Eric Tucker

Layers of Vulnerability in Occupational Safety and Health for Migrant Workers: Case Studies from Canada And The UK

Abstract In many high-income countries, such as Canada and the UK, there has recently been a significant increase in the number of migrant workers. This paper examines the occupational safety and health implications of this phenomenon. We identify a framework for assessing the occupational safety and health vulnerabilities of migrant workers, using a layered approach, which assists in identifying the risk factors. Using this layer of vulnerability framework, we compare the situation of at-risk migrant workers in these two countries.

Worker Participation in Health and Safety Regulation: Lessons from Sweden

This paper is a comparative study of worker participation in occupational health and safety regulation in Sweden and Ontario,k Canada, based on research conducted in the late-1980s when worker militancy on the issue was strong in both jurisdictions. It examines differences in the extent of legal participation rights and emphasizes how differences in the social context in which the law operates influences the ability of workers to influence OHS outcomes at their workplaces.

The Westray Mine Disaster and its Aftermath: The Politics of Causation

Causation analysis is densely political in at least three ways. First, because causation is crucial to our system of attributing moral, legal, and political responsibility, causation arguments are advanced for purely instrumental purposes. They do political work. Second, because any particular occurrence is the outcome of an almost infinite number of antecedent events, “but for” causation analysis produces trivial results. A judgment about causal significance is required and will depend, in part, on the goals of the analysis. The choice of goals is political, but unstated goals and hidden assumptions often exclude consideration of some possible causes as significant. Theses politics of causation need to be made explicit. Third, the institutional setting in which official determinations of causation are made influence the outcome. Hence, it is necessary to explore these as well. Each of these three dimensions of the politics of causation is explored through an analysis of the 1992 Westray Mine disaster which killed 29 miners in Nova Scotia, and the official responses to it. It is argued that if the goal is to protect workers and nothing else, the political-economic context that promotes the creation of hazardous conditions must be considered a significant cause of harmful occurrences. It is unlikely; however that any of the official responses to the disaster will take this approach.

Remapping Worker Citizenship in Contemporary Occupational Health and Safety Regimes

The article draws on the rapidly growing field of citizenship studies to map and explore the dynamics of contemporary occupational health and safety (OHS) regulation. Using two key dimensions of OHS regulation (protection and participation), the author constructs four ideal types of worker citizenship (market, public, private industrial, and public industrial citizens). Historically, workers have been written into OHS regulatory regimes in each of these ways. Most recently lawmakers have created a new species of OHS regimes, best described as mandated partial self-regulation. Its distinguishing characteristic is its flexibility, such that worker citizenship can take on any of the forms previously described, often without changing the statutory framework. Using Ontario as an example, the study finds that in the late 20th century, workers made significant strides toward public industrial citizenship and, surprisingly, even under a neoconservative government, workers successfully defended their participatory rights and saw their right to protection modestly strengthened through increased enforcement. The conditions under which this regime operates, however, constantly threaten to undermine the efficacy of worker participation rights and to weaken the enforcement effort. Some suggestions are made about using a citizenship discourse to revitalize the worker OHS movement and strengthen OHS rights.

Worker Health and Safety Struggles: Democratic Possibilities and Constraints

The central point of this article, written in 1995, was that health and safety struggles can be at the vanguard of challenges to a legal social order that tolerates poor labour standards and high levels of worker exploitation. Workers who fear their work is making them sick or subjecting them to high levels of injury and disablement know first-hand that the values of democracy, autonomy, equality and community are denied and not realized by current arrangements. By drawing on that experience and explicitly linking health and safety demands to an alternative vision of social justice, one in which workers enjoy greater levels of autonomy and democratic control at work, progressive social change has occurred in the past, and can occur in the future.

The compliance model of employment standards enforcement: an evidence-based assessment of its efficacy in instances of wage theft

This article critically assesses the compliance model of employment standards enforcement through a study of monetary employment standards violations in Ontario, Canada. The findings suggest that, in contexts where changes to the organisation of work deepen insecurity for employees, models of enforcement that emphasise compliance over deterrence are unlikely to effectively prevent or remedy employment standards violations.

The Gospel of Statutory Rules Requiring Liberal Interpretation According to St Peter's

This paper does not evaluate the overall effectiveness of this technique, but rather focuses on one particular way in which the legislature has attempted to control judicial interpretation, the command to interpret statutes liberally and purposively. Typical of such a direction in section 10 of Ontario’s Interpretation Act. This essay proceeds historically. In the first section It examines the common law antecedent to section 10 of the Interpretation Act, the rule in Heydon’s Case. Although this is a judicial not a legislative attempt to define the conventions of interpretation, the disputes over statutory interpretation during that period provide a foundation upon which we can build when analyzing subsequent legislative attempts at reform. In the second section it examines the case law interpreting and applying section 10 from its original enactment in 1840 to 1973. It then examines a series of cases that arose in the Ontario courts beginning in 1980 that culminated in the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in RE Trustees of St. Peter’s Evangelical Lutheran Church and City of Ottawa in which an attempt to redeploy section 10 and its federal equivalent, section 11, was defeated. In the final section 1 reviews the implications of the preceding analysis.

Using tickets in employment standards inspections: Deterrence as effective enforcement in Ontario, Canada?

It is widely agreed that there is a crisis in labour/employment standards enforcement. A key issue is the role of deterrence measures that penalise violations. Employment standards enforcement in Ontario, like in most jurisdictions, is based mainly on a compliance framework promoting voluntary resolution of complaints and, if that fails, ordering restitution. Deterrence measures that penalise violations are rarely invoked. However, the Ontario government has recently increased the role of proactive inspections and tickets, a low-level deterrence measure which imposes fines of CAD295 plus victim surcharges. In examining the effectiveness of the use of tickets in inspections, we begin by looking at this development in the broader context of employment standards enforcement and its historical trajectory. Then, using administrative data from the Ministry of Labour, we examine when and why tickets are issued in the course of workplace inspections. After demonstrating that even when ticketable violations are detected, tickets are issued only rarely, we explore factors associated with an increased likelihood of an inspector issuing a ticket. Finally, we consider how the overall deterrent effect of workplace inspections is influenced by the use or non-use of deterrence tools. JEL Codes: J88

Migrant workers and fissured workforces: CS Wind and the dilemmas of organizing intra-company transfers in Canada:

Canadian temporary foreign worker programs have been proliferating in recent years. While much attention has deservedly focused on programs that target so-called low-skilled workers, such as seasonal agricultural workers and live-in caregivers, other programs have been expanding, and have recently been reorganized into the International Mobility Program (IMP). Streams within the IMP are quite diverse and there are few legal limits on their growth. One of these, intra-company transfers (ICTs), is not new, but it now extends beyond professional and managerial workers to more permeable and expansive categories. As a result, unions increasingly face the prospect of organizing workplaces where ICTs and other migrant workers are employed alongside permanent employees, raising difficult legal issues and strategic dilemmas. This article presents a detailed case study of one union’s response to this situation.