Workplace injuries at 20-year low
Posted May 1, 2011 5:45 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
New statistics released from the province show Alberta’s workplace injury rates are at a 20-year record low.
However, the provincial fatality rate has actually increased by almost 24 per cent, to 78 deaths per million full-time jobs in 2010.
The Minister of Employment and Immigration, Thomas Lukaszuk tells 660News that’s concerning.
“Everybody is concerned about fatalities,” he says. “The number of fatalities is of utmost concern to me as a minister, and it continues to fluctuate. I will not rest until we see some real changes in those numbers.”
There were 136 workplace-related fatalities last year, a jump from 110 in 2009.
Most of the deaths were from occupational disease, fron people being exposed to unsafe work environments years ago.
Lukaszuk says he plans to develop a new occupational disease prevention program to reduce the number of workplace deaths.
“We have entered into a collaboration with Alberta Health and Alberta Wellness to develop best practices on how to minimize workers exposure to those agents, so that a minister 10 years from now will not have to report fatalities as a result of exposures on today’s job sites,” says Lukaszuk.
Meanwhile, the president of the Alberta Federation of Labour says Minister Lukaszuk is painting a rosy picture of what really is a poor record for workplace-related injuries and deaths.
Gil McGowan says Lukaszuk is conjuring up data to “downplay the real story on workplace injuries in Alberta.”
“The Minister is using spin in what we would describe as manipulated statistics to deny the problem that’s right in front of his nose,” says McGowan, “That problem is rising workplace injuries and rising workplace fatalities.
McGowan says it stretches the bounds of credibility that the injury rate is at a 20-year low, but the number of fatalities in 2010 actually went up from the year before.
He adds the number of injuries is most likely skewed, because employers don’t have any incentive to report real data to the government.
He says he’d like the government to come down harder on employers that don’t provide safe workplaces for their employees and to hire more provincial inspectors.
