While union leaders and lawmakers have fought to tighten up workplace safety regulations since the National Day of Mourning passed into law in 1991, this year’s local ceremony April 28 served as a sober reminder that they still have a ways to go.
Newly elected United Steelworkers (USW) Local 6166 vice-president Tony Colbourne kicked off Saturday’s assembly at the union’s headquarters by listing the names of the 27 Manitoba workers who died on the job in 2017.
This list of workplace fatalities featured a large variety of ages and occupations, ranging from an 83-year-old semi-retired construction worker in Steinbach to a 17-year-old camp counsellorfromSplit Lake, who drowned while on an evening swim with fellow campers back in July.
After some stirring words from Mayor Dennis Fenske, MLA Kelly Bindle and MP Niki Ashton, outgoing USW Local 6166 president Les Ellsworth provided some closing remarks about why he’s always taken safety so seriously during his many years with the union.
“When we were reading the names today … my mind quickly went back to when my 18-year-old brother was killed due to a faulty tire on a truck,” he said. “An accident at work can happen to any one of us and the effects can be devastating.”
Ellsworth also talked about how these workplace-related fatalities can have a broader impact on communities a large, referencing the 1992 Westray Mine explosion in Plymouth, Nova Scotia that resulted in 26 workers losing their lives.
“I attended the 25th anniversary of Westray last May and to this date you still see the pain in the eyes of the families that were left behind,” he said. “There was children there that had never seen their dads because mom was pregnant at that time.”
While nothing could ever truly make up for this horrible loss of life, Ellsworth reminded everyone in attendance that the outrage generated by this tragedy eventually resulted in the passing of the Westray Bill (Bill C-45) in 2004. This bill not only established new legal duties for workplace health and safety, but it also imposed harsher penalties for employers that were found to be criminally negligent when it comes to their workers’ well-being.
“Many of our existing health and safety laws are only here because someone died and someone else fought to ensure that it won’t happen again.”
Ellsworth said that local mine workers will be in good hands when the union’s new executive takes over on May 17, since both Colbourne and incoming president Warren Luky have served as worker safety representatives in the past.
“I want to say to Tony and Warren, you have a lot of challenges ahead of you,” Ellsworth remarked. “People are still dying from occupational disease. People are still getting seriously injured. But together, if we work with the employers and lobby the governments, we can still make the difference.”
According to the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety, the Association of Workers' Compensation Boards of Canada recorded 905 workplace deaths across the country in 2016 alone.
