Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Safety, Weaponized!

Safety must not be a shortcut, a loophole, or a weapon. It must be genuine

By Neil Houtman, Local 52 and National Board Member

I sometimes feel like I am buried under policies and procedures. It feels as if safety has grown dramatically in our society over the course of my career (23 years in construction). Most workplace safety policies and procedures result from injuries or near misses and are designed to prevent the incident from happening again. Because workplace injuries are horrific, I applaud all efforts to eliminate them.

But is there a point where we weaponize safety in the guise of diligence? If so, can we as union members, stewards, and representatives grieve discipline for safety infractions?

I was once unwittingly part of an electrician’s removal from site. The electrical employees were unionized (not by CLAC). I advised the worker the way he was using my table saw was unsafe, and he should find an alternative method for doing the task. I informed his foreperson of the conversation and was brushed off.

Later that day, I saw this electrician walked off site by two stewards. The foreperson told me with a big smile he had been looking for a way to get rid of that employee, and I gave him the cause he wanted. The company had a zero-tolerance policy for safety contraventions.

Was the worker using the saw in an unsafe manner? Yes. Could it have resulted in severe injury? Yes. But in the details, we reveal some issues.

The electrician was assigned to do some formwork by their foreperson; carpentry skills would be outside his scope of expertise.
It appears he was not given adequate tools or training to accomplish the task.
It appears there were no procedures in the company’s safety manual for cutting plywood on a table saw.
According to this union’s work jurisdiction rules, the employee should not have been doing carpentry work.

This was not a good reason to send him home, and the people involved knew it. Safety concern was brandished as the easy, immediate excuse to get rid of a worker instead of the hard labour relations work of progressive discipline.

Should the union have filed a grievance? Grieving discipline meted out due to a safety infraction can be tricky. It can send the wrong message to the employee and others in the company that they can get away with unsafe work. Like any potential grievance, much must be considered, such as the employee’s history and the severity of potential consequences of their actions.

The lesson this incident with the table saw imparts is that safety must be genuine. It must not be a shortcut, a loophole, or a weapon.

Safety is a tool, a culture, and a mindset. When it is used as a weapon, it just becomes another bogeyman that can jump out and get you.

Safety, Weaponized!

You might be interested in