Bill 6, the Enhanced Protection for Farm and Ranch Workers Act, extended the reach of a number of statutes in Alberta to include the formerly excluded farming and ranching industry. Previously, agricultural workers were exempt from the Employment Standards Code (e.g., minimum wage and paid vacations), the Labour Relations Code (e.g., the right to organize a union), the Occupational Health and Safety Act (review of injuries, accidents and deaths) and the Workers’ Compensation Act (mandatory WCB coverage). In its initial form, Bill 6 placed the 52,000 workers on Alberta’s 41,000 farms and ranches in an identical position to those in other industries in the province.

The labour minister at the time, Lori Sigurdson, announced Bill 6 at a press conference on a grain farm near Gibbons on November 18, 2015. The bill meant farmers would be expected to follow basic occupational health and safety codes, she said, adding that Alberta was the only province that didn’t already apply such laws. In Alberta a worker is more likely to get injured on a farm than at any other jobsite. Farms are also where an Alberta worker is most likely to die. Over the past 30 years, 368 Albertans died while working on a farm—70 of them children. Prior to the bill’s passage, farm and ranch workers had few protections. If they were injured on the job, they were entitled to no compensation from the government or their employer. Provincial investigators were unable to go onto farms to investigate serious injuries, death or unsafe work practices.

On the face of it, Bill 6 seemed sensible and just. The response, however, was fast and furious. In only a few days over 10,000 individuals signed a petition against the bill and 35,000 joined a Facebook group condemning the legislation. Multiple protests were held at the Alberta Legislature that November and December. No one in government seemed to anticipate that the legislation would ignite such a reaction from the province’s farmers.

The way the government presented it made it seem to a lot of people that farmers aren’t safe and don’t practise safe conduct, which is far from the truth.” —Erna Ference, chicken farmer

The backlash during the bill’s rollout was fuelled in part by a huge distrust of the newly elected NDP, which has an urban base. “We were caught off guard,” says Erna Ference, a chicken producer who farms with her husband near Black Diamond. “The way the government presented it made it seem to a lot of people that farmers aren’t safe and don’t practise safe conduct, which is far from the truth.”

Ference, who is also the chair of the Alberta Chicken Producers, says the previous government had been working towards a farm safety program with farmers and were consulting about occupational health and safety and workers’ compensation coverage. “We thought we were consulting, and all of a sudden, we weren’t. It was just announced,” she says. “We wanted to let the system work its way through, the way we were going about it—a little more cost-effective than the way the NDP went.”

Many farmers, unaware that the PC government had been working on improving farmworker pro-tections, felt they hadn’t been consulted and the legislation had been rammed down their throat.

Panicking, the government made mistakes. No senior officials attended the first town hall meeting in Grande Prairie, only government staff, which upset farmers. Afterwards Sigurdson and Agriculture and Forestry Minister Oneil Carlier attended several meetings.

But the major mistake the government made was creating the impression that family farms were the target of Bill 6. Many farmers feared the new legislation would take away their way of life by “destroying” the family farm. They worried their children wouldn’t be allowed to do chores or help out at all. They were concerned that neighbours volunteering would have to be covered by workers’ compensation. Alberta’s WCB website indicated that the bill would indeed require WCB coverage for family members and volunteers on farms and ranches. But the province soon announced that the legislation would apply only to paid employees—not neighbours, family or friends. On December 10, 2015, this was formalized through amendments to Bill 6. “They did listen to us, and that was good,” says Ference. “They exempted family farms.”

Nonetheless many farmers still had problems with mandatory WCB coverage of paid workers, arguing that private insurance was often a better option. Wayne Drysdale, MLA for Grande Prairie-Wapiti and opposition agriculture critic, has said many producers remain unhappy about being forced to take on WCB coverage because they viewed the private insurance they previously held as more comprehensive and cheaper. Some farmers argued that Bill 6 was “labour legislation disguised as farm safety legislation,” and that labour laws don’t fit the realities of farm life. During harvest season, for example, farmers can work 18-hour days. Rules about maximum hours don’t apply.

The Wildrose party, Rebel Media and Jason Kenney, among other critics of the NDP, didn’t do anything to dispel farmers’ fear. Rather, they stoked it with incendiary speeches and appearances at rallies. “Some people at the town halls were issuing death threats,” says Glenn Norman, a representative for the National Farmers Union. Norman lives in Red Deer County and raises cattle and custom hay. His organization supported Bill 6 from the beginning and he attended the town halls in both Red Deer and Olds.

“Rebel Media was a disinform-ation service,” he says. “They really stirred things up. And the Wildrose and the PCs were shadow influencers. At one meeting I was at, somebody wanted their Wildrose MLA to speak. Why would you [give mic time] to someone who has the opportunity to speak in the Legislature when there are actual farmers trying to figure out what is
going on?”

The Bill 6 discussion brought the Alberta farming community together. To voice their concerns as one unit, 29 of the province’s commodity organizations, including large groups such as the Alberta Beef Producers and the Alberta Wheat Commission, formed the AgCoalition. Kent Erickson, former chair of the Alberta Wheat Commission, became one of the organization’s co-chairs.

Erickson says the province didn’t realize the initial legislation would be problematic. Part of this had to do with the nature of farmers and ranchers, he says, who tend to be independent and work alone. “I think the government put our industry into a corner. It’s like a badger. If you put its back into a corner, it’s going to fight,” he says.

Farmers tend to treat their workers like family, he says. And many farmers resented the idea that the government was trying to interfere in their business. “It was an ideological difference: a left-wing opinion on workers’ rights versus a right-wing opinion,” he says.

It wasn’t a good fight, because we didn’t have their perspective and they didn’t have ours.” —Kent Erickson, grain farmer, former co-chair of the AGCoalition

Erickson, who operates a grain farm near Irma, says the farming community did need a push to get the ball rolling on improving farm worker safety but felt the government pushed too hard. He was also concerned because the new government didn’t seem to have a lot of agricultural background in its caucus. “Their viewpoint was coming from unions and worker collectivization, from that side,” he says. “They had very little understanding of how farmers work and how diverse we are, and where our perspective was coming from.

“It wasn’t a good fight,” he acknowledges, “because we didn’t have their perspective and they didn’t have ours.”

The AgCoalition’s role was to communicate with the government and ensure a more meaningful discussion. The group continued to speak out about Bill 6, and more recently formed a non-profit society, AgSafe Alberta, whose consultants go out and help farmers create safety plans for their farms at no cost. The group met with Sigurdson and her deputy ministers and had what Erickson calls a good dialogue.

“Maybe we didn’t agree with the government—but at least we were able to have a relationship with this government,” he says.

Carlier admits the province’s communication could have been better, but says he’s still proud of what his government has accomplished so far. “We had the opportunity to introduce legislation that existed in other provinces [and] that gives another measure of safety to farm workers,” he says. “Farmers and ranchers want their places to be safe anyway. This gives them another tool in the toolbox.”

The bill came into effect on January 1, 2016. The provincial government announced it would create technical working groups to consult on the regulations that would comprise the specifics of Bill 6. Members of the farming community and labour experts were asked to apply to sit on one of six panels and the government chose the groups’ memberships.

Barb McKinley, a consultant who runs a business called The Worker’s Advocate, put her name forward following a recommendation from the Alberta Federation of Labour and the Steelworkers’ Union. McKinley, who lives in Edmonton, grew up on a family farm in southern Alberta and still has relatives in the cattle business. She sat on Technical Working Group 3, which met from March 2016 until January 2017 with a mandate to review existing health-related requirements in the Occupational Health and Safety Code as they apply to farms and ranches. The process involved a number of meetings with stakeholders from different groups. McKinley, who helps injured workers negotiate with the Workers’ Compensation Board, said there was still a lot of misinformation and mistrust on her panel when the process started.

“A lot of people thought that occupational health and safety inspectors were going to turn up on their farms unannounced and demand to see their hazard assessments and inspect everything,” she says. “They didn’t realize that that’s not at all how occupational health and safety operates.”

According to McKinley, the department emphasizes education and compliance rather than a punitive approach. A lot of work had to be done to make the farming community understand the process.

She thinks the process and changes were long overdue. “Farming and ranching are some of the most dangerous occupations, and family farms can be quite dangerous in terms of children and people working alone,” she says. “It’s long overdue to include the agricultural sector on the same playing field as the rest of Alberta’s industries.”

Once I understood things a little better, I changed my mind. That was one of the things about the technical working groups. I learned a lot.” —Barb Mckinley, The Worker’s Advocate

The process of consultation was useful, she says. Since many of the farmers in her group were industry representatives, they went back to their commissions and stakeholders and explained what the new legislation would look like. This helped calm people down. McKinley and her group found that many of the existing safety codes applied quite naturally to agriculture. Many of the big producers, for example, including hog producers and cattle producers, were already doing many of the things the safety code mandated. “I don’t think it’s a huge imposition on the sector,” she says.

Her group dealt with rules about how farmers can store fuel, enter confined spaces and deal with grain bins. As a labour representative, she feels like she learned a lot from the farmers and suggests they learned a lot from her too. “Once I understood things a little better, I changed my mind about my position,” McKinley says. “That was one of the things about the technical working groups. I learned a lot.”

Eric Musekamp, who operates a group called the “Farmworker’s Union,” was also involved in the process. He sat on the Health and Safety Education technical working group.

Musekamp, who lives near Medicine Hat, was a farmworker for 25 years and had been ostracized for his views. He and his wife, Darlene Dunlop, formed their non-profit society with the mandate to lobby for farmworkers. The group was prohibited from creating an official union, but met and consulted with farmworkers who had been injured.

Musekamp started the Farmworker’s Union in 2004 in order to lobby the government to treat farmworkers equally to others under the Charter. He was motivated, he says, by the death of a fellow worker. On August 20, 1999, Terry Rash had tipped an old truck into a ditch in Taber. Farm owner Charles Beauchamp took a knife and slashed the 52-year-old farmworker to death.

“I was a few farms over from Terry and I didn’t know him,” says Musekamp. “But news of his killing swept through the hired-man community. What really got it going was that when Beauchamp went to trial, he plea bargained and ultimately got a recommendation from the sentencing judge for him to be considered for early release, because of the embarrassment of being caught killing your hired man. You couldn’t kill a dog and get that kind of sentence.”

Musekamp felt shock and horror about the incident—and that’s when he discovered farmworkers in Alberta were exempt from all normal workplace standards that the rest of Canada enjoys.

On his Facebook page, Musekamp continues to get abuse and vitriol, including death threats. The trailer he lives in has been vandalized. Yet Musekamp hasn’t backed down from his position. He’s a supporter of Bill 6. He and his wife have been calling for workers’ rights for years.

Musekamp believes Bill 6 is starting to shift the culture in agriculture. “Employers are putting more thought into the way they treat their workers and are treating them more equitably,” he says. Yet even as employers are expected to provide workers’ compensation, Musekamp has still heard of workers who’ve been asked by their employers not to claim it. He also knows of some workers who were not aware that they have coverage.

Since January 1, 2016, compensation claims for injured farmworkers in Alberta have more than doubled. In 2016 there were 793 claims, compared to 339 the year before. This increase was expected, because more people were covered and more people were reporting injuries. The legislation effectively protects both the farmer and the worker, since under workers’ compensation, employees can’t sue their employers. Now, if a worker is injured on a farm, the employer may only need to pay higher rates.

Don Voaklander, director of the Injury Prevention Centre at the University of Alberta, collects fatality data from farms across the country. He was involved in the Best Practices technical working group, and says that while more workers’ compensation claims were expected, it will be a long time before anyone knows if Bill 6 has brought down the rate of farm injuries. It might, he says, but if so, the difference could be slight, since an estimated 65 per cent of Alberta’s work-related fatalities occur on family farms.

“Farming is still going to be a risky endeavour with Bill 6,” he says. “What it does is give paid employees the equality of other paid employees in Alberta.”

His group recommended rollover protective structures on tractors and other changes related to specific farm machinery. The recommendations eventually adopted are similar to standards used in BC, which, Voaklander says, is the Canadian leader in regulations and best practices for farms. “Most provinces don’t have anything specific to farms. I think Alberta was trying to emulate what BC had done and make it as workable as possible,” he says.

He believes Bill 6 was sorely needed. “I don’t think you can have a second class of worker not protected by Occupational Health and Safety or covered by WCB. Alberta was the last to the table for any of these regulations.”

He adds, “Previously, I wouldn’t have told my kids to work on a farm.”

The changes will be less burdensome than the farming community feared, Voaklander says, because two-thirds of farmers in Alberta don’t have employees. Meanwhile, he adds, a safer operation can be more competitive.

Alberta is about the middle of the road in comparison with other provinces in terms of farm accidents. However, the province does have more child deaths compared to other parts of the country. About three or four children die in Alberta in farm accidents every year.

“It’s been a modest increase for a few years, so that’s a bit of a worry,” says Voaklander. Carlier hopes the discussions of the bill have raised awareness about public safety, even on farms and in work situations not covered by Bill 6.

The recommendations of the technical working groups were available online and open to public comment until February 26, 2018. They will eventually inform subsequent laws. Carlier hasn’t announced a date for new regulations. Albertans such as Erna Ference wonder how many of the recommendations the government will actually consider.

“On any type of regulation, there may be some changes,” she says. “It will be a living document, with continuous input from experts in the field—and that’s farmers and ranchers themselves.”

In the meantime Jason Kenney, the leader of the United Conservative Party, has launched a campaign opposing Bill 6. Kenney, who refused interviews for this story, has an active campaign page called “Deep-Six Bill 6,” which vows to repeal the bill if he becomes premier. That’s a move many think would be a waste of time—including Ference.

“A lot of good work has been done,” she says. “I think the bill could be revisited. But to throw it out, when we’ve come so far in so many ways… It just doesn’t make sense.”

“Jason Kenney’s promise to repeal Bill 6 would be a whole step back,” agrees Barb McKinley. She says labour and farmers and government have built bridges, and Kenney would tear those down. “There’s no reason for that other than cheap politicking.”

“Taking a class of worker and saying ‘You don’t have the same rights and protections that other workers do’—where’s the logic in that How can you justify that legally, morally or ethically?”

Alexis Kienlen is a reporter for Alberta Farmer. Originally from Saskatoon, she now lives in Edmonton.

The post Beyond Bill 6 appeared first on Alberta Views.

Chandler was one of Alberta’s 20 farm fatalities in 2006, 16 of which were work-related. Sixteen work-related fatalities is a pretty average year on Alberta farms. While such deaths are tragic, it’s the non-fatal farm injuries that are the real story. Alberta doesn’t track non-fatal farm-work-related injuries, but a reasonable estimate (based on injuries in other, less dangerous occupations) is about 5,000 serious injuries (whereby workers can’t do some or all of their job the next day) and 50,000 minor injuries on farms each year.

This estimate excludes most occupational diseases—diseases rarely reported, because they often don’t appear until years after exposure to pesticides, naturally occurring substances, or conditions of work. They include osteoarthritis and low-back pain, eye, skin and respiratory issues, hearing loss, reproductive problems and birth defects, leukemia and skin cancer, Parkinson’s, and infectious diseases carried by animals or found in the soil. As one young Alberta farm worker told the Alberta Workers’ Health Centre (AWHC) about inhaling chemical fumes, “It’s a farm, so it’s hard not to get hurt.”

Indeed, farming is one of Canada’s three most dangerous industries. Philippa Thomas knows this. In 2006 Thomas cut her thumb while working in a stable in Cochrane. The cut became infected and led to a rare and debilitating nerve disease. She can no longer work and requires heavy medication for pain. Thomas’s employer—like most employers of Alberta’s 12,000 farm workers—wasn’t subject to basic health and safety laws. This means Thomas had no legal right to know about the hazards in her workplace and no right to refuse unsafe work. Alberta is the only province that excludes farm workers from these rights.

“Alberta farm workers live and work in 19th-century conditions,” says Gil McGowan, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour. “They have almost none of the rights and workplace protections that every other worker in this province has won over the past 100 years. I think the average Albertan would be appalled to see what [farm] working conditions are like.”

For example, Alberta excludes farm workers from employment standards such as minimum wage, overtime and vacation pay, rest periods and child-labour prohibitions. Farm workers are also precluded from unionizing, and farm employers do not have to carry workers’ compensation insurance. Workers such as Thomas, whose employers aren’t insured, can only hope for compensation if they sue their employers—a slow, expensive and risky proposition.

Alberta farmers resist regulation because they don’t believe that rules governing other workplaces are appropriate or workable for farms. According to Lynn Jacobson, president of the Wild Rose Agricultural Producers (WRAP), “We definitely can’t live with the type of rules that are in the oil industry or the industrial workplace. They just don’t apply to farms, and if they did, they would just be so onerous that we’d never be able to comply. We need to be able to set safe working standards [and] to be part of the drafting of those regulations.”

Yet after a decade of discussion, nearly 200 farm worker deaths and tens of thousands of injuries, no such regulations have emerged. Farm worker advocates are tired of waiting. “The Occupational Health & Safety (OHS) exclusion leaves workers exposed to a higher risk of death, disease and dismemberment,” explains Eric Musekamp, president of the Farmworkers Union of Alberta (a voluntary association that is denied the rights of other unions). “But it also serves to denigrate farm workers’ humanity. When coupled with the exemptions from other labour laws, we have a climate where the boss doesn’t have to worry about protecting workers’ safety or health or about providing a rest break, day off or overtime pay. This is a lower standard of care than is needed to protect the family dog or the livestock or even the fauna and flora on the farm.”

“It’s embarrassing that Alberta is so out of step with every other province,” adds McGowan. “It damages our province’s reputation and confirms the worst stereotypes that other Canadians have of us.”

A central question in the debate over farm worker safety is whether OHS regulations can save lives. Would OHS rules have saved Kevan Chandler This is impossible to answer definitively. The 2008 fatality inquiry conducted by Judge Peter Barley recommended including farm workers within the ambit of OHS legislation. Barley’s recommendation reflects that health and safety coverage would give farm workers the right to refuse unsafe work. It would allow the province to investigate injuries and make regulations to address hazards. Had farming been subject to OHS for 10 years prior to Chandler’s death, these rights and rules may well have saved the man’s life.

The lack of basic workplace rights for Alberta farm workers goes back to the beginning of the 20th century, when farmers successfully lobbied government to exclude their labourers from workers’ compensation and from safety and minimum-wage legislation. Farmers also colluded with governments to underpay or not pay the harvest workers who flocked to Alberta each fall. Not much has changed for farm workers in the last 100 years, but since Chandler’s death a growing chorus has demanded better regulation of farm safety.

For example, last summer Liberal MLA Dr. David Swann raised the issue of child labour on Alberta farms. The employment of 10- to 14-year-olds to cultivate and harvest crops such as fruits, berries and potatoes—jobs with significant hand-labour components—is entirely unrestricted in Alberta. More broadly, farm worker advocates and opposition parties have demanded basic safety rights for all farm workers. Premier Alison Redford promised protection for paid farm workers in 2011, but her Conservative caucus continues to stall.

“It’s embarrasing that Alberta is so out of step with every other province. [A lack of rules] damages our reputation.”—Gil McGowan, Alberta Federation of Labour

Tory MLAs commonly assert that farm education can reduce injury rates. “We’re trying to make sure that farmers have the right information about what is safe practice and what are some of the issues they should be aware of on-farm so that we don’t have this number of fatalities,” said then-Minister of Agriculture, Food & Rural Development Doug Horner in 2006.

Alas, no evidence suggests that education reduces injuries. A 2008 University of Saskatchewan study found an education-based farm-safety program yielded no observable improvements in practices, hazards or injury outcomes. Other researchers have reached similar conclusions, examining the Canadian Agricultural Safety Program and several US efforts. Continuing to advocate for such a demonstrably ineffective approach raises troubling questions about the government’s sincerity when its ministers say things like “any time we have a farm fatality or a farm accident, it’s one time too many. Our goal is to have zero.”

At the same time as they advocate education, MLAs downplay the efficacy of regulation. Then-premier Ed Stelmach (himself a farmer) noted in 2007 that “…just because we have regulations does not mean that somebody is going to follow them. We have many regulations. We have many laws. We have laws that say that people should stop at a stop sign, and they don’t. [Should we] put a policeman at every intersection in this province to prevent people from not following the rules?” In short, Stelmach was asserting that regulation wouldn’t work because farmers won’t obey the law.

Yet US, Australian and Irish experiences suggest farm safety legislation—when actively enforced by the government—can lower injury rates. And lots of evidence shows “legislating common sense” can reduce injuries. Examples include mandatory bicycle helmet and child car-seat use and prohibitions on firearms, domestic violence and drunk driving. The question is not whether farm safety can be regulated. The question is whether there is any political will to enforce the law in rural Alberta.

Conservative MLAs have also used the (confusing) notion of the “family farm” to resist demands for regulation. “Farms are unique in that they are worksites, they’re homes and they’re places where families live, work and play. So they can’t be treated the same way as a construction site,” according to Horner. Some farms are certainly both workplaces and homes—but this need not impede or preclude regulation.

Governments across the country regulate all manner of farms successfully, so why can’t Alberta In fact, Alberta does regulate some (relatively safe) farms such as greenhouses, mushroom farms and nurseries, some of which are mixed-use worksites. Yet Alberta doesn’t regulate many relatively dangerous farming operations, such as feedlots—operations that are often single-use locations. This suggests the whole “unique worksites” angle is a red herring.

The PCs also draw a distinction between so-called “family farms” and “corporate farms.” But what is a family farm Is it a small farm (whatever “small” means) Is it also (or alternatively) a farm staffed by a family and/or operated as a sole proprietorship Is a corporate farm a large farm Or one that employs waged labour Or an incorporated operation Conservative MLAs haven’t explained this difference.

There is little data to help us out. In 2006 Alberta had 49,431 farms—down 7.9 per cent from 2001. Farm size went up by 8.8 per cent, particularly in farms over 1,600 acres. Growth in farm receipts is almost exclusively on farms with gross income of over $500,000. These changes suggest an increasing number of large-scale, capital-intensive farms. Highland Feeders is a good example. This former family grain farm east of Edmonton has gone from 50 head of cattle in 1983 to 36,000 head today with annual revenue of $60-million. Yet Highland is still a family-run operation.

The definition of a “family farm” was further confused in 2008 by then-Minister of Agriculture & Food George Groeneveld: “Corporate farms or industrial… are still managed pretty much by families; in fact, in the feedlot industry pretty much entirely.” So, corporate farms are also family farms—but only when rhetorically convenient for Conservative MLAs.

With the family farm mired in definitional contradictions, government MLAs then began focusing on the unique nature of the agricultural workforce. Then-Minister of Employment & Immigration Thomas Lukaszuk stated in 2010 that “…a farming environment is not your regular, standard industrialized environment. You have family members working. You have relatives working. You have neighbours helping neighbours.” Basically, Lukaszuk was arguing that the presence of friends and family makes uniform safety regulations unworkable.

Lukaszuk’s assertion ignores that many businesses, such as restaurants, residential construction firms and convenience stores, employ immediate and extended and sometimes unpaid family members and neighbours. All of these businesses are regulated. Many types of farming operations are also regulated despite the “friends and family” complication—again we return to greenhouses, mushroom farms and nurseries. Again, other jurisdictions somehow manage to regulate farms, so why can’t Alberta?

Interestingly, only 18 months earlier, Lukaszuk had voted against a motion to protect paid farm workers while exempting family members and other unpaid labourers. One reason government members gave for not supporting this amendment was because it differentiated among workers based upon their family and employment status. Yet little more than year later, the government resisted regulation because it didn’t adequately differentiate.

There is certainly merit to the idea that everyone should have the same rights. But the paradoxical effect of refusing to distinguish among groups of farm workers in order not to deprive any group of farm workers of rights is that all farm workers are deprived of statutory safety rights. And depriving all farm workers of rights means treating them differently from every other worker in Alberta.

MLAs also cite concern about the cost of safety regulation to the agricultural community. For example, in the wake of the 2003 “mad cow” disease outbreak, then-Minister of Human Resources & Employment Mike Cardinal was reluctant to impose safety regulations on farms: “Agriculture continues to face many challenges due to the fact that we have to export most of our agricultural products. Therefore, when it comes to agriculture, agriculture cannot afford at this time, because of the status there, to have too many standards imposed on it.”

With BSE well behind him in 2010, Lukaszuk expressed similar reservations about Judge Barley’s 2008 recommendation to regulate health and safety on farms. “The Minister of Agriculture & Rural Development and I… will make recommendations that achieve two things: keep our farmers safe but also keep them in business, because the only way to make sure that a farmer doesn’t get hurt is just to put him out of business, and we are not willing to do that.”

Of course, no evidence suggests the cost of health and safety regulations would bankrupt farmers. Farmers in other jurisdictions are able to bear this cost. Most troubling is the basic premise of Lukaszuk’s assertion: Governments should protect workers only when the business can afford it. More bluntly, Lukaszuk is arguing that profit is more important than workers’ health. How is this position consistent with the government’s stated goal of no agricultural fatalities or injuries Interestingly, cost concerns are rarely raised around other forms of farm regulation, such as for chemical application, handling and disposal; animal health; food safety; water pollution; hazardous-waste disposal; decommissioning of land; and surface reclamation of oil and gas sites on farm property.

Saying “farmers can’t afford regulation” displaces concern about worker safety with concern about farm bankruptcy. In this way, the desire of farmers (i.e., “farmers don’t want regulation”) is transformed from a bald statement of self-interest into an unverifiable (but plausible) rationale (“they can’t afford it”).

Why do MLAs go to such lengths to avoid regulating farms “It’s a direct result of the demand from the farm lobby that the government not extend any labour legislation to the ag industry,” says Musekamp. “The farm lobby has provided the PCs with funding, logistical support and votes.”

“We definitely can’t live with the types of rules in the oilpatch or industrial workplaces. They just don’t apply.” —Lynn Jacobson, Wild Rose Agricultural Producers

In effect, the Conservatives are beholden to rural voters because they can’t form government without rural support. MLAs are surprisingly candid about this. In 2006, then-Deputy Premier Shirley McClellan (herself a farmer) indicated farmers direct government policy on things like safety and injury compensation coverage. “I know that if the producers, in their wisdom, not ours, were to come forward in a majority view to the Minister of Agriculture, he would bring that forward to this table. He represents them extraordinarily well. But I must inform the hon. member, being a part of the agricultural community myself, that they are very independent thinkers, and they like to make their decisions and ask us to carry out policy they believe is in their best interest.”

It is revealing to reread McClellan’s statement after substituting, say, “coal mine operators” for “agricultural producers.” How does this statement sit with you now Do you like the idea of coal miners having no right to refuse unsafe work How about having no restrictions on child labour in coal mines Why are farms different?

Recent consultations have yielded little progress. The government appointed a 15-member Farm Safety Advisory Council in 2011. The council is dominated by agricultural producers, and its inaugural report sat under wraps for more than a year. Finally released in March this year, the report recommends the status quo.

Farm worker advocates have mixed views about the prospects for major changes. “We were hopeful before the last election, “ says the AFL’s McGowan. “But recent conversations with government members and bureaucrats lead us to believe that the traditional forces opposing legislative reform have reasserted themselves. The premier is not going to challenge the agribusiness lobby, because of their influence in ridings important to Conservatives’ electoral prospects.”

Musekamp disagrees. “The issue has now devolved into a political calculation,” he says. “Much of the farm lobby is now Wildrose. Our premier and ag minister are not farmers and, as lawyers, may very well understand and respect the law. This new dynamic in Alberta politics, I believe, will make the difference.”

To be fair, rural Alberta and agricultural producers are not universally opposed to regulation. In January the Wild Rose Agricultural Producers—Alberta’s largest farm organization—voted to seek extension of child labour laws to farms. They don’t expect this to affect the children of farmers, however, only child employees, so many children will still be able to drive a combine or run an auger. And thus we will still end up with situations like this one, described to the AWHC by a young farm worker: “I was stuck fencing with a 12-year-old using five tons of equipment, with no way to contact for help. I was the oldest one there. That’s retardedly unsafe.” You know it’s bad when a 15-year-old boy is the voice of reason.

WRAP continues to resist extending basic safety rights to workers. While compromises may be available—such as exceptions for farms employing fewer than five workers—the private nature of government/farmer consultations makes it impossible to know what farmers might accept. Interestingly, exclusion from safety-related regulation is not always to a farmer’s advantage. For example, in 2012 Kevan Chandler’s widow reached a settlement over his death; she’d sued for negligence. As a result of that settlement, Tongue Creek Feeders declared bankruptcy and laid off approximately 40 workers. Had the employer been forced to carry workers’ compensation insurance, Chandler’s death would not have driven it under. This advantage underlies WRAP’s recent decision to seek mandatory workers’ compensation coverage for farmers.

Our new premier and ag minister are lawyers and, as such, may very well understand and respect the law.” Eric Musekamp, Farmworkers Union of Alberta

The workers’ compensation exemption for farm employers also raises complex policy questions. For example, medical costs from workplace injuries are initially borne by the healthcare system. If an employer has workers’ compensation coverage, the Workers’ Compensation Board reimburses the healthcare system for these costs and increases employers’ premiums. When employers don’t have workers’ compensation coverage, taxpayers foot most of the bill. In 2011 this represented at least an $4.5-million (and perhaps as much as $8-million) transfer in injury costs from employers to the government. Workers without coverage also chip in, paying for their own painkillers, physiotherapy and wheelchairs.

Similarly, workers who experience wage loss due to compensable injury have those wages (partially) reimbursed by the WCB, with the cost passed on to employers. Workers whose employers do not carry workers’ compensation must bear the wage loss themselves, unless they are eligible for some other form of social benefit, such as employment insurance or income support. Philippa Thomas is a prime example: Since her injury, she has been unable to work and her pain medication costs top $14,000 a year. Few workers have the means or tenacity that Chandler’s widow did, to successfully gain compensation.

For its part, the government seems content to let the issue run. For example, when questioned in October 2012 about when the government would grant farm workers the same safety rights as every other worker in Alberta, Minister of Human Services Dave Hancock said, “We’re working on it,” and then criticized Liberal MLA Dr. David Swann for asking corporations to apply their ethical procurement guidelines and refuse to buy Alberta potatoes grown and harvested by child labourers.

Two months later, Premier Alison Redford told the Edmonton Journal, “We’re going to put in place the right approaches at the right time”—but declined to say what “the right approach” is or when “the right time” will be. She also said, “We’re not going to find ways to avoid making commitments, but we are going to do the right thing, and sometimes those are short term, sometimes they’re medium term and sometimes they’re longer term.” What that meant (if anything) became clear in January 2013 when the government confirmed that no legislation would be forthcoming in the spring session. Such delay and evasion is of little comfort to farm workers and their families who daily face the spectres of poverty, injury and death in Alberta’s barns and fields.

Bob Barnetson is an associate professor of labour relations at Athabasca University. He lives in Edmonton.

The post Alberta’s Most Unsafe Workplace appeared first on Alberta Views.

But before the story completely disappeared, Alberta’s daily newspapers briefly acknowledged serious concerns with the WCB. “The outrage from injured workers who feel they have been dealt with unfairly by the WCB is legendary among media outlets in this province,” a Calgary Herald editorial acknowledged on October 24. “Few topics generate more letters, commentary and pleas for help.” The Edmonton Journal website published examples of such letters online, many of which expressed outrage at the WCB even before denouncing the gunman’s actions. The Journal noted that provincial politicians spend a lot of their time meeting with injured workers. “There’s not an MLA that doesn’t on a monthly basis deal with extremely frustrated, and in some cases very aggressive, individuals who feel they have been treated unfairly and unjustly at the WCB and the Appeals Commission,” Liberal MLA and WCB critic Hugh MacDonald told the newspaper.

The Herald editorial concluded, however, based on a survey conducted for the WCB, that everything is just fine with the way the board operates, that Albertans who suffer an injury on the job are treated fairly and that ordinary citizens need not be unduly disturbed. Hector Goudreau, employment minister at the time, told media he would continue to press the WCB to improve the way it works, but said the provincial government wouldn’t seek any major changes. And with that, the story pretty well passed out of most Albertans’ minds. But the problems that helped contribute to the October hostage-taking in Edmonton, and to other incidents like it, continue to fester.

Worker advocates help to fill the dialogue gap between the sometimes incoherent outrage of injured Albertans and official WCB reassurances that “all’s well.” Many were not surprised by the October incident—only that it’s been so long since the last one. (A similar peacefully resolved hostage-taking took place at the WCB offices in Calgary in 1993, and a man suicided there two years before that. Sundry other incidents of minor violence take place at WCB offices from time to time.) And notwithstanding improved security at the board’s Edmonton headquarters, many worker advocates believe that without changes at the WCB, it’s only a matter of time before a similar incident happens again—possibly with tragic results.

Each province and territory in Canada has its own workers’ compensation board. The Alberta WCB manages workers’ compensation insurance based on legislation; employers currently pay an average of $1.32 per $100 of payroll in premiums—the lowest in Canada. The WCB is employer-funded, not-for-profit and independent of government.

When functioning properly, the WCB compensates workers for lost income, healthcare and other costs related to an injury suffered on the job. Fully 92 per cent of Alberta employees are covered under workers’ compensation (farm workers are notably excepted). There were 167,896 injury claims in 2008; approximately two out of every 100 Alberta workers missed time due to injury, while approximately three out of every 100 suffered a disabling injury on the job. The most common types of injuries were sprains, strains and superficial and open wounds to the back, fingers, hands and wrists.

It sometimes takes workers months or even years to recover from a serious injury. Fair and prompt compensation payments are supposed to cover them in the meantime. And when a worker can’t go back to their job, the WCB is supposed to help them retrain.

It rarely works as neatly as this. The problem, says Randy Corbett, a former WCB case officer and now a workers’ compensation specialist for the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, is fundamental in nature. The WCB has “gone off the rails”—forgetting the historic compromise that led to the creation of the workers compensation system in Canada in the first place, and acting as if the board is, and should be, a private, for-profit insurance company.

“The Alberta WCB puts people through a mental meat grinder,” he says. “It shouldn’t be this way. They act like a privatized insurance company. They should say, ‘We’re a workers compensation board. We’ll do anything we can to assist injured workers.’”

There’s nothing wrong with the original concept of workers’ compensation as it was introduced in Canada in 1913, argues Rick Vermette of the United Food & Commercial Workers union, who like Corbett works with union members struggling with the WCB. The idea—developed in other countries and refined in the 1913 Royal Commission report of Sir William Ralph Meredith, Chief Justice of Ontario—was based on a historic compromise. Workers compensation guaranteed medical care and income replacement for workers injured in the course of their jobs. In exchange, workers gave up their right to sue their employer for negligence.

The judge’s final report, known to this day as the Meredith Report, called for no-fault insurance, collective liability among all employers, independent administration of the system at arm’s length from the government, the promise of prompt income replacement for injured workers and exclusive jurisdiction for the board.

“But the Alberta board has really lost sight of its mission,” Corbett argues. He says that the philosophical shift began in the early 1990s. Prior to 1991, Alberta legislation and the WCB focused on workers’ rights. The system worked fairly well—no-one was at fault in the event of an injury, and workers and employers alike benefited from employees receiving help. In fact, one of the biggest problems with workers’ compensation was arguably “unfunded liability”: the difference between probable future funding to the WCB and its probable future obligations to injured claimants. If anything, this pointed to the already low cost of premiums to employers.

In 1991, however, a major policy change “balancing” employer and employee rights was announced. The WCB stated that if workers had a right to file a claim, employers had a right to “manage” claims, including the right to challenge them. Unions argued that pitting workers against employers was contrary to the WCB’s original purpose, and further charged that the WCB was simply obeying the Ralph Klein government’s orders to trim costs to the province’s employers.

Then-WCB CEO John Cowell dubbed critics of the new policy “voices in the wilderness.” A 1996 Herald opinion piece noted that those voices “quickly [became] a large noisy chorus demanding a full inquiry into the operations of the WCB [and] the draconian reduction of services and entitlements to injured workers.” Workers and unions charged that the historic compromise had been undermined in favour of one side: “Employers benefit by getting huge assessment rebate cheques and the WCB itself is running a huge surplus it doesn’t know what to do with. All conveniently done on the backs of injured workers. Instead of guaranteed coverage, injured workers are turned away. Claims are denied, services and entitlements reduced or cut off.” Two decades later, many Albertans accept the now often antagonistic relationship between injured workers and employers as a given.

A previous decision by the WCB and the government to suspend the safety-promotion aspect of the board’s work exacerbated the trend, Corbett adds, since the board was no longer making the obvious connections between workplace safety and reduction of workplace injuries. Occupational Health & Safety (OH&S) was moved out of the WCB and into the Department of Labour (now Alberta Immigration & Employment) in the 1970s. Although WCB continues to have an OH&S aspect to its work and directly funds some safety initiatives, Corbett says that since the split the WCB has put less emphasis on injury prevention and more on cost reduction. “WCB doesn’t see accident prevention in the light it did before,” he says. “It’s there, but it’s not the priority it was.”

The problem is that the WCB “has gone off the rails”—acting like a private, for-profit insurance company.

Instead, the WCB today offers incentives in the form of discounted premiums to employers who report low numbers of incidents—a perverse motivation for employers to encourage their employees not to report minor injuries. This, in turn, creates conditions that can result in more serious workplace injuries. For example, small businesses in Alberta are eligible for a 5 per cent discount in their premiums after five years if they file no time-lost claims, but they’re hit with a 5 per cent surcharge as soon as they record five or more claims. Rick Vermette remembers a worksite where workers were told they would all get expensive leather coats if they went a certain period without a claim. When a worker was injured a few days before the closing date on the “contest,” he came under severe pressure from his co-workers not to report it. After all, they all wanted a nice leather coat!

Another impact of this private-insurance mindset, both Corbett and Vermette argue, is that it led the WCB to start acting as if all applicants for compensation were malingerers or cheats. They argue that WCB case managers now set out to disprove claims rather than put their focus on compensation or retraining. “To achieve this, they abdicate responsibility to their medical department,” says Corbett. “The message to them is, ‘Hold the line, we have to keep costs down.’ ”

A major role of the workers compensation process is to get injured Albertans back to work. Critics argue that the WCB is now less concerned with workers’ best interests and more with reducing temporary total disability payments (a low number of which the board uses as a principal measure of success). “They pride themselves on reducing the numbers of time-lost days,” says Corbett. Another reason to rush employees back is that injured workers who are off the job for more than two years have a less than 5 per cent chance of ever returning to work.

The result of the WCB’s suspicion of injured workers is that many legitimate claims are denied.

One way to reduce “time loss” is to encourage injured workers to return to the workplace doing “modified duties.” Modified duties programs make sense in theory. They can foster a constructive relationship between injured worker and employer. They can assist with a transition back to either full duties or duties in an alternative job. Unfortunately, however, insiders say many of these programs don’t work well, and that the WCB often determines that a worker is capable of returning to modified duties before they’re medically ready. This can result in relapses or new injuries that are more severe than the original ones.

The WCB has also been criticized for failing to properly monitor the return to work to make sure job duties are appropriate. “I often hear complaints about workers returning to modified duties only to have their employers push them into doing heavier work because they’re short-handed,” says Corbett. The WCB advises injured workers in writing to do what they recommend, or risk seeing their benefits cut off. Corbett equates this to economic blackmail, and says it ignores the need for a relationship with the injured worker to get him/her to actually participate in the program. It also serves to create suspicion of and hostility toward the WCB.

Another criticism widely voiced in worker advocacy circles is that the WCB and employers often behave as though the return-to-work plan is carved in stone. People recover from injuries at different rates and this needs to be reflected in whatever rehab plan is followed. To ensure a successful return to work, the plan should be adjusted to address problems.

In addition, there’s often a disconnect between the WCB and the injured worker’s physician. The WCB is known to occasionally secure additional medical reporting such as MRI and CT scans and not share the information with the worker’s doctor. The WCB will ask a doctor for an opinion, then criticize the opinion on the basis of medical information the physician was not shown. The result is that injured workers and their families aren’t the only people fed up with the WCB meatgrinder: Corbett says that many physicians refuse to deal with WCB claims, as they’re simply too frustrating and too complicated.

The result of the WCB’s operational philosophy—suspicion of workers coupled with a zeal for keeping employers’ costs down—is that many legitimate claims are denied. As they lack the ability to sue, injured workers’ only recourse is to contend with a complicated appeal process that is stacked against them.

The average worker returns to their job no more than a few weeks after suffering a light injury. But more seriously injured workers are out of commission for longer periods. When a serious injury claim is not disputed by the WCB, it takes an average of three to four weeks from injury to first compensation payment. Many workers can go a month without a paycheque. But when a serious injury claim is disputed, the system can grind to a virtual halt.

The process works like this: an injured worker has one year to appeal a WCB case manager’s decision. The appeal is reviewed within the claims unit by WCB staff to see if there’s anything wrong. It’s unusual for decisions to be overturned at this level.

The matter is then referred to the first formal level of appeal, called the Dispute Resolution & Decision Review Body (DRB). The DRB, which is also staffed by WCB employees, upholds approximately 90 per cent of the decisions made by the claims department staff, says Corbett. He adds that any DRB staffer who upholds too many appeals will soon be looking for a new job. “It can’t be proved, but [I’d argue] that for WCB case officers, it’s a career-limiting move to uphold an appeal,” he says.

Even if they uphold an appeal, DRB staffers can’t impose decisions on the WCB claims department. Rather, they must convince them that their decision is wrong. “Needless to say, this happens only rarely,” says Corbett. Worker representatives consider representation at this level a waste of time. “The decision is simply a rubber stamp of the original verdict rendered by the case manager,” Corbett says.

Once a decision is made, the injured worker has one year to appeal to the second (and final) level, the Appeals Commission (AC), a government entity reporting to the Minister of Employment & Immigration. Commissioners who sit on appeal panels are order-in-council appointments by the provincial cabinet and include three representatives from each of business, labour and the public. The process at this level is supposed to be unbiased toward the WCB. The AC overturns about 40 per cent of appealed WCB rulings. It’s no coincidence that the number of appeals soared after the WCB adopted its “private insurance” mindset; the AC has heard approximately 13,000 appeals since 1990.

However, this doesn’t reflect the true number of workers who slip through the cracks at the WCB—only the number that filed an appeal. “The board rewrote its policies in the 1990s and it’s far too complicated now for many workers to present a case,” says Vermette. Filing an appeal is also a notoriously long and stressful process; many workers have no income all the while, which can be months—in extreme cases, years.

Another impact of the for-profit mindset was the policy by the WCB to cap compensation, no matter how much the worker was earning before his or her injury (the cap in 2010 is $77,000). Arguably, says Corbett, this cap has done as much as anything else to undo the historic compromise behind workers compensation—the assumption that the injured worker can expect full compensation for his loss of employment. This can hardly be said if a skilled tradesperson earning, say $150,000 a year, with commensurate family and professional expenses, is reduced to 53 per cent of his normal take-home pay.

Critics point out that Manitoba pays injured workers 90 per cent of net on their actual earnings, and this has not caused serious financial problems for its WCB. Considering the economic advantages enjoyed by Alberta, Corbett says, it’s worth asking: why can’t we do the same thing here?

Don’t look to the board to reform itself. Worker advocates say that the private insurance mentality and resulting culture of suspicion has taken root too deeply for reform to be led internally. The most likely way to fix the WCB, they say, is to engage political power holders to impose change.

The WCB, while operating independently, is governed by provincial legislation. Any major reform of the WCB, by necessity, will have to originate in the Legislature. Worker advocates argue that Alberta’s elected representatives need to pledge their commitment to injured workers, not simply to employers’ bottom lines. They’re worried, however, that most politicians try to keep WCB issues at arm’s length because of their extremely contentious nature—and the potential for political and financial fallout that any reforms represent. For example, if the government concluded that workers who should have received support did not receive it, retroactive payments could run into the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. Easier for the Legislature—and all parties—to stay the hell away.

How to fix the WCB, then First, there needs to be a swing back to the Meredith principles, which, notwithstanding the fact they’ll be 100 years old in three years, still make sense. To do that, Alberta needs a board committed to the principles—which should be appointed by the Legislature, not cabinet. Their guiding philosophy should clarify that the WCB exists first and foremost to provide a financial cushion to injured workers, and not to pad employers’ bottom lines.

In the short term, the WCB needs an ombudsman that meets two essential criteria: they must be independent of the WCB executive and they must have real power—that is, he or she must be able to compel the WCB executive to respond when a ruling goes against the WCB appeals process. One great advantage of an ombudsman is that they could significantly reduce one of the biggest sources of complaints to MLAs.

Until the WCB is reformed, the pressure on injured workers and their families will continue to grow. The compensation process will continue to be long, stressful, confusing and too often crushingly disappointing. Happily, most injured workers eventually recover and manage—even if seriously disillusioned about the WCB—to put the experience behind them. A few who are disabled become bitter, however—and bitter people can act crazily, even if they have a legitimate grievance. The result is occasional explosions and potentially tragic consequences.

“In the 1960s and 1970s, injured workers could think the WCB would take care of them. You can’t say that any more,” Corbett says. “I can understand why the [hostage-taking] happened and I wasn’t surprised when it happened. I predict that incidents like that will happen again unless the WCB improves the way it treats people.”

David Climenhaga is a journalist, teacher, author and communications director of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees.

____________________________________________

Support independent local media. Please click to subscribe.

The post Insult to Injury appeared first on Alberta Views.

An hour earlier, they had received a call from Calgary-based Pillar Oilfield Projects, the employer of Grettie’s son, John Hennessy-Moore. The caller delivered the news with delicate simplicity: “There’s been an accident.” details were sketchy. John had been struck in the head by a steel beam and his injuries were life-threatening. An air ambulance was taking him to Edmonton’s Royal Alexandra hospital. Grettie and Doug were to come immediately. Grettie remembers clutching a wallet-sized photo of her only child and whispering, over and over, “hold on, son, I’m coming.”

An outgoing, bright 18-year-old, John had recently graduated from high school with a certificate in apprentice pipe-fitting. In the fall of 2004, he had accepted a job with Pillar, upgrading the pipes at husky Energy’s Lloydminster plant. The money was fantastic, and John loved the work.

The last time he visited his mother in Red deer, four days before the accident, John told her he planned to work for a few years, start his own workplace safety company, buy a house and settle down. When he left to head back to Lloydminster for the work week, Grettie told him to be careful. “Don’t worry, Mom,” he replied. “Safety is my middle name.”

Lying in the hospital bed on December 4, 2004, John had no discernible brain activity. His skull was wrapped in a turban of bandages, his eyes and nose swollen and bloody. Grettie spent the night at her son’s side, stroking his hand, singing the lullabies she’d sung for him when he was a child. Early the next morning, a neurological examination concluded that John was indeed brain-dead. Arrangements were made for the transfer of his healthy organs. John died; five strangers lived.

Like most industrial accidents, John’s was the product of an algorithm of misfortune, error and wild-card variables which, more than two years later, are still not entirely clear to his family. They know that court proceedings between the company and the Attorney General’s office (the accident took place on the Saskatchewan side of Lloydminster’s border) are underway and a resolution is imminent—insofar as there can ever be a resolution to losing a child in a preventable workplace accident.

Eager to work, thousands of young people fit pipes, pour coffee, dig ditches, run machines.

Every day, hundreds of young people like John Hennessy-Moore enter Alberta’s labour force. Eager to work, they fit pipes, pour coffee, dig ditches, run machines. Filling a gap in a province desperate for workers, young people are increasingly accepting jobs with little training or supervision. Responsibilities loom large, but so do wages and benefits. When these youth choose work, however precarious, over advanced education or vocational training, they often promise it’s just for a year… well, maybe two. But the workplace carries enough brute force to mangle, maim, bury, burn and crush.

A disturbing number of workers aged 15 to 24 in this province and across the country are the victims of occupational injury and fatality. Statistics are available—with caveats and conditions—that form curves, trend lines, and analyses. Some numbers are reported raw, others as a rate, and still others as a proportion; cynics might describe it as statistical smoke and mathematical mirrors. For example, the Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada (AWCBC) and the Alberta department of Employment, Immigration & Industry (AEII) count fatalities differently. According to AWCBC, 12 young Albertans were killed in 2005, 13 in 2004 and eight in 2003. AEII reports the same figures for 2003 and 2004, but only nine deaths in 2005. The department later added one to the count, raising it to 10. An AEII representative explained the discrepancies in an e-mail: “The difference between our number of 10 and WCB’s number of 12 is that different methodology is used. One goes by the age at the time of the incident, and the other goes by age at the time of death. For example, someone could be in a coma through a birthday and then pass away. We are working toward using common criteria so these issues don’t arise.”

According to the AWCBC, in 2003, 55,380 young Canadians, 7,317 of whom were Albertans, suffered time-loss injuries. In 2004, figures dropped to 54,051 nationally and 7,106 provincially. In 2005, the national figure dropped again to 52,920, while the provincial number rose to 7,197. AEII adds proportionality to the mix: in 2005, young Albertans accounted for 20.4 per cent of workplace injuries although they represented only 17.5 per cent of those in employment. In 2006, the numbers were 23.4 per cent and 17.6 per cent respectively.

The Alberta Workers’ Health Centre (AWHC), a registered charity with financial support from unions, individuals and businesses, seeks to improve the health and safety of Alberta’s workplaces and help those who have suffered from work- place injuries and illness. Executive director Kevin Flaherty, a sociologist by training, is no stranger to explaining societal issues through statistical trends. He comes across as the kind of guy who’s as drawn to the big picture as he is to the small details. He’s got a great laugh, a quick wit and a relaxed sense of self. But there’s nothing easygoing about his commitment to reducing the risks for young Alberta workers.

Flaherty bristles when terms like “accident-prone,” “bravado” and “rookie” are used to explain the disproportionate number of young workers who fall victim to unsafe workplaces. “It’s a blame-the-worker ideology,” he says. “In large measure, these are kids who want to do a good job. But if workplaces are risky, they are by definition taking risks working there.” Indeed, research from the Toronto-based Institute for Work & Health shows that workers of any age are four times more likely to be injured in the first month of work than they are after they’ve been on the job for at least a year. According to the results of the study, a 16-year-old with a year of experience behind him is 25 per cent as likely to be injured as a 40-year-old in his first month of work. Experience matters more than age.

Jason Foster, director of policy analysis at the Alberta Federation of Labour, believes that rates of injuries and fatalities are not suitable proxies for gauging the safety of Alberta’s workforces. “I worry when figures are reported with the impartiality of agriculture exports or oil production. Of course it’s better to have six fatalities in one year instead of the 10 that occurred the year before—but does this mean that four lives were saved?” he asks. “I have a hard time believing that Alberta workplaces are getting safer—and isn’t safety the ultimate goal?”

Foster believes that the root cause of unsafe workplaces lies in the emphasis on production and profit. “We have never been successful in weaving health and safety into the basic business model. Sure, it may get inserted somewhere or grafted on if it’s politically expedient to do so, but it’s never been at the core of running a successful, reputable business in this province.”

The Workers’ Compensation Board of Alberta is legislated to administer the workers’ compensation system for the province. Employers can reduce their premiums—already said to be the lowest in the country—by improving their safety performance and by developing a modified work plan. The first directive can be achieved by participating in the Partners in Injury Reduction Program, successfully implementing a basic workplace health and safety management system, and qualifying for a certificate of recognition. The second directive is linked to getting injured employees back to work as soon as possible. So if a forklift operator breaks her leg and sits in front of the TV for a month, the employer’s premiums will go up. If she returns to work and sits at a computer doing data entry, the employer’s premiums stay the same.

Grettie Hennessy lost her son, John, when he was struck by a steel beam at Husky Energy’s Lloydminster plant. (James May)

But critics charge that Alberta’s approach to occupational health and safety is too much carrot and too little stick. Foster says that while there has never been a golden age of workers’ rights in this province, the 1990s made the 1980s look like the good old days; 1991 and 1992 were particularly terrible. First, Alberta companies pushed forward an agenda that favoured voluntary compliance and self-regulation. Then, fresh off his leadership victory, Premier Ralph Klein dismantled the Department of Occupational Health & Safety and rolled it into the Department of Labour (which would later morph into the Department of Human Resources & Employment and then into the Department of Employment, Immigration & Industry). Programs were cut, staff were laid off, and by the end of the decade the government was spending 40 per cent less (adjusted for inflation) on occupational health and safety than it did in 1990.

And the number of prosecutions dropped rather significantly. From 1985 to 1988, the average was 39 prosecutions a year. Over the next five years, the annual average was 10. In 1997, there was only one. Since 2000, with the hiring of prosecutors dedicated to health-and-safety cases, and with an increase in maximum fines and sentences, the situation has gotten marginally better. Alberta Justice’s Occupational Health & Safety prosecution unit is understandably reluctant to comment on resource issues: having two prosecutors for the entire province doesn’t make for good PR. However, the unit recently doubled its resources by hiring two new prosecutors.

Tamara Trull is one of the original two prosecutors. It’s hard not to hear the sincerity in her voice when she talks about her work. She’s clever and caring, if a little cautious about what she says when it comes to the numbers and dollars that make up Alberta’s prosecution purse. But ask her to comment on safety issues, victim impact statements or alternative sentencing, and she’s almost giddy with passion.

The provision for alternative sentencing came into effect in December 2002 with changes to the Occupational Health & Safety Act. According to Trull, it creates the opportunity for a broad range of sentencing options that see fines directed toward specific charitable activities or public goods. “Before the Act changed, fines collected for workplace infractions went directly into the government’s general revenues. now we can direct fines toward workplace safety, emergency services and worker advocacy programs.”

Erik Dyment died in July 2005 when a truck box he was sandblasting fell on him. He was 14, and employed by the Reynolds museum in Wetaskiwin. “In talking with the Dyment family, we learned that Erik had dreams of becoming a pilot,” says Trull. “So we proposed a penalty that would include the donation of a large tract of land on which to build an emergency air strip.” In December 2006, a Provincial Court judge handed the car museum and its owner, Stanley George Reynolds, the maximum penalty of $500,000: a $5,000 fine, plus 13 hectares of land valued at $495,000.

Other alternative sentences have included donations to hospital burn units, the STARS air ambulance, and the Job Safety Skills Society. Trull’s latest coup is an alternative sentence worth $45,000 to fund a DVD that will form part of a much-needed informational package for victims of workplace incidents.

According to a march 2007 provincial government news release, 2006 set a number of records for monetary penalties. Seven companies and three individuals were found guilty of infractions for a record total of $1,534,500 in penalties, 75 per cent of which was in alternative sentences. The highest penalty to a company was against the Reynolds museum for Dyment’s death, and the highest penalty to an individual was against Jeffrey Clements, operator of Reality Flooring, who was charged $75,000 because his employee was seriously burned while working with a solvent.

In 2002, the minister of Alberta Human Resources & Employment (AEII’s predecessor) challenged Albertans to reduce workplace injuries by 40 per cent by the end of 2004. The challenge was accepted by provincial industry, safety and labour leaders. According to AEII spokesman Barrie Harrison, the target was not reached, although improvements continue to be made.

The AWHC’s Kevin Flaherty has a top 10 list of things that could be done, almost immediately and with relatively little money, to improve the condition of Alberta workplaces. Topping the list is the introduction of mandatory joint health and safety committees with representation from management and labour. While all other provinces have such committees, they are voluntary in Alberta. “When governments in other jurisdictions mandate employers to establish joint committees we see injury and fatality rates drop, employee morale improve, and fewer production stoppages,” he says. “Workplaces need checks and balances, input from diverse sources, and an empowered, engaged work force. Even Adam Smith, the father of the free market, favoured appropriate regulation on industry.”

This fall, the province will launch a workplace safety campaign targeting young workers, particularly those aged 15 to 19. Six videos are being produced, with storylines ranging from a shoe store sales clerk falling off a ladder, to a gas station attendant seriously burned by a cleaning solvent. According to Barrie Harrison, young people in focus groups say the campaign is on the right track. “When we showed them story boards for the deli worker who lost a finger and the short- order cook burnt by the deep fryer, the participants said that not only did they think it was possible, but that many of them had witnessed similar incidents,” he says. The campaign, expected to cost $850,000, will run in venues that young people frequent. The videos will  be screened as movie trailers. “We want to encourage young people to ask questions like where the first aid kit is and what happens if I get hurt, and to know that they can’t be fired for exercising their workplace rights,” says Harrison.

Dr. Curtis Breslin, a scientist with the Institute for Work & Health, encourages policy-makers to support young people’s gradual introduction to the workplace.

“It could be like the gradual driving licence program,” he says. “Why can’t we do something similar with workplaces— perhaps by further restricting the types of equipment young people can operate, the hours they work and the supervision they’re given?”

Breslin credits European systems, especially Germany’s, with preparing youth for the workplace through structured apprenticeships, co-op placements and safety training while they are still in school.

Kevin Flaherty agrees that the education system is an untapped resource. “Young people show up at work unsure of the rules, lacking experience and not knowing who to trust. When they’re told to just get the job done by the same people who say that they’ll look out for their safety, it’s a mixed message with potentially disastrous consequences.”

The Alberta Workers’ Health Centre uses the power of narrative to educate young people about their workplace rights. Work Plays is a dramatic production dealing with safety, sexual harassment and employment standards. Since 2003, it has been seen by over 140 high-school audiences. The play elicits stories from the students themselves.

“After a performance in a small town in central Alberta, two young guys told us about a job they had removing insulation from a house that was built in the asbestos heyday,” says Flaherty. “When they asked their supervisor whether they should be wearing protective clothing, he told them not to worry—at least they were putting the insulation into garbage bags before taking it to the dump.”

“What about the injuries that don’t show up for decades There will be no trace to the source.”

Flaherty worries that this kind of hazard goes unnoticed. “When workplace incidents are immediate, bloody and gory, they at least get media attention. But what about the injuries that don’t show up for years, even decades The asbestosis, the carcinomas, the repetitive strains Some of these kids will develop serious illnesses later in life and there will be no trace to the source.

In Late 2003, 24 year-old Karl Stunt of Ottawa accepted a part-time job at Banff ’s Sunshine Village, where he made $8.50 an hour and had the time of his life—a last hurrah before heading back home and returning to university.

August 31, 2004, was a lovely summer day. Karl had been working with an apprentice mechanic in a maintenance cage repairing the lift.

In the late afternoon, planning to call it a day, they came down the hill toward the lift station. The cage had a peculiar flaw: a steel platform had to be pulled down as they descended, or it would strike the overhead machinery in its path. Karl was unaware of this. As they swung into the station, a metal bar smashed Karl in the head.

He died six days later at Calgary’s Foothills Hospital—on Labour Day, no less. The apprentice mechanic was fired shortly thereafter.

Karl’s possessions were shipped back to his parents. Among them were eight rolls of undeveloped film. Karl’s father, Bill, and mother, Renata, processed the film and pored over the pictures documenting the last few months of their son’s life.

In one of the photos, Karl’s sunglasses are propped on his forehead. His black hoodie is branded with the Sunshine Village logo and taglined “STAFF 03-04.” He’s got a can of mountain ale in one hand; his other hand rests on the shoulder of a beautiful young woman. His whole life is ahead of him.

The limitation period for filing charges is two years less a day from the date of the accident. In the Stunt case, four charges were filed under the Occupational Health & Safety Act within days of the limit.

The months that followed have been peppered with delays, change of counsel and abandoned plea bargains. The trial is set to begin on May 1, 2008.

“It’s unbelievably cruel to be left in this limbo for so long,” says Bill. “The insurmountable grief of losing a child is compounded by the callousness of a corporation that denies us any resolution.”

He contends that by underfunding enforcement and refusing to legislate joint workplace safety committees, the Alberta government keeps guilty companies out of the courtrooms. “The government needs royalties from the oil fields, taxes from developers, and export potential from resource industries—and votes from all of them. It turns a blind eye to corporate negligence and lets young people like Karl pay for the Alberta Advantage with their lives,” he says. “Sure, Alberta’s economy is booming, but it’s on the backs of young, untrained workers.”

Bill hopes his son’s employer is more safety-conscious today. He looks forward to the day that the case is settled and he can devote his energy to workplace safety advocacy.

He also hopes that he can help parents who find themselves in his unenviable position. “They have no idea, of course; (they) never think that it could happen to their children,” he says. “We hear about young people getting killed at work and we shudder at the thought. That loose bolts, shaky scaffolding and faulty wires destroy the lives of unsuspecting youth is an absolute crime.”

Alison Azer was nominated for a national magazine award for her article “The Lion-Hearted” (Alberta Views, October 2006).

The post Perilous Trades appeared first on Alberta Views.

Taking as their mantra, “If you build it they will come,” successive provincial governments have sought to diversify Alberta’s economy. In a push to move away from the mere export of raw materials to be processed in other provinces or foreign countries, Alberta has made a concerted effort to do more value-added processing within its own borders. The strategy consists of offering investors access to the province’s abundant natural resources and providing a low-tax, pro-business environment. For agriculture, the result has been the construction and acquisition of facilities in the province by foreign-owned agribusiness companies such as Cargill, IBP, Archer Daniels Midland and Nestlé.

Beef processing has been a major recipient of such foreign investment, with the construction and expansion of large slaughter plants at High River and Brooks. These investments have created thousands of jobs and given a welcome boost to the farm economy by supplying a market for locally raised cattle. But the industry also passes on the social cost of its production to local communities in the form of increased crime, homelessness and demand for indigent care.

While social need has increased, the provincial government, in pursuing its agenda of debt-reduction and a balanced budget, has systematically cut social services, leaving much of the responsibility for paying the social price of the industry’s operation to local communities and charitable organizations. Dreams of economic independence and a buoyant economy have, for those on the ground in today’s rural-based beefpacking industry, become a nightmare in which social need endlessly consumes the charity and goodwill of local citizens.

The background on beef

Since the first European settlers came to the prairies, cattle have been raised on the excellent grasslands. With the arrival of the railway in the late 1880s, live cattle began to be shipped east and west from Calgary to be slaughtered close to major population centres. Beefpacking’s market orientation remained largely unaltered until the advent of boxed beef, introduced in the late 1960s by Iowa Beef Packers (now known as IBP). Cattle carcasses were no longer shipped whole; rather, fat and bone were removed at the plant and meat cut to retail specifications before being vacuum packaged for shipment.

This innovation appealed to the hospitality industry and supermarkets because it allowed them to employ fewer butchers and reduce costs. It also allowed the packers to ship more meat and keep valuable by-products for additional sales. A 1993 study estimated that the average cost of transporting fed cattle from Alberta to southwestern Ontario was $112.50 per head, while the equivalent figures for carcasses and boxed beef were $49.50 and $28.91 respectively. The development of boxed beef has thus allowed the industry to consolidate close to where the cattle are raised.

The Alberta Advantage

In the last 15 years, the availability of fed cattle, a weakened labour movement, and government incentives have together encouraged two of the three largest U.S. beef processors, Cargill and IBP, to invest in Alberta.

In 1999, the province had nearly 2.4-million cattle on feed, 1.3-million more  than in 1984. Alberta has become the largest cattle feeding province in Canada. Ample supplies of barley and irrigated crops provide silage; fresh water is abundant; little precipitation makes for less mud and clean cattle; and efficient feeding conditions along with “moderate” winter temperatures allow for good feed conversion.

Meanwhile, labour interests have been slowly starved. Before 1984, meatpacking wages were determined by means of an industry-wide national contract. The bargaining system that had existed since 1947 was challenged by the Calgary-based Burns meat company, which claimed that high costs had made the company unprofitable. They demanded that the union bargain on a plant-by-plant basis. The United Food & Commercial Workers union refused, and Burns charged them with bargaining in bad faith. Labour relations boards in Ontario, Alberta and Manitoba subsequently upheld the company’s position. The union called a national strike, but in its aftermath, a two-tiered wage system was established, with lower rates for new hires. At Lakeside Packers in Brooks, replacement workers were hired at three dollars per hour less than the national rate and worked throughout the strike. Meatpacking wages have yet to recover; current starting wages at Lakeside remain below 1984 levels.

The beefpacking industry passes on the social cost of its production in increased crime, homelessness and demand for indigent care.

Labour’s position in the province was further undermined after a bitter 1986 strike at the Gainers meatpacking plant in Edmonton. In 1988, the provincial government approved a new labour relations code that gave the cabinet the power to decertify unions that conduct illegal strikes and allowed the Labour Relations Board to limit picketing. New barriers to union certification were erected with the requirement of a vote on union acceptance even when a company’s entire workforce has signed union cards, creating the potential for intimidation or a campaign against unionization by management. In addition, the board’s right to certify a union when management has interfered with an organizing drive was removed.

IBP’s 1994 takeover of Lakeside may be, in fact, partly explained by the company’s own hostility towards labour unions in the United States. Soon after the company was founded in 1960, it refused to abide by the terms of the equivalent U.S. master agreement in hiring workers at its plants and has used strikebreakers in disputes at its plant in Dakota City, Nebraska.

While the cattle population exploded and labour’s prospects dwindled, the Alberta government, in the late 1980s, provided $4-million for a wastewater treatment facility to assist Cargill with the construction of its High River  plant,  along with grants and loans totalling $16-million to help Lakeside become “the largest slaughter and beef processing plant in Canada.” In 1994, IBP purchased Lakeside and immediately announced it would expand the plant’s slaughter capacity and add a processing side. Soon afterwards, Cargill announced a similar expansion plan for its High River facility. When Cargill’s plant opened in 1989, it had the capacity to kill 6,000 cattle per week with 410 production workers, while Canada Packers’ Winnipeg plant slaughtered just 3,000 cattle with 475 workers.

The benefits of economies of scale and increased efficiency immediately put these plants at an advantage over their older counterparts. Moreover, Cargill began by employing a non-union labour force (it has subsequently been organized), whose starting wages were four dollars an hour less than those of workers at other plants in the province. Cargill’s lower costs led to closures of Canadian-owned plants in Calgary and Lethbridge and complaints that the provincial government favoured foreign investors.

Beefpacking and social change

Beef processing employs a lot of people, approximately 2,500 at Lakeside and 2,000 at Cargill’s plant. In the United States, the industry has been associated with increases in school enrolment, demands for social services, and crime, creating a significant social penalty for rural communities there. These social changes can be attributed to the nature of the industry. Low pay, a high injury rate, stress and the physical demands of the work ensure high employee turnover—an industry average of between 6 and 8 per cent per month among line workers. This means that packers quickly exhaust locally available labour and then recruit workers from outside the local region— highly mobile young adult single males and recent immigrants.

Low pay, a high injury rate, stress and the physical demands of the work ensure high employee turnover—an industry average of between 6 and 8 per cent per month among line workers.

Both groups increase the demand for services, offsetting the benefits of economic development with a greater social handicap. The highest incidence of crime is among young single males between the ages of 18 and 24, a group also highly susceptible to alcohol abuse, while a ballooning school enrolment and demands for special services and health care are assured by an influx of young immigrant families. Moreover, many industry recruits and potential employees arrive penniless and need to be housed and fed before receiving their first paycheque, which boosts the obligation to provide food and shelter for indigents.

They came, they saw, they left

Lakeside’s expansion began in December 1996. Within four months of hiring 700 mostly local workers at a weekly turnover of between 40 and 60 workers, Lakeside’s human resources manager acknowledged that the company had “pretty much exhausted the local labour supply.” As a result, the company began to recruit laid-off workers from the collapse of the cod fishery in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia as well as new immigrants to Canada.

In July 1996, Cargill’s plant manager took me on a tour of the High River facility. I was informed that more than 50 languages and dialects were spoken inside the plant. To emphasize the plant’s diversity, a world map was displayed at the entrance with pins corresponding to workers’ countries of origin. Updating this map would have proven a challenge, though: at the time, about 110 workers left and were replaced each month. Most line workers are new immigrants, the largest groups being southeast Asian, Indian, Iraqi, Iranian and Latino. Lakeside’s growing number of immigrant employees led, in fact, to the establishment of an on-site immigration service for workers in the fall of 1998. Users of this service are mainly from Iraq, Cambodia, Somalia, Ethiopia, Bosnia, Pakistan, Sudan and Nigeria, most seeking advice on how to proceed with family reunification.

Many immigrants learn about employment opportunities at the plants through Calgary’s Catholic Immigration Society. But a buoyant Calgary economy has meant that the agency placed no immigrants at either facility in the first eight months of 2000, which has increased pressure to recruit labour from other sources. At Lakeside, the result has been the hiring of some workers with criminal records.

Housing hell

In mid-1997, the town of Brooks announced a zero- vacancy rate for rental accommodations. A 1995 consultant’s report advocated that the town should promote the construction of new single family homes in hopes that this would create a vacancy chain, with local people “moving up” to newer homes and leaving cheaper properties vacant for newcomers. The report proposed the construction of between 900 and 1,400 units over two years, but only 284 were constructed. Moreover, when Lakeside doubled its production workforce in 1998 with the addition of a second shift, just 78 units were added to the housing stock— and 48 the following year. The housing shortage means that have the options of living in the surrounding rural area or Medicine Hat or doubling or tripling up in town units that should accommodate just one household.

The provision of 168 dormitory style units for single employees at the Lakeside plant in fall 1997 has not led to a much happier result. Designed as transitional housing, its rental rate increases the longer a person stays, while Lakeside deducts rent and other costs workers incur, such as the purchase of optional equipment and meal vouchers, from their paycheques. (Meal vouchers, for use in the plant’s cafeteria, are provided for workers who arrive penniless and are awaiting their first paycheque.) Lakeside’s human resources manager acknowledged that one unfortunate consequence of the scheme was that many workers, even after they received their first paycheque, were essentially broke.

(The housing itself isn’t exactly the pinnacle of comfort, surrounded as it is by a chain link fence topped with barbed wire and with a common, rather than separate, entry.)

Lakeside did seek a permanent solution to the town’s housing shortage by requesting planning permission for a trailer court on the north side of town, but was denied.

Meanwhile, Cargill’s High River home markets itself as a retirement community and dormitory for commuters who work in Calgary. These two functions have effectively kept the cost of local housing beyond the means of most low-paid workers at the plant. Cargill’s line workers live in Calgary, a 25-minute drive north of the High River plant.

Within four months of hiring 700 mostly local workers at a weekly turnover of between 40 and 60, Lakeside’s human resources manager acknowledged that the company had “pretty much exhausted the local labour supply.”

The price of a job

Many who seek work at the plants arrive penniless from other communities. Under Alberta’s welfare system, they may be eligible for a one-time transitional assistance payment from the Department of Family and Social Services. But between the time they arrive and make an appointment with a Social Services intake worker and receive a payment, they need shelter and food.

For those without friends or relatives in Brooks, the Salvation Army provides lodging and food assistance. The amount spent providing these services increased from $4,576 in 1996 to $14,924 by 1998. Indeed the total amount of providing clothing, furniture, medicine and other forms of assistance amounted to over $23,084 in the first six months of 2000. Most of these funds are donated by local residents.

To provide more food assistance for newcomers, the Brooks Food Bank was established in October 1998 with the goal of “providing temporary emergency access to food.” During its first year of operation, it distributed 4,514 food hampers designed to sustain an adult for seven days. Food assistance is temporary, the average client being assisted 2.4 times. Since the food bank opened, the demand for its services has only increased. A 2000 survey of food bank clients found that 70 per cent of them work at Lakeside, and a further 12 per cent started work at the plant and then quit. Like the Salvation Army, the food bank depends largely on local donations of money and food.

Further evidence of the poverty of newcomer families is the establishment of a school breakfast program in one elementary school in the fall of 1999 and the expansion of the program to other schools last year.

Official applications for one- time transitional payments to the Brooks office of Alberta Family and Social Services (AFSS) jumped from 65 in 1996 to 598 in 1999, while the number of transients receiving assistance increased from 16 to 64. Most of the recipients are single, but, as Lakeside workers are eligible for a $1,000 bonus for recruiting family and friends to work at the plant, over time it could be expected the number of single recipients would decline.

The amount received under the transitional assistance program varies. Lakeside residents receive $229 for food, clothing and personal items; non-residents, an additional $168 for shelter. Neither amount covers the typical one- month’s damage deposit required for rental properties, so Lakeside now provides funds to cover this for recruited workers. The amount provided by AFSS in supporting the initial settlement is considerable. Assuming very conservatively that half of the 1999 aid recipients did not live at Lakeside, the amount provided by the provincial government to support Lakeside’s labour force that year was in excess of $185,000.

Service saturation

Except in the early grades, there is little evidence that the influx of population to Brooks has increased school enrolment. However, the local school district has experienced an increase in demand for English as a second language (ESL) instruction, and special services for children with severe physical, emotional and social disabilities. In the fall of 2000, the school district hired a half-time ESL instructor. The number of students receiving special services has nearly doubled, from 12 in 1998-99 to 21 in 2000-2001. A local school official attributes this increase to an influx of persons of low socio- economic status. Funding for these programs comes from provincial government grants.

Daycare is a pressing problem.

Parents have been known to drop their children off at school at 6 a.m. en route to work at the plant. Too, the shortage of affordable daycare may have been a factor in the 2000 shaking death of an infant by a juvenile left to care for several other young children. These and other related incidents having dramatized the problem, local MLA Lyle Oberg helped obtain a $50,000 grant from the province to fund a study of daycare needs.

Another place where need is showing is the emergency centre of the local hospital. Monthly emergency room visits averaged 1,434 in 1996, but had steadily increased to 1,980 by 1999. The increase reflects the difficulty of newcomers in obtaining access to a primary care physician. Clinic hours are limited to 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday. For those who can’t take time off work to see a physician, using the emergency room is a practical alternative. Emergency centre health care workers note that, because some patients cannot afford   to pay for prescriptions, they return a few days later in worse condition.

The housing shortage means that newcomers have the options of living in the surrounding rural area or Medicine Hat or doubling or tripling up in town units that should accommodate just one household.

Paying for crime

Lakeside’s recruitment of young adult, single males has had the effect of augmenting the number of reported crimes from 1,949 in 1996 to 3,314 in 1999—a 70 per cent increase. The local RCMP detachment, in fact, “boasts” the highest Criminal Code caseload per officer of any detachment in the province. Analysis shows that a large proportion of the increase in criminal activity is associated with alcohol consumption. Between 1996 and 1999, the number arrested for disturbing the peace swelled from 66 to 377, while the number of those intoxicated jumped from 128 to 309. Violations of the provincial Liquor Act rose from 172 to 261. Accompanying these increases in alcohol-related arrests have been several highly publicized fights between newcomers and established residents outside local bars. In September 1997, more than a hundred people were involved in such a brawl. When RCMP attempted to break it up, they were attacked by the mob.

The number of property crimes has also risen, most notably for motor vehicle thefts—from 41 in 1996 to 101 in 1999—while thefts of property of a value less than $5,000 increased from 333 to 468. These increases reflect the high employee turnover endemic to beef processing and the accompanying loss of a sense of community; as the town fills up with newcomers, it becomes difficult for citizens to identify strangers around their neighbours’ property and thus prevent theft.

Concurrent with the growth of violent crime has been  a steady rise in the number of women and children seeking shelter from abusive relationships. After a formal needs assessment that pre-dated Lakeside’s expansion, the Brooks and District Women’s Safe Shelter Society was formed in 1997. As of May 2000, 254 women and children had been accommodated, 70 per cent of whom were from outside the region. In spring 2000 the society, with funding from the federal government, purchased a four-bedroom house in Brooks. The shelter now competes with a comparable facility in Medicine Hat for the same limited funding sources.

Small communities: development to default

Successive provincial governments have sought to diversify the province’s economic base by offering investors access to natural resources and a pro-business environment. In the case of beef processing, foreign companies have constructed large slaughter plants, displacing locally owned facilities and passing on the social fallout to local communities in the form of housing shortages and increased crime together with rising demands for indigent housing and food assistance, transitional assistance payments, ESL instruction, special education services and emergency health care.

To a small community, the cost of providing for indigents is considerable, in money and energy. Yet, in an era of “self-reliance” and government cutbacks to social services, these circumstances are unlikely to change. Indeed, evidence from other communities indicates that local voluntary social service providers will have to increase their fundraising efforts to meet future newcomer needs. Lakeside has tried to address Brooks’s housing shortage, while the province has met its statutory responsibilities. By default, funding for indigent care has become a responsibility of the local citizenry. The long- term sustainability of this approach remains to be determined.

Reported crimes in Brooks increased 70 per cent from 1996 to 1999. The local RCMP detachment, in fact, “boasts” the highest Criminal Code caseload per officer of any detachment in the province.

Other rural communities faced with the prospect of thousands of new processing jobs should weigh all the costs associated with this type of development, while Albertans in general might consider whether the Alberta Advantage should include the willingness of local communities to pay the social toll of industrial well-being.

Michael Broadway, professor and head of the geography department at Northern Michigan University, has studied since the mid-1980s the changes brought about by the meatpacking industry’s move to rural areas. He is the co-editor of Any Way You Cut It: Meatprocessing and Small-town America (University Press of Kansas, 1995). He began his study of the Canadian beefpacking industry in 1996 and is a frequent visitor to Alberta.

The post Here’s the Beef appeared first on Alberta Views.