it for such details.

   The labour movement continues to demand tough legislation in this area, because we are certain it would result in improved worksite conditions. We have no doubt that participation in the development of workplace conditions by workers and their representatives would result in much improved safety and health for all workers. Section 25 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act does address the issue of joint health and safety committees, but qualifies it with the key phrase "the Minister may by order require that there be established ...". Successive Ministers have simply chosen not to do this.

3. Demanding the Right to Refuse
   Section 27 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act provides that workers have the right — even the obligation — to refuse dangerous work not normal in their occupation. This principle recognizes the dignity of workers and their right to protect their own lives and those of their co-workers in dangerous situations. Under the Act a complaint is initiated by a worker and then investigated by the Department of Labour which makes a ruling. In two recent cases the Government — acting as an employer — has initiated appeals to overturn rulings in favour of a worker's right to refuse. In one situation, the Department of Justice has initiated an appeal to overturn a decision by the Minister's Advisory Council to support a guard at the Remand Centre who claimed to be in jeopardy because his co-workers were improperly trained. In another case a guard had successfully argued that dangerous working conditions existed because power tools were accessible to prison inmates. The same Department has appealed to the Advisory Council to overturn the ruling. The cases are still pending. However, the government's persistence does send a clear message to employers throughout the province that it's open season on the "Right to Refuse".

By the time the Klein government was elected in 1993, the administration of occupational health and safety in Alberta had already been seriously eroded by downsizing and deregulation. A full government Department of Occupational Health and Safety had already been reduced to a small arm of the Department of Labour, and staff and programs had been cut in all areas, particularly in education, research and occupational health services.

In 1993 Premier Klein and his government made it clear that they intended to go even further, to escalate the damage caused by the preceding Tory Government by enacting a "mandate" to change and restructure Alberta. An overall Provincial Business Plan in 1994 made it clear that the core mission of the Klein administration would be to turn all roles and functions of government to the marketplace. Each Department, and major program area was charged with the responsibility of coming up with its own Business Plan to achieve that goal. Accordingly, the first Occupational Health and Safety Business Plan released in 1994 declared:

A key goal contained in the Business Plan focuses on moving the Department away from an interventionist/regulatory role to facilitation and partnerships in areas of service delivery. Alberta Labour will work in partnership with employers, associations, labour groups, and others in developing effective health and safety management systems. This approach emphasizes consultation, collaboration, and voluntary compliance.

The second Business Plan for the years 1997-1998, entitled Quality Service Through Partnerships, proudly announced that budget reductions looked for in the first plan had been achieved, or exceeded, and went on to detail the direction that would be taken in a second term, including:

• the ongoing restructuring wherever possible, and preferably in relation to the delegation or devolution of activities;
• the continued development of Delegated Administrative Organizations (DAO's) where appropriate; i.e., industry funded and operated administrative and management bodies accountable to the Minister;
• the simplification of legislation, regulation, policy and service to provide a one-window approach to the department;
• privatization or elimination of services where appropriate

1. Partnership Programs set the stage
   This core concept in the Department's Business Plan was explained in a promotional document entitled Partnerships in Health and Safety which explains that it is a grass roots attempt to encourage people and organizations to "develop their own health and safety programs, tailor-made to their own particular circumstances - programs that can be refined and improved over time, in the light of both new knowledge and experience." It goes on to declare that, to be really effective, "a health and safety program benefits from being regularly evaluated or 'audited' by a well-trained and objective outside observer. Such audits can help to ensure the program is actually working to enhance the health and safety of workers."

   Employer's wishing to enroll in the Program are encouraged to contact their industry association or a principal contractor, and are promised government support. Their operation is then audited by a "Certified Independent Auditor" who might be an employee of a principal contractor, a member of an industry association or any other participating organization, or an independent consultant who has been accredited by the Occupational Health and Safety Partnerships section. Once their report is delivered to the "appropriate partner", it is reviewed by Alberta Occupational Health and Safety, which issues a "Certificate of Recognition". Thereafter, traditional workplace inspections are replaced by "paper reviews" in which workers have little or no involvement. Industry associations and other such bodies who qualify as "Partners in Health and Safety", essentially assume government's role in health and safety.

2. Paving the Way through Deregulation
   In 1994, as a central pillar in its Plan to turn the Province of Alberta over to Business, the Klein Government initiated a process unprecedented in the Western world. A Regulatory Review Task Force struck under the chair of Peace River MLA Gary Friedel (coincidentally, the same MLA who sponsored the latest Right-to-Work initiative in 1994) was given the mandate to deregulate virtually every sphere of government activity in the pursuit of the Alberta Advantage.

   A pro-business task force was told to scrutinize, and if possible rescind virtually every area previously protected by legislation or regulation: standards for electricity, welding, oil and gas, utilities and pressure vessels, plumbing, vehicles, building and fire codes, general safety, first aid, radiation and explosives, health and safety committees and procedures for permits and certification in every field of activity. Overall, a full 50 per cent of all regulations are to be eliminated or consolidated. In health and safety about 33 per cent will be lost. The proud declaration of the Task Force is that Alberta Labour will maintain only a policy and audit role, thereby giving birth to a new era of workplace culture of non-interference by Government. The intention is to entrench complete dominance by employers over the daily lives of their workers.

   The situation is further aggravated by the fact that, since 1993, severe budgetary trimming has resulted in more than a 30% cutback of Department or program employees in the field, eliminating any possibility of proper enforcement of either current or future standards in health and safety.

3. Changes in Workers Compensation
   Workers' Compensation is the oldest legislated worker right in Alberta, introduced in 1919 after concerted pressure by the labour movement across Canada. Alberta's legislation followed the principles outlined by Justice Meredith and implemented in Ontario in 1914. In brief, Workers' Compensation is an insurance policy which protects employers against liability for injury or death of their employees. It was developed because the legal system which depended on workers suing employers was a costly and unreliable method of securing compensation. While providing compensation to workers, the Act eliminates the right of the workers to sue the employer, providing a no-fault insurance system funded by employers as a cost of production in which neither the employer nor the worker assumes blame.

   Previous to 1991, the Alberta legislation and the Board focused on workers' rights. However, in that year, a major change occurred in policy, based on a concept of "balance" between employer and employee rights. According to the views of the new CEO, Dr. John Cowell, if workers have a right to file a claim, then employers have an equal right to "manage" these claims, including the right to challenge them. In addition, a full one-half of workers' rights were removed, when the Board announced, as a cost-cutting measure, that it would no longer provide meaningful Vocational Rehabilitation.

   Until 1994, organized resistance by the labour movement under the leadership of the Alberta Federation of Labour prevented any dramatic changes to the WCB benefits structure. In October of that year, however, the Board unilaterally announced that it would change the whole structure of WCB benefits. A "dual wage loss system" was effectively instituted, in which an injured worker would receive regular total temporary disability payments until judged to have reached a "medical or vocational plateau". At that time, based upon the evaluation of the Board, the worker would be assessed a one-time "non-economic loss payment" to account for any assessed permanent damage. Any further payments would be based upon an "Estimated Earning Capacity"; i.e., the difference between what the worker is actually able to earn and what the Board deems to be his "actual capacity" to earn, in place of the previous permanent partial disability benefits.

   In a few short years, Alberta workers have lost millions of dollars in benefits. Other changes were introduced to make it more and more difficult for workers to file claims and launch appeals. These included a one-year limit on claims, and stricter filing procedures. The true meaning of these changes was revealed in Spring 1996, when the Board proudly announced that it would be rebating almost $100 million in Compensation premiums to employers. Further to this, in Fall 1996, it announced that it would be cutting premiums by a further 14.5 per cent. Having been denied government protection against injury or death on the workplace, Alberta's workers are now being denied just compensation when they are injured.

   A central feature of this rebate program is the WCB's new Performance Pricing, which proposes to make an audit process the basis of its rebate program. In other words, a paper assessment of safe workplace practice will allow employers to qualify for sizable rebates, if they achieve a minimum number of health and safety points based on criteria tabulated through an audit process. Neither the criteria established in the audit process nor the undertaking of the procedures currently under discussion would involve direct inspections of workplaces for enforcement purposes. This is the contribution which the WCB be making to the "Alberta Advantage".

The labour movement must clearly outline its opposition to changes initiated in the last few years, as they go to the very roots of our historical battle for Occupational Health and Safety. The Business Plans have the effect of denying workers the right to protect themselves from injury and disease, and when they are injured or killed, changes to the WCB system increasingly deny them access to just compensation.

We must oppose policies based on concepts of "voluntary choice" or "voluntary assumption of risk", because they ignore the inequality of power in the employment relationship. We must take issue with the proposition that employer expenditures on workplace health and safety should somehow be based on willingness to pay for hazard reduction, as the majority of the cost of illness and injury have either been socialized, or are borne directly by workers, their families and communities. Seldom do individual employers have to absorb the costs associated with losses they have caused.

We must point out how the doctrine of "free contracting" affects risk assessment, producing higher allowable levels of exposure to specific hazards in the workplace than for the general public. Control measures cannot depend on "market forces" such as demands for risk premiums or some other form of compensation in return for exposure to hazardous work environments. Trade unions have learned that, even where standards are high and regulatory tools adequate, enforcement tends to be inadequate because there are typically too few enforcement officials, and even these are given mandates which preclude an aggressive stance towards enforcement favouring conciliation-oriented approaches over prosecution.

Finally, we have had to step up our challenges to the business community, when it either minimizes or denies that a hazard exists at all, and demands from us "proof beyond a reasonable doubt". Business resistance to our concerns is based on the realization that conversion to healthy, safe and environmentally-friendly production will be costly, primarily because most workplaces and processes were designed without these in mind. Employers will continue to favour control measures that concentrate on individual workers and work practices rather than on structural factors; i.e., they will blame the workers, introduce medical screening and genetic testing, and even the medical removal of the worker from the workplace.

In place of the market approach and the "Alberta Advantage", we must promote a program based on the understanding that workers have a right to safe, healthy and dignified work. Where employers have typically promoted a narrow definition of occupational health and safety, the trade union movement has promoted a broad view, which involves all aspects of the workers life, consistent with the definition of occupational health provided in 1963 by a joint committee of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Health Organization (WHO):

The promotion and maintenance of the highest degree of physical, mental, and social well-being of workers in all occupations, the prevention among workers of departures from health caused by their working conditions, the protection of workers in their employment from risks resulting from factors adverse to health; the placing and maintenance of the worker in an occupational environment adapted to his physiological and psychological condition.

These objectives sought by the labour movement have now been enshrined in ILO Convention #155, which establishes the following as minimum standards:

1. co-operation at the workplace between workers and employers as jointly responsible for the work environment, e.g., through joint health and safety committees;
2. the right of workers to refuse unsafe and unhealthy work (also to be found in the recent ILO Convention on the Prevention of Major Industrial Accidents);
3. the right to information and training; and
4. specific government provision for health and safety, in the form of health and safety legislation and regulations; government resources devoted to health and safety; and an inspectorate.

ISO is developing and promoting world wide auditing systems which would have the effect of replacing democratically established minimum workplace standards. In 1987, it established the 9000 Quality System Management Standards series under which firms become registered after completing a series of steps including site visits and auditing. Well over 25,000 manufacturing sites in Europe and North America have already received ISO 9000 registration and the list is rapidly growing as there is considerable pressure on companies to seek registration or face diminished status in the marketplace. More recently, ISO has instituted a l4000 Series program on auditing standards, versions of which are finding their way into government restructuring plans everywhere. Changes in Alberta's Health and Safety and WCB based on voluntary auditing schemes reflect the determination by international business to push governments around the world toward performance-based standards, deregulation and harmonization.

The replacement of democratically-based international standard-setting through the United Nations by global corporate interests represented in ISO is jeopardizing the role of the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Health Organization (WHO), both of which have had separate and joint roles in setting and promoting standards in health and safety. There are about 70 international ILO conventions, numerous recommendations and more that 20 codes of practice in the field of occupational safety and health on which most countries, including Canada, have drawn. ISO's incursion threatens this whole regime of health and safety and is clearly manifested in Alberta which is striving to be at the forefront of changes driven by global business interests.

Likewise, the International Program of Chemical Safety (IPCS) is a UN initiated forum dominated by international business interests charged with planning the international harmonization of chemical classifications by the year 2000. The consolidation of national and inter-governmental programs into one well-harmonized regime threatens some of the strongest features of WHIMS in Canada.

In addition, the World Trade Organization (WTO) which has replaced the GATT (General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs) is increasingly asserting its influence on conditions under which goods and services are being produced around the world; in fact, the United States has proposed that the WTO control the international implementation of the chemicals classification plans by IPCS. Labour is concerned that the WTO will use its power of sanction to characterize certain health and safety measures as barriers to trade, and will address this problem in 1999, when the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions will participate in a World Congress on Health and Safety. Governments are increasingly turning to the WTO to lead market-driven approaches to world trade, and it is rapidly becoming the main international agency by which business will establish its dominance in many jurisdictions, including health, safety and environment.

Trade unions must work to raise the level of awareness among their members that provincial, national and international developments in health and safety are all part of the same pattern, requiring national and internationally-coordinated responses. In Fall 1996, a coalition of Canadian groups involving the Canadian Labour Congress and national environmental and development organizations met in Ottawa to establish a new coalition to challenge the hegemony being created by global business through the WTO. The Canadian Labour Congress has also recognized that national coordination of information and actions must take place to address these problems effectively. It has struck a "New Strategies Working Group" to make recommendations for national direction and common action. It remains for the Alberta Federation of Labour to clearly highlight the international nature of the changes taking place in our province, and to provide strategies to deal with them, involving local, national and international solutions.

Rising to the Challenge: Our program of action to the year 2000

The Business Plans of the last few years certainly do not mark the first attempts by governments and business to turn back the clock on labour's historical struggle for a healthy and safe workplace. Neither will they be the last, as governments and their ill-advised plans come and go. However, the labour movement and its historical struggle for occupational health and safety has endured for hundred of years

The historical lesson we have learned is that we must fight in order to succeed. In fact, the promulgation of the 1976 Occupational Health and Safety Act marked an historical high point in the struggle by Alberta workers for a healthy and safe workplace. Rank-and-file workers, together with their leaders, organized, agitated, and educated for change. Through education and communication, they raised to an all-time high the awareness of workers, their families and communities about hazards they faced in unsafe and unhealthy workplaces. Through training, they equipped themselves with the tools they needed to deal with them. By organizing themselves, they increased their power to deal with employers who exposed them to these hazards, and to negotiate protection and controls through their unions, their joint health and safety committees, through central organizations such as the Alberta Federation of Labour, and through community groups. Action on the environment has now became part of their mandate.

However, gains won by one generation have too often been lost or badly-eroded by the next, as a new generation of workers tends to take them for granted. This happened in the Alberta during the 1990; the heritage of protection handed to us by the workers in the 1960s and 1970s was eroded beyond recognition. The express intent of the Klein Business Plans is to now eradicate them completely, as if they never existed.

In October 1996, the Alberta Federation of Labour held a successful Occupational Health and Safety Conference in which long-time activists were joined by a large number of new members determined to correct what they see as intolerable state of affairs and a criminal neglect of their rights in the workplace. These delegates devoted themselves to learning about the challenges posed by the Alberta Business Plan, and other challenges, and formulated proposals that provide the Alberta Federation of Labour with a solid basis for a program to take the Alberta labour movement into the next millennium.

Delegates made it clear that they want the Alberta Federation of Labour to rise to the challenge of the Klein Business Plans. They expect no less of this Federation, and neither should delegates to this Convention. The challenge facing us is to put occupational health and safety back on a campaign basis provincially and on every worksite. It is a commitment which will require time, effort and money, but it is one we cannot avoid. The lives of working people depend on it. Conference delegates recommended the following six-point program of action.

1. Provincial Coordination: A call for well-planned information and action campaigns around key areas, and for a full-time AFL Health and Safety Officer to coordinate programs province-wide.
2. Worker Compensation: A complete assessment and reorientation of Alberta's compensation scheme is demanded. The efforts of the Trade Union Ad Hoc Committee on Workers Compensation established by the combined labour movement in 1994, must be rejuvenated with adequate resources to properly monitor WCB activities and organize provincial and regional campaigns. Partnerships and audits as proposed by the provincial Government and the WCB must be reassessed and a strategy to ensure trade union input developed. The manual, Securing Just Compensation, should be updated and distributed as soon as possible
3. Political Action: A broadly based lobbying effort must be directed at representatives in the provincial Legislature, and Opposition members must be supported. Trade unions must be encouraged to be involved in provincial and national election campaigns, and Province-wide awareness, through public education should be planned. Events such as the 28 April International Day of Mourning should be considered as opportunities for education and organizing.
4. Information and Analysis: Workers and activists in Alberta must be provided with ongoing information about developments in health and safety as well as workers compensation. There should be a well developed information flow to local unions and activists covering the following topics:
   • Changes to legislation and regulations
   • Activities of trade unions and other groups,
   • Information bank of human and material resources
   • Documentation sources and Research results.
   Modern means of communication such as the World Wide Web should be investigated and information programs coordinated with other trade union bodies including the Alberta's Workers Health Centre. An update of the AFL handbook for health and safety activists, The Struggle for a Safe and Healthy Workplace should be revised and published as soon as possible.
5. Education and Training: Training and education are key to the success of any program or campaign. Well-planned programs to educate stewards and members about workers compensation should be provided. Training should focus on developing health and safety activists, including the formation of a network for them. Trade unions should be encouraged to work with and provide more support for the Alberta Workers' Health Centre
6. Collective Bargaining: Unions engaged in collective bargaining must be encouraged to address crucial issues relating to changes in occupational health and safety and the WCB. An analysis of wording in current collective agreements should be performed, and wording for health and safety training and education developed and promoted. An advocacy group should be established to identify critical issues related to collective bargaining and courses of action. The possibility of a dedicated educational fund (supported with payroll deductions) should examined.