The Alberta government is launching a new website the Fall to provide the public with safety information and statistics about employers across the province.
The move is part of ten point plan announced earlier this year to give Albertans greater access to employers’ injury and fatality records.
Employment Minister Thomas Lukaszuk confirmed the provincial government will publish partial safety records for roughly 125,000 employers covered by the Workers’ Compensation Board.
About 11,900 businesses with voluntary insurance coverage, such as farms, advertising agencies and flyer distributors, won’t be included.
Information spanning 2005 to 2009 will be posted online, likely at the end of September. The new government website will include:
* Number of lost-time claims
* Estimated number of employees
* Lost-time claim rate
* Number of fatalities
* If the employer holds a Certificate of Recognition (COR)
* Industry and province wide lost-time claim rates for comparison purposes.
Lukaszuk said Alberta’s workplace safety records disclosure will be the most substantial in Canada.
The measure comes eight years after the Klein government promised in legislation to let Albertans know who are the best and worst workplace safety performers. The Stelmach government, however, has chosen a different approach.
“Call it public shaming, if you wish,” the employment minister said of the planned website. “The fact is that if you’re an employer with statistics that are significantly less favourable than that of your cohorts in the industry, you may want to wise up if you want to continue attracting workers, if you want to continue attracting contracts from other employers.”
The province has faced heightened scrutiny of its efforts to protect Alberta’s two million workers. In the spring, the auditor general released a scathing probe of the government’s workplace safety system. The watchdog found Alberta Employment wasn’t sufficiently cracking down on employers who repeatedly flout safety laws and whose workers face a higher risk of injury. The auditor general also raised concerns about Alberta’s safety certificate program.
While several industry groups are backing the government’s safety records plan, the province has faced heightened scrutiny of its efforts to protect Alberta's two million workers.
In the spring, the auditor general released a scathing probe of the government's workplace safety system.
The watchdog found Alberta Employment wasn't sufficiently cracking down on employers who repeatedly flout safety laws and whose workers face a higher risk of injury. The auditor general also raised concerns about the COR program.
A year-long Herald investigation published in June uncovered other deep-rooted problems, including infrequent prosecutions of safety violators linked to worker fatalities and incomplete tracking of whether convicted companies were paying fines.
Lukaszuk reiterated that more changes are coming. The Liberals and NDP, however, are calling for more information to be included, such as work site inspection reports, safety violations and enforcement orders.
"If I'm a repeat or habitual violator of the safety law, that should be included on the list," said Liberal MLA Hugh Mac-Donald.
NDP MLA Rachel Notley noted lost-time injury and illness claims only paint a partial picture because they exclude wounded employees doing modified work. Unless more information is published, Notley doubts the government measure will greatly improve workplace safety.
The Alberta Federation of Labour said the government's "watered-down" website falls short of what was promised eight years ago. "It doesn't show the public the whole picture," said labour spokeswoman Nancy Furlong.
Bob Barnetson, assistant professor of labour relations at the Athabasca University in Edmonton, also believes the new government effort to “open the books” does not go far enough to warn the public about poor employer safety records. Simply posting lost-time claims on-line does not show the bigger picture of slip-shod practices, he says.
“If the purpose of releasing data is to help workers know which employers are safe and which are not, then why would the government use data that dramatically understates the risk of injury?” he says
Further complicating matters is that injuries with no financial implications (for which no claim is filed), compensable injuries simply not reported (about 40 per cent of all injuries), and most occupational diseases are entirely invisible in WCB claims data. “This suggests the lost-time claim data the government is releasing really represent 10 per cent (or less) of all workplace injuries,” Barneston adds.
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