Saturday 5 January 2008

Occupational Health and Safety

6 comments:

Saskboy said...

I barely ever see TV commercials, but caught the deep fryer one. That was scary enough.

Unknown said...

Is the SFL doing anything about Return to Work issues? It seemed to be a big topic at the convention, but I haven't heard anything about it since. It is a major concern as workers are rapidly losing their right to heal before returning to work under both WCB and private health plans. Companies are overruling doctors, and threatening our benefits if we don't 'co-operate'. This is very serious, and it has the potential of affecting every worker in the province.

Larry Hubich said...

Hi Janice,

Return to Work is one of the items on the list of issues being dealt with by and through the SFL OH&S Committee.

If you have some specific items to raise with the Committee I suggest that you raise them through your union's representative on the SFL OH&S Committee.

Unknown said...

I don't think we have a union rep on the SFL OH&S Committee. Is there a way I can contact the committee directly?

Larry Hubich said...

Hi Janice,

I suggest you contact SFL Exec. Asst. Don Anderson by sending him a letter or an e-mail to:

Saskatchewan Federation of Labour
# 220, 2445 13th Avenue
Regina, Saskatchewan S4P 0W1

Phone # (306) 525-0197
Fax # (306) 525-8960

You can get his e-mail address by following this link:

http://sfl.sk.ca/staff.php

Unknown said...

thanks. I will be making contact with him.

RTW, especially as applied to WCB, totally baffles me.

To establish WCB, we gave up the right to sue in return for guaranteed income while we recovered from injury. Somehow "Duty to Accommodate" has been used to get the WCB to adopt an "if you can get out of bed, you have to go to work" program. Or, as the HR guy at the company where I work has said: "If you can hobble around at home, you can hobble around at work." It angers and confuses me.

And now income replacement insurers are adopting the same policies.

I'm not against modified duties, or even the idea of RTW programs, but the implementation of them with no regard for time to heal, doctor/patient confidentiality, or taking an overall view of the injured worker's circumstances. (i.e. should a person with the temporary use of one hand due to injury be expected to drive to work when they live in a rural area? - no one available to car pool with.)causes me great concern.

And, as far as I can tell, the RTW policies of the WCB were developed without any worker involvement.