Your Rights
Accident prevention group aims new awareness campaign at young workersWorkplace safetyWhen Sarah Wheelan started a new job in a delicatessen, she didn't know how to refuse to do a task that she knew was "very unsafe" -- cleaning a meat slicer while the blade was rotating. ANNE-MARIE TOBIN - The Canadian Press |
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"When I tried to talk to my supervisor about it, I found it very difficult. I didn't know how to approach him," she said in an interview earlier this month, after helping to launch a safety campaign aimed at young workers by the Industrial Accident Prevention Association.
And so she did as instructed. She would remove the guard on the machine, spray cleaner on the blade, and hold a cloth up against the blade while it was spinning.
Wheelan is now 28 and living in Toronto, but looks back on that job -- when she was a much greener 23 -- with more knowledge and experience under her belt.
"It took me several weeks to get up the courage to talk to my supervisor, but if I had known what I know now, I would've started Googling," she said.
"I would've ended up on the iapa.ca website, I would've been looking for tips of how I could bring this up with my supervisor, talking to my parents."
When she finally did talk to the boss, he basically dismissed her concerns, she said, and so Wheelan quit about a week later.
"He started telling me stories about how new butchers would often nick themselves and it
wasn't uncommon for butchers to lose fingers in these sorts of
situations," she recalled. "And basically I couldn't handle it."
Workers in the 15- to 24-year-old age group make up approximately 15% of the Canadian workforce.
In 2006, 11,382 young workers in that age group were injured on the job in Ontario, badly enough that they were unable to work for at least one day. And 10 young people were killed in work-related accidents.
Maureen Shaw, president and CEO of the Industrial Accident Prevention Association, said it's a vulnerable age group that's just coming into its own and trying to earn money for college or university, or a first car.
"They lack experience, they lack training, they feel that they are somehow immune, if you like, to anything bad happening to them," she said.
"They want to impress their boss ... They don't want to rock the boat. They don't want to say 'no, I won't do that."'
PUSHING FOR SAFETY
At least that can be the case if they haven't had exposure to a young worker awareness program that explains their rights and the responsibilities of an employer, she said.
Jessica DiSabatino, whose younger brother was killed at age 18 in 1999 after he got pulled into the blades of a dough mixer while working at a bakery, is one of the people trying to raise awareness.
Her family began the Our Youth at Work Foundation, pushing for safety on the job in speaking engagements at high schools and to corporations around North America.
"Ten years ago students had no clue. It was like you were giving them new information," she said.
"But I think now when we go in, students have a much better idea about workplace safety, about their rights as workers and I think you can really see that in the questions they ask."
Her organization urges parents to talk to their kids about their jobs and ask whether there's an orientation or training program.
"Ask them ... how's the pace of work, can they talk to their employer, because we do know this: that it stops -- that injuries will stop when parents begin talking to their kids about how their job is, and so we really encourage them to do that," DiSabatino advises.
Shaw said fatalities tend to occur in mining and construction, but serious hazards can also be encountered in the restaurant industry, for instance, in the handling of hot fat.
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