Last year in B.C., three people died every week due to workplace hazards, on average.
That’s right, 158 workers in our province lost their lives because of what they do for a living in 2017.
And each April 28, people gather in public squares, parks and halls around the country to remember them and remind each other that workplace safety is one of the most important things the working world needs to address. On Friday, the City of Campbell River held a service a day early at Spirit Square, but there was another planned for the following day at Frank James Park, as well.
It’s a fitting location for the ceremony. James was a city worker who never returned home after being struck on the side of the road doing work for the city in 1989.
Dave Lovely, safety advisor for the City of Campbell River says it’s an important day for the city itself, which is why they hold their own ceremony separate from the one put on by the Labour Council – and attends theirs as well.
“We are actively engaged in a wide range of work,” Lovely says. “As an organization, we have to be prepared for just about anything. There’s a lot that goes into making a safety program work when you’ve got workers in the variety of situations we’ve got, whether it’s indoors or outdoors, doing emergency or especially hazardous procedures or whether they’re doing the everyday things like these folks are doing,” he says, looking around Spirit Square before the ceremony at the city workers performing routine maintenance like lawn mowing.
They also do it for people like Richard McFarlane.
McFarlane was a lieutenant with the Campbell River Fire Department. He died in 2014 after a courageous battle with lieukemia developed from years of service in fire supression.
Rod Saunders with Worksafe BC says the day also serves as an opportunity to quash some myths surrounding workplace safety so we can improve worker safety as a society.
The first of these myths, Saunders says, is that it costs more money to create a safer working environment or have more supervisors with their eyes on potential hazards.
“Realistically, it’s the opposite of that,” Saunders says. “Sometimes employers don’t realize what the cost is of huring people until they do it and realize it pays to be safe,” whether that’s in legal costs or simply the lost productivity that ensues while they train someone new to replace that person, “even if it’s just temporary, maybe that person was a long-time, really productive employee, and now they’re not there for a while. That can be a huge cost for a company.”
Tomorrow’s day of Mourning ceremony will begin at 10:30 a.m. at Frank James Park in Willow Point.
Did you know? The Day of Mourning was initiated by the Canadian Labour Congress in 1984. April 28 was chosen because it was on that day in 1914 that the province of Ontario proclaimed the first comprehensive Workers Compensation Act in Canada. The day caught on around the world and now over 100 countries recognize April 28 in some fashion, though some call it “Workers Memorial Day.”