Modernization of the Health and Safety System

We took out the violins this week over Bill 59 on occupational transform health and wellness and safety. We try to make people believe that it would weaken their “right to manage” too much.

This bill was tailor-made to save the bosses 4.3 billion over 10 years, on the backs of the workers earned by work! This conservative assessment has obviously not changed over the course of the amendments: the setbacks in compensation are numerous.

Even worse. The prevention mechanisms that worked well in a minority of workplaces such as mines and many factories are weakened. The workers lose their right to oversee the prevention program and the new law would abolish the minimums required in terms of prevention, leaving the parties to tear each other apart on the subject. As if we could negotiate the life and health of employees at the same time as their salary and their night bonus.

With the reform, men and women will not be compensated. After all, they do not fit into the new restrictive boxes, because their request came too late. Many are those who will be deprived of physiotherapy services, rehabilitation, medication, or equipment to be able to live with dignity!

To hear the bosses’ lobby balk at a bill that gives them pride of place is to witness a maneuver to draw the cover, in the hope that the minister will decide even more on the side of the employers.

We agree on one point with the CPQ: a reform of the health and safety system was due. In fact, for 40 years the system has neglected the importance of prevention at the source in many workplaces, such as the service sector or those of health, education, and public services. The prevention mechanisms that had to be implemented in all workplaces under the 1979 law were only implemented in a small part of the workplaces.

It turns out that is where a lot of our members work. We have seen that the 1979 law has borne fruit: work accidents have indeed decreased in our mines, in our factories, in our foundries. The involvement of the workers worked: they contributed to making the work safer, implementing preventive measures, and finding practical solutions.

The new law, if passed as it stands, gives the keys to the chicken coop to the fox. The employer alone would decide on the prevention program in the company. Prevention representatives (workers) would lose powers. The minimum prevention requirements are removed by no longer setting the number of hours of release and the frequency of meetings of the psychological healthcare and safety committee. Worse, prevention is being diluted in several workplaces by allowing the establishment of prevention mechanisms for several establishments, disconnecting prevention representatives from the field and from their work colleagues.

Management and the minister want to cut costs. There is only one ethical way to achieve this: to do real prevention, in the field.

Anything else only deprives workers of the protection they are entitled to expect. leaving the parties to tear each other apart on the subject. As if we could negotiate the life and health of employees at the same time as their salary and their night bonus.