This document provides an overview of occupational health and safety issues facing auto plant workers in Canada. It discusses how free trade agreements like the FTA and NAFTA led to increased speedups that negatively impacted worker health and safety. The Canadian Auto Workers union fought these impacts through political activism against free trade and by advocating for ergonomics and time studies in contracts. The union also encouraged workers to refuse unsafe work and campaigned for regulations like WHMIS. While Canadian OHS laws were an improvement due to past worker struggles, the system remains imperfect and employers still try to reduce worker protections.

1. Introduction to Occupational
Health and Safety in Canada and
Canadian Auto Plants
For Russian Auto Plant Union
July 2012
Cathy Walker
Former Director (retired)
Canadian Auto Workers (CAW)
Health and Safety Department

2. Greetings from Canada, world’s second
largest country by land mass, with
Russia being the first, of course

3. Our population is tiny by
comparison with yours
34 million in Canada
142 million in Russia

4. Your symbol is the fierce
Russian bear

5. Our symbol is the little beaver

6. Nonetheless we have much in
common as workers and trade
unionists

7. Auto plant workers in Canada

8. Auto plant workers in Russia

9. Auto plant workers in China

10. Auto plant workers in Mexico

11. We have the same issues and
the same problems

12. The world used to be easier to
understand, didn’t it?
Two superpowers: U.S. and Soviet Union

13. The world changed in 1989
The Soviet
Union
imploded

14. Something significant happened in
Canada in 1989 too
Does anyone know
who this guy is?

15. Free Trade Agreement (FTA)
between
the United States and Canada
Even though the
majority of
Canadians were
opposed to it
Effective January
1, 1989
Its purpose was to
benefit American
corporations

16. Ronald Reagan and Brian Mulroney
were implementing the corporate
agenda of globalization

17. Corporate Agenda of Globalization:
Characteristics
“Free” Trade
Privatization
De-regulation
Bad for public
sector workers and
bad for private
sector workers
Unfettered
capitalism
Attempts to destroy
our solidarity

18. What is Free Trade?
Karl Marx knew in 1848
“What is free trade under the
present condition of society? It
is freedom of capital. When
you have overthrown the few
national barriers which still
restrict the progress of capital,
you will merely have given it
complete freedom of action.
So long as you let the relation
of wage labor to capital exist,
it does not matter how
favorable the conditions under
which the exchange of
commodities takes place,
there will always be a class
which will exploit and a class
which will be exploited.”

19. What effect did the Free Trade
Agreement have on the health and
safety of Canadians?

20. Workers Suffered from Speed Up

22. What year was this picture taken?
What are they signing?

23. Clinton signing NAFTA, 1993
North American Free Trade
Agreement

24. NAFTA effective January 1, 1994

25. The Mexican people knew what
NAFTA was really all about; led to
Zapatista uprising in Chiapas

26. What effect did NAFTA have on the
health and safety of Canadians?

27. We surveyed our members in
auto assembly and auto parts to
find out

28. CAW -- McMaster University
Auto Parts Study
1,600 workers in 1995
Conditions are bad:
61% said their workload is too much
40% said they worked in pain at least half the
time
44% said their job is more tense than it was 2
years ago
55% said they couldn't keep up the current
pace until age 60
53% said they worked as fast as they could
most of each day
37% said they worked in an awkward position
at least half of the day

29. CAW -- McMaster University
Auto Parts Study
1,600 workers in 1995
And they were getting worse:
41% said their health risks at work were higher
than 2 years before
45% said they were more tired after work than
2 years before
52% said their workload was heavier now than
2 years before

30. That’s the problem we faced:
what did we do about it?
We fought free We fought the
trade on the effects of free
political front trade in the
workplace

31. Participated in broader struggle
against globalization, FTAA and WTO
Quebec City, April 2001

32. Our health and safety
representatives and local union
leadership fought speed-up and
advocated ergonomics on a daily
basis

33. We bargained contract
language on ergonomics and
time study

34. Companies should spend
As much money on making workers
comfortable in their work as they do
making customers comfortable in the
cars

35. Large auto assembly plants:
full time union OHS, Ergo and
Time Study representatives
Chosen by the union (OHS usually by
election) but paid for by the employer
In order to compel the employer to
pay for the full time OHS rep, we have
to bargain this in our collective
agreements
“time as required”

36. We encouraged workers to
refuse work that was likely to
endanger them

37. Poster:

38. RSI Campaign -- Nationally
RSI Awareness Day, began on
February 29th, the non-repeating day
of the year; then on February 28th
thereafter
In workplaces and communities the
campaign had posters, leaflets,
meetings, and education and training
including one day educationals

39. Ergonomics Regulation
Campaign Nationally to mirror
what we’d bargained
We were successful in some
provinces and in the national
jurisdiction

40. Canadian workers have a long
history of struggle over health
and safety
Union campaigns on the injustice of
child labour, including children killed
and maimed at the workplace,
brought us workers’ compensation in
1913

41. Asbestos: Killer dust
Canada was the major source of
asbestos for the world for decades
1949 major strike among asbestos
miners demanding reduced dust
levels; fought the U.S. corporation,
the church and the state
Major political effect for Quebec:
Quiet Revolution

42. 1970s, big strike wave over
occupational health and safety
Once again, Quebec asbestos miners
struck over need to reduce dust levels

43. Elliott Lake Uranium
Mineworkers in 1970s
Dying from silicosis and lung cancer
As well as from hazardous falls of
rock

44. Workers’ struggles have produced
better laws
In 1974-5 in Ontario, miners
struck Elliott Lake uranium
mines over health and safety
issues
This led to a Royal
Commission to study the
problem in 1976
Recommended Occupational
Health and Safety Act,
became law in 1979

45. The new law had some
strengths and weaknesses,
and these continue today

46. Employers: responsible to
provide a healthy and safe
workplace; workers have little
power

47. Workers Must Have a Voice
For it is they who suffer injuries and
occupational disease
Workers know the hazards of the
workplace best and they know the likely
solutions best
The new law guaranteed workers’ voice
through the joint occupational health and
safety committee system

48. Problem:
Joint OHS Committees have no power
Ironically, despite OHS committees
being composed of half employer
representatives, these same
committees have no power to make
decisions, but must make
recommendations to the employer

49. Solution:
Follow the examples of Sweden and
Norway and give joint OHS
Committees the power to make
decisions which the employer must
follow

50. Problem:
If we give Joint OHS Committees
the power to make decisions,
committees may often stalemate

51. Solution:
Once again, copy Northern Europe
where workers are in a majority on
Joint OHS Committees

52. Other solutions to ineffective
OHS Committees:
Copy the Australian states of Victoria &
Queensland
Give workers’ health and safety
representatives the power to write
Provisional Improvement Notices
These act as posted orders on the
employer for health and safety violations
The employer must comply within 7 days or
appeal to the government regulatory
agency

53. Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004
Provisional Improvement Notice
Employer Health and Safety Representative
Name/Company Name First name Last name
Street no. Street name Name of Designated Work Group
Suburb or Region Postcode Union
Served to –
Date issued Compliance date
First name Last
name
Position Must be at least eight Days
After the issue date
In accordance with Section 60 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, I, the Health and Safety
Representative named above, am of the opinion that you, the Employer/Person named above:
(a) are contravening a provision of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 and/or regulations;
or
(b) have contravened a provision of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 and/or regulations in
circumstances that make it likely that the contravention will continue or be repeated.
The Provision of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 or Regulations or I believe has been contravened is:
The reason for my opinion is:
In accordance with Section 61 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, the measures I believe you should take to remedy the contravention are:
Signature of person serviced to
Signature of Health and Safety Representative Date received:
Union:

54. Give Worker OHS
Representatives the right to
shut down hazards
This was originally contemplated, but then
government caved-in to employer
pressure and provided a bi-lateral right to
shutdown, which is meaningless
But we’ve done this through practice in our
workplaces

55. Give Worker OHS
Representatives the power to
approve or reject new equipment
The master agreements with General
Motors, Ford and Chrysler give the union
health and safety representatives the right to
approve or reject new equipment

56. Problem:
In non-union situations, the
employer representatives often
dominate the OHS Committee

57. Solution: Make it easier to
unionize
Penalize employers who engage try to
keep unions out
Prohibit strike-breaking

58. 1970s in the auto
plants: if the
workers didn’t like
something, they
wouldn’t work;
they were
protected; they
had our union

59. History of Struggle
We want workers to understand that
our OHS laws were achieved through
workers’ and unions’ struggles

60. Better regulations through struggle
In 1986-7, hundreds members of
our union at Toronto area
aerospace plants, McDonnell
Douglas and DeHavilland refused to
work for weeks over the right to
know about workplace hazards
(chemicals)
Cleaned up their workplace and set
the stage for new law

61. WHMIS (Workplace Hazardous
Materials Information System)
Tri-partite committee (labour,
employers and government) drafted
the WHMIS system
WHMIS became law in 1988 across
Canada:
labelling of chemical containers
Material Safety Data Sheets (detailed
information)
worker education and training

62. Our Canadian OHS system is
far from perfect
We know we have a long way to go
Sweden and Norway have better
laws than us
Employers and right-wing
governments try to take away what
we’ve won
And we know that fundamentally
The class struggle is never over

63. Thanks very much