The Ontario labour federation, spearheaded by Laura Walton, is advocating for stronger worker protections as health concerns continue to rise due to deteriorating air quality across the province. Recent meteorological events have been front page news almost daily. Their leadership and action are essential to safeguarding the safety and well-being of Ontario’s workers from the growing hazards of extreme heat and wildfire smoke.
Walton emphasized the urgency of the situation, stating that the labour group aims to provide firsthand insight into summer working conditions. For the next six weeks, they’ll be deploying instruments in workplaces all over Ontario. With some luck, these devices will churn out readings like those seen in the image above being the heated and humid conditions that workers must endure during the summer months.
As Waltons explained, educating workers about what a safe workplace environment looks like helps to empower workers. It emboldens them to call for what they need—whether that’s air purifiers or better ventilation systems. She stressed the importance of joint health and safety committees, which can be used to advance protective safety measures. These committees are an easily scalable solution in almost every workplace with 20 or more employees.
The Klienberg-inspired labour group has joined forces with the provincial New Democrats. This fall, they intend to bring a private member’s motion to the provincial legislature calling for stronger protections for workers facing a growing number of extreme weather events. Ontario workers have the right to refuse unsafe work, including when they believe conditions from extreme heat or smoke are unsafe. This right protects their safety in deadly spaces.
The provincial standards established specific winter temperature standards to protect employees against extreme cold conditions. Sadly, equivalent protections from heat and poor air quality have yet to materialize. Environment Canada has issued numerous air quality warnings this summer due to wildfire smoke, affecting various regions across the country, including Ontario.
As I write this, the Prairies are still under special air quality statements. This is all thanks to smoke from wildfires in the Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Ontario. Toronto is now living under air quality alerts as wildfire smoke continues to creep into the city.
The City of Toronto has implemented a heat stress policy. This policy moves more work to cooler parts of the day and provides cool areas for employees. Staff have had to walk off the job due to extreme heat and high humidity. Because of this decision, two public swimming pools in Toronto have shut down.
Michael Lynk, professor emeritus of law at Western University, remarked on the need for unions to become more assertive in advocating for workplace rights in light of increased air quality warnings.
“Just the threat of possibility of (refusing work), which is lawful under health and safety law, is usually enough to encourage or nudge employers to take union concerns seriously.” – Michael Lynk
Further, he said, unions will be portrayed as taking a more hard-nosed approach. Further, they’ll be doing a much better job of pushing workers to take this issue seriously as air quality issues become more prevalent.
Walton further recognized that having strong data collection would be the bedrock when they made their case to the legislature.
“When we go to (the legislature) in November and people are like, ‘Well, I don’t know what the big deal is because it’s freezing rain right now,’ we actually have data to capture what was happening this summer.” – Laura Walton
