(The following article is from the February 1-28, 2010 issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

Special to PV

The tragedy of four immigrant highrise workers in Toronto who fell 13 storeys to their deaths on Christmas Eve has brought the issue of workplace health and safety back to the front pages. According to the men's widows, they were seriously concerned about their balcony repair jobs, but may have been unaware of their rights to refuse unsafe work.

     According to interviews with the women conducted through a Russian language interpreter by the Toronto Star, one of the workers said the swing scaffold was very long and looked like it was made from four parts which weren't securely fastened together.

     One of the five non-union immigrant workers survived but remains in hospital. The accident was the worst construction tragedy in Toronto in half a century, and is under investigation by Toronto police and the Ministry of Labour.

     The president of Metron Construction, the company which employed the workers, would not comment on the makeup of the workforce at the highrise. But one of the widows said she never saw her husband bring safety manuals home or heard him talk about safety training. Her husband had very limited reading ability in English, she told the Star, so even if he had been given a Construction Association of Ontario manual he would have had difficulty understanding it.

     However, it is the legal responsibility of a supervisor to ensure that all workers receive safety training and clearly understand their knowledge of this training.    

     Meanwhile, the Ontario Construction Secretariat has tried to draw attention to the role of independent contractors in the province's construction industry, often undermining health and safety on the job. The secretariat noted in an April 2008 report that about 84,500 workers, or 22 per cent of the province's construction workforce, are part of the "underground economy." Many undocumented workers face unsafe conditions and a poor apprenticeship system.

     In total, 405 construction workers have lost their lives in Ontario since 1990, including 21 during the year 2009. The litany of deaths on the job ranges from being struck by falling objects, cut by machinery, electrocuted, or crushed between vehicles.

     As the Star reports, "union leaders and labour activists believe a lack of proper safety inspections and oversight on the job, and outdated legislation which no longer reflects the reality of modern construction sites, means workers' lives are hanging in the balance. Poor enforcement combined with the growing use of migrant workers will mean the number of accidents will increase, they say."

     "Imagine if 405 paramedics or police officers died on the job over the last 20 years," says Patrick Dillon of the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council of Ontario, an umbrella group representing more than 150,000 workers.

     The story of immigrant workers killed on the job is not new. On March 17, 1960, five Italian construction workers died when the underground tunnel in which they were working collapsed at Hogg's Hollow near the York Mills subway station. Their deaths led to a royal commission that eventually led to improved safety and labour laws. The 50th anniversary of the Hogg's Hollow tragedy will be marked this spring.

     There are now 430 occupational health and safety inspectors in Ontario, and safety blitzes have taken place, but the most recent happened only after the scaffolding deaths. While the Occupational Health and Safety Act has been updated to include the right to refuse unsafe work, the construction industry is turning to "independent contractors" to allow employers to avoid paying benefits or workplace insurance coverage. These bosses take advantage of migrant workers who are desperate to earn an income, without training them adequately. "Independent contractors" operate outside the health and safety act and the Employment Standards Act. While labour ministry officials claim that inspectors watch out for the safety of independent contractors as part of their responsibilities, this is regarded as a wild exaggeration at best.

     NDP MPP Cheri DiNovo (Parkdale High Park) has introduced an amendment to the employment standards act, seeking to change the definition of an employee. Calling workers "individual businesses" rather than employees, she says, is the "new out" for employers, who don't have to pay benefits or even minimum wage. DiNovo notes that only one per cent of all workplaces in Ontario ever see an inspector, and that many of the inspectors do not have construction backgrounds.