Canadian Safety Reporter

7 Canadian HR Reporter, a Thomson Reuters business 2018 News | August 2018 | CSR power and knowledge, that an employer will know the law, will be covered by the law and will do everything possible to make the workplace safe. It also assumes the worker has the knowledge and the rights and the power to act on these rights," he says. "That's problematic because if workers are accessing a temp agency, they're already in a pre- carious state and needing this job. Are they likely to complain about a health and safety issue? That is the mechanism that a worker is expected to trigger in the internal responsibility sys- tem that is supposed to protect them." The structure of temp agency work also makes temp agency workers more vulnerable to oc- cupational illnesses, Matsunaga- Turnbull says. Working at many jobs for short periods of time puts these workers beyond legal exposure limits to hazards, from noise to carcinogens. An allow- able limit applies only to a single workplace. When many sites are involved, it is difficult to monitor the limits. "If you're working for a par- ticular employer and they're following the law, you do your manageable exposure limit. Then you go to your next job and it starts from zero again. So, in an eight-hour period, you could be exposed to toxic levels of something," he says. "The way your work is structured is expos- ing you to multiple sites, and to- gether that means you're going to get sick." Improvements coming Some provinces are taking steps to increase safety for temp work- ers. In Alberta, new legislation that came into effect on June 1 requires temp agencies to: • Ensure the worker is suited to the place of work • Ensure the worker has, or will be provided by the client employer with, appropriate personal protective equipment • Ensure the employer can keep the worker safe. In April, the Ontario Ministry of Labour announced it intend- ed to bring into force a section of Bill 18, the Stronger Work- places for a Stronger Economy Act, 2014, that will require the Workplace Safety and Insur- ance Board to attribute injuries and incident costs to the client company rather than the temp agency. So client companies in Ontario may soon have to as- sume more liability for temp workers. But MacEachen says it is difficult to know how much it will actually change things. Once client employers have to accept responsibility for safety incidents, she says, they will start contesting them. While it would be difficult to contest an injury such as a broken leg, there are many other injuries whose cause would be difficult to prove, es- pecially for temp workers who are placed with an employer for short periods of time. "Lots of injuries are muscu- loskeletal claims and soft tissue injuries, back pain, that kind of thing. It will become very diffi- cult for the workers to prove that the origin of the problem was in this workplace and not in the one where they worked last week," she says. "That's precisely what work- ers have faced with temp agen- cies anyway because when temp agencies are the employer of record, that's what they say to the workers, too. That's the challenge when you're working workplace to workplace." Looking at more general ways to improve their safety on the job, MacEachen says the big- gest challenge regarding temp agency workers is their isolation. Because of the way they work, it's difficult for them to have some kind of organization of other workers like them, a place where they can take advantage of com- mon shared resources, such as access to health plans and infor- mation about what to do in dif- ferent situations. "We need to adapt as a society to these newer types of work- ers who are more scattered and isolated, and to find ways to sup- port them. We're still adjusting to that," MacEachen says. Matsunaga-Turnbull suggests temp agencies could provide some common resources for workers. "And maybe some civil soci- ety groups — poverty advocate groups or worker centres — would have the power to help either organize or advocate for temp workers or trigger inspec- tions. So it's not that one worker putting himself or herself at risk. That's the challenge. Are there mechanisms to organize the un- organized?" All workers have a right to participate in their own health and safety, he adds. With temp agencies, because work is always short-term, the challenge is how to involve workers in safety. "We're looking at a disposal workforce. Many businesses are set up now to be dependent on short-term jobs with no perma- nent staffing. If your business plan is set up that way, you're not actually seeing people who can contribute to your company or organization. You're just seeing a piece of work," Matsunaga- Turnbull says. "I think we tend to look at what's happening in the workplace; we need to expand that out and ask, what's hap- pening to people when they find themselves in these situations and how is the work itself being structured?" This article originally appeared in the June/July 2018 issue of Canadian Occupational Safety magazine, a sister publication of CSR. Unfamiliar work environment increases safety risk Avoid < pg. 3 Temp agency workers are more vulnerable to occupational illnesses with the transient nature of their work Credit: Shutterstock/kenary820

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