Roland LeFort Cep local 707

Enabling

Our journey continues. It’s been almost a year now since we started training sessions all employees at Suncor on a subject we call enabling. "A conscious or subconscious act that allows a person to continue an unacceptable behavior"

We want to talk about those people and their unacceptable behaviors, but we also want to talk about the things that we do that sends the message to those people that it is OK.

It is not OK and if we want a safe workplace we all have a part to play.

Fifteen years ago it might have been acceptable for one to spend the night in the bar and then drive home. Although we didn’t talk about it there was always this hope that no accident would happen on the way. Today that behavior is unacceptable and friends talk about it. Today it is acceptable and even expected that a friend would not let a friend drink and drive. A true friend would see to it that a person’s keys are taken away if one is drinking. That is a very impressive change in culture and it didn’t just happen. The change occurred because society began to talk about the destruction that it created. The accidents, the children affected and all the things that were not being talked about.

This is what we are attempting to do with these training sessions , we want to start a shift in culture at the workplace by simply talking about the problem. Allowing people to understand that their is a problem and that together we can make a difference.

At those training sessions we are asking you to talk to someone if you suspect that a co worker , a friend or a family member, is having difficulty a dependency. The message that we want you to hear is that the right things will happen if we talk about it. The union’s position is one of caring not only for our member but also the members family and if we see problems in the workplace we know that there are problems at home. When we talk about caring , we mean offering assistance to deal with the illness. That is the bottom line, no matter how we chose to make it happen the end result should be offering assistance.

There is a myth out there that people with dependencies will not do anything about their illness until they hit rock bottom. I hope that we will have dispelled that myth. We can help affect change in peoples lives long before they get the bottom but that means we have to change some of our behaviors also. Your local union executive strongly supports this education program, we believe that this is the best way to deal with the issue of drugs and alcohol in the workplace.

Industry in general has taken a different approach to dealing with this same problem. Drug testing seems to be the preferred method. Their approach is mostly attributed to two principles in law, Due diligence and the Burden of proof.

Due Diligence, taking every reasonable effort to avoid harm to people or the environment. In matters where a company or an individual is charges for having caused harm to people or the environment , the accused must be able to prove that they had done everything that was reasonably possible to help prevent that harm from happening. Testing would offer that diligence apparently.

The other issue around proof is based on the theory that companies need proof of presence of unwanted substances in one’s body to justify the actions to follow.

These are valid reasons and the labour movement in general understand them but we believe that these methods do not effectively deal with the problem. For that reason mainly we do not support testing.

When we started discussion with Suncor on this subject it was agreed that we would introduce the education program on enabling and that we would hire a consultant to give us recommendations on the values of introducing pre-employment testing (due diligence)

The report came back suggesting that testing might be acceptable since other employers in the area are using it.

Based on that report we suspect that Suncor will soon introduce pre-employment testing . We don’t agree with it and we will continue to try and convince management that there is really no value in it.

We are committed however to the process that we have started with our EFAP on educating our members and their families on enabling. We have an agreement in principle with the company that , random ,testing for cause or post accident testing will not be implemented.