WCB launches new strategy to limit workplace injuries

WorkSafe Saskatchewan has adopted a new strategy it hopes will prevent fatalities and serious workplace injuries in the province.

The Fatalities and Serious Injuries Strategy was launched Monday. The three-year plan is a product of WorkSafe Saskatchewan, which is a partnership between the Saskatchewan Workers’ Compensation Board (WCB) and the Ministry of Labour Relations and Workplace Safety.

According to Don Morgan, Saskatchewan’s labour relations and workplace safety minister, the strategy was created after consultation with industry leaders as a way to focus on areas which have the highest rates of injuries: Asbestos exposure; work-related motor-vehicle crashes; firefighter cancer exposure; and, falls from heights.

Morgan noted the strategy will give ministry officials the ability to target employers that have a “higher-than-usual risk” of injuries and deaths on the job. From there, they’ll try to develop a workplace awareness on the issue of safety.

“The occupational health officers will know which employers and which industries are at a greater risk and they will focus their attention on them by doing more unannounced visits,” Morgan explained after the strategy launch Monday.

“It’s not just a matter of going in and saying, ‘You’re doing this wrong.’ It’s a matter of saying, ‘Let’s develop a plan and a strategy within that workplace so they know what to do to reduce those numbers.’ ”

Around 2,400 workers are seriously injured each year in Saskatchewan. From 2010 through 2018, the WCB reported 354 cases of workers who died on, or as a result of, their job.

Out of the occupational disease fatalities in that number, 23 per cent were due to firefighter cancers.

Over the next couple years, the strategy hopes to develop an awareness campaign for cancer in firefighters, gather feedback from fire halls and provide better access to resources.

In 2021, the goal is to investigate “the feasibility of a grant program” which would help purchase more hazard controls, like particulate blocking hoods or backup sets of turnout gear.

“Some of this new equipment and new advances in that is going to go a long way in bringing down some of that (cancer) risk,” Regina Fire Chief Layne Jackson said, noting a cancer diagnosis is a normal occurrence within his crews.

“We have a strong family culture within the fire service, and when one of our members develops cancer — whether they be current or whether they be retired — it does have an impact on all of us.”

Gord Dobrowolsky, the WCB board chair, said the board plans to “focus equally” on all four of the priority areas.

Having hired more occupational health enforcement officers in recent years, Dobrowolsky noted the strategy’s emphasis over the next three years will be on awareness, which he said was the common denominator in the 88 per cent of employers that reached “Mission Zero” in 2018.

“Day in, day out, the first thing they did when they came into the work in the morning was they had safety meetings,” Dobrowolsky explained. “It doesn’t matter how many times you repeat the mantra, it has to be continually vocalized so that workers remember that safety is No. 1.”