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By George Stewart, Director of Occupational Health and Safety, Workers' Compensation Board of Prince Edward Island
Canadian workplace injury prevention initiatives aimed at youth have increased dramatically in the last decade and these efforts have resulted in a decrease in the i njury rates for young workers in this country. However, this decrease is smaller than for any other age group with injury rates remaining the highest among young workers.1 In Canada, a concerted and consistent focus on injury prevention aimed at young workers continues to be important.
At present, all Canadian jurisdictions responsible for workplace health and safety have programs and staff dedicated to workplace injury prevention education among young people. The growth of young worker health and safety education initiatives in Canada can be attributed, at least in part, to the level of cooperation and collaboration that exists among all jurisdictions responsible for young worker health and safety. Larger jurisdictions have taken the lead in developing workplace injury programs and campaigns targeted to youth while many smaller jurisdictions have been able to build on these existing programs in creative and innovative ways.
It is anticipated that multi-pronged injury prevention initiatives aimed at young workers, employers, supervisors, educators and parents will continue to evolve in all jurisdictions and will result in even more significant decreases in the injury rates for young workers. Ongoing jurisdictional efforts to educate young people about workplace health and safety have been effective because there has been such a strong coordinated focus on building awareness about occupational injury and illness among all young workers in this country during the past decade.
In the late 1990’s, there was a growing recognition among many larger Canadian jurisdictions responsible for workplace health and safety, most notably British Columbia, Ontario and New Brunswick, that a disproportionate number of young people were being injured at work. This recognition prompted some jurisdictions to conduct research to determine the reasons why young people were more likely to be injured in the workplace. An Ipso-Reid survey conducted in 2000 for Worksafe BC revealed a number of important insights into the attitudes towards young workers and workplace safety. The following are some of the key findings of this research:
- Workplace injury was not a significant top-of-mind concern for youth, parents or educators. However, the study revealed that most young workers faced injury or the threat of injury in their jobs and most realized that they should have paid attention to the issue.
- Inexperience and a sense of “invincibility” or “bravado” resulted in increased risk-taking in both the workplace and their everyday lives.
- Young workers identified a number of key fears or worries that related to the risk of injury. There were: stress, pressure, being rushed, boredom, boss or coworkers putting them at risk or harassing them, being cold, and getting sick or injured at work.
- Young workers felt that they were taken advantage of by their employers and or senior workers and most expressed a sense of clear hopelessness about the situation. They felt that there was little or nothing that could be done to improve workplace safety for them because, in their minds, society had deemed it acceptable to treat teenaged workers badly.
- With few exceptions, youth reported that they received minimal safety training in their jobs.
- While most employers, industry and labour representatives accepted that young workers are different from older workers in their attitudes and experience, they also acknowledged that most workplaces did not provide youth-specific training.
- Parents almost universally assumed that employers were providing some sort of safety training for their children and most parents surveyed acknowledged that they had not asked their children if indeed this was the case.
- A number of consistent themes emerged from the study regarding the reasons why young workers get injured more frequently and more seriously than older more experienced workers. These included: inexperience in the workforce, lack of confidence or understanding of their rights as workers, a sense of invincibility, an unwillingness to ask questions – either out of fear of reprisals or fear of seeming incompetent, they are more likely to be given more dangerous jobs, and lack the relevant education and preparation for the workplace.
This survey was instrumental in advancing efforts across the country to develop workplace health and safety strategies aimed at youth. In many larger jurisdictions, awareness campaigns were created and education initiatives were undertaken in a concerted effort to decrease injury rates among young workers.
In 2000, a national conference on youth health and safety in the workplace was held for the first time. The conference, hosted by Human Resources and Development Canada (HRDC), brought 130 youth from across the country together with an equal number of health and safety professionals and interested parties representing industry, labour organizations and government agencies to identify the issues that young people experienced when they began their working lives and to assess the ways in which these problems could be addressed from the perspective of youth. During the conference, youth identified seven major concerns that impacted significantly on the health and safety of young people in Canada’s workplaces and made several key recommendations including:
- The development of enhanced health and safety training/education programs for inclusion within the core curriculum from kindergarten to grade 12 for all jurisdictions
- The establishment of a Cross-Canada Youth Advisory Committee comprised of youth representatives from each jurisdiction in Canada
- The development of a coordinated approach to health and safety messages through representatives such as the Canadian Association of Administrators of Labour Legislation (CAALL) and the Association of Workers Compensation Boards of Canada (AWCBC)
- The development of a central young worker health and safety web portal
This conference, which the Federal Minister of Labour at the time saw as a new beginning that had taken a hundred years to occur, was instrumental in raising awareness regarding the need to develop strategies to address the issue of young worker health and safety in this country. Furthermore, the conference also demonstrated the need for all provinces and territories to work together whenever feasible to develop a coordinated and harmonized approach to young worker health and safety.
During this time, the Safe Communities Foundation became very active in promoting youth health and safety throughout the country. A “Passport to Safety” program was developed in Ontario with input from both health and safety professionals and educators from across the country and implemented in several other jurisdictions. Passport to Safety is a national young worker health and safety awareness program that allows youth to test their health and safety knowledge. Youth who successfully complete the test are awarded a “passport” transcript that can be attached to resumes to demonstrate their basic awareness of health and safety. The program is not intended to replace job-specific health and safety training that is required of all employers under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Since its inception, this program has continued to grow and it remains a powerful tool for promoting the importance of workplace health and safety training among youth, employers and educators across the country.
In 2003, the AWCBC hosted a national public forum that focused on youth health and safety. The conference highlighted many of the jurisdictional and inter-jurisdictional initiatives that were being implemented and advanced throughout the country. The conference also revealed that the recommendations which had been articulated at the national youth conference in 2000 had been acted upon by legislators.
A national Government/WCB Young Worker Health and Safety Program Inventory has been in place since 2003 and is updated annually to help individuals and organizations involved in efforts to promote young worker health and safety reference existing projects, programs and resources across the country. The inventory includes research, social marketing strategies, programs and products specifically designed or intended to educate or raise awareness among young workers, employers and supervisors, parents and guardians, educators at all grade levels, and community leaders who have a leadership role with youth.
The recognition that a disproportionate amount of young people were being injured in the workplace and the resolve among health and safety professionals industry, labour organizations, educators and government agencies to decrease injury rates among youth through a wide variety of provincial/territorial and national initiatives during the past decade has resulted in a much greater awareness among young people and employers that inexperience in the workplace increases the risk of injury. As all jurisdictions across the country have continued to implement or improve programs and services for young workers, it has become increasingly apparent that a single national young worker health and safety strategy would be difficult to implement as jurisdictions are at different phases in the development of programs aimed at youth and have varying degrees of resources available to them. However, the development of strong national networks and initiatives has facilitated opportunities for increased communication and collaboration among all jurisdictions.
The growth of workplace health and safety strategies aimed at youth during the past decade in Canada has been possible because of the unwavering commitment that all jurisdictions have made to decreasing injury rates among young workers in their respective provinces or territories while promoting a shared national vision of safer and more healthy workplaces for all young people. The development of tools and messages designed to educate and resonate with youth helps them to better understand health and safety issues before they enter the workforce or as they begin their working lives. Doing so also helps to build awareness and this is an important employability skill for young people to possess as they will carry this knowledge with them throughout their working lives.
The following websites provide important information about young worker health and safety in Canada:
www.jobsafecanada.ca/
www.ccohs.ca/youngworkers/
www.canoshweb.org/en/young_workers.html
www.passporttosafety.com/
www.safety-council.org/info/OSH/OSH.html
www.canadian-health-network.ca/servlet/ContentServer?cid=1048161689494&pagename=CHN-RCS/Page/GTPageTemplate&c=Page&lang=En
1 Breslin, C.F., Smith, P., Koehoorn, M., Lee, H.(2006). Is the workplace becoming safer? Statistics Canada Perspectives on Labour and Income, 7(7), 18-23.
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