Occupational Health and Safety

Instructions

This assignment asks you to design a plan for an “ideal” occupational health and safety enforcement system that addresses the political and economic realities of the Canadian workplace. Your plan must consider each of the following questions and issues:

* What is the overall goal of your enforcement system? How will you measure its success?

* What role would each party (the state, employers, and workers) play in your system?

* What specific enforcement mechanisms would your plan include?

* What are the strengths and weaknesses of your enforcement system?

The overall goal of the enforcement system is to prevent injury and safety incidents in the workplace by ensuring employees have the right skills, are motivated and have the opportunity to behave safely while at work. Although there current regime has been in been in place for close to 40 years, there are still some deficiencies. The proposed plan will look at those deficiencies and how to correct them.

The Occupation Health and Safety Act (OHSA) incorporates a number of provisions in order to protect employees’ health and safety in all workplaces including the three (3) principal rights of the worker: “increased protection for workers refusing unsafe, mandatory appointment for worker health and safety representatives, procedures for designating and controlling the use of toxic substances and increased penalties for contraventions of the Act.” To ensure compliance, two (2) mechanisms are identified. The first is called the inspectorate, whereby Ministry of Labour inspectors have the power to enter any workplace without warrant or notice to conduct inspections, and may impose orders and contraventions if those orders are ignored. The other is the implementation of Joint Occupational Health and Safety committees (JOHSC), where the main function of the committee is to identify and obtain information on workplace hazards and recommend a course of action to improve the health and...