REGINA – A group gathered at City Hall to commemorate the 39 lives lost in workplace accidents in Saskatchewan last year.
It was to mark a National Day of Mourning, with similar events going on across the country. Saskatchewn has the second highest rate of workplace injury.
“It’s so easy to be apathetic about accidents. You tend to say, “oh well, that’s not going to happen to me,” but it could. You have to be aware,” said Kenneth Kubian, Regina and District Labour Council president.
This week the government announced 86 percent of employers have reached the mission zero goal. To get it to 100 the Labour Relations and Workplace Safety Minister stressed individual responsibility.
“We may never get to zero, but zero is the only acceptable number that we have. Too many of the things we see in there are avoidable. There are ones where people weren’t using their personal protective equipment, they weren’t paying attention (or) they weren’t properly trained,” said Don Morgan.
However, labour leaders want the government to take a different tack – ramp up inspection and enforcement.
“I’m alarmed that the government has said they’re going to stop inspecting other workplaces so they could focus on the people with the highest incident of accidents because that opens the door, I think, to more accidents in places that aren’t currently being inspected,” said Saskatchewan Federation of Labour president, Larry Hubich.
The NDP has a similar suggestion:
“Our workforce has grown so much we should have many more inspectors and resources to understand the challenges in our workplaces and more inspections,” said NDP labour critic David Forbes.
the Saskatchewan Workers’ Compensation Board accepted close to 36 thousand injury claims last year.
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