Introduction
The first time I taught an undergraduate course in employment and labour law I went around the class of 50 students and asked them to say if they had held jobs and if so, what kind? The first assignment in the course asked them to write about a workplace conflict that they had experienced or observed, and tie it to the course readings.
I noticed some patterns in the papers that I received: non-payment during training periods, confiscation of tips, promises made on hiring that turned out not to be true. By and large, these were vulnerable young employees. Much of the work they had done was part-time, contract, temp, or other forms of tenuous work. The subject that I had found most concerning was their experience around health and safety in the workplace.
Experiences of my students
Out of 50 papers, 14 chose to recount conflicts in the workplace relating to health and safety issues. These included interpersonal incidents, such as a young woman being told to confront an aggressive thief in a retail situation; another being left at a location alone where she dealt with a delusional man making various demands including that she “touch his hands” (she discovered later that the employer’s health and safety committee had previously recommended that no employee should be sent to this location alone); a young woman who was sent to mow grass on a back road by herself while the three men in her crew worked together in another area; the only man in a workplace who had his schedule constantly changed but was told to “man up” and not be “such a bitch” when he raised his concerns; and a manager who falsely accused retail staff of “going missing”, being on their phones. He followed young male staff into the washroom to make sure they weren’t leaving.
On the physical side, students recounted the following: One got a four inch burn on her arm from a hot fryer and continued to work as she believed that she would lose her job if she went home. She told her supervisor that “it didn’t hurt that much” and tended her wound at home in secret. Even after the accident she was provided with no protective equipment other than an apron. One student continued to work in a retail environment for hours with a temperature of -20 C and no running water or toilet as the manager on call would not respond to his or his colleagues’ calls or messages asking for permission to close the store. One was on a job which involved moving large items such as freezers and pianos. The three person crew had little training and constantly argued over proper lifting technique. In the end, two colleagues tried to lift a 315 pound freezer into a house alone with the result that one was injured and taken to hospital by ambulance. One student found herself under pressure to lift a patient by herself with a broken Hoyer lift. In this case, after some back and forth, the employer agreed to get the lift repaired and use two staff to make the lifts until this was done. One student was on shift when the lumber cutting person at her place of work was on a lunch break, and an impatient customer insisted that his lumber be cut immediately as he could not wait. Eventually another staff person agreed to make the cut, caught his thumb in the saw blade, was taken away to hospital, and told he would lose the use of his thumb.
Gen Z, the age of my students, are often teased for being delicate flowers, and I did see some of that (as in every generation). Much more common, however, was a sense that, as one student wrote: “If you are told to do something by a manager you are required to do it because it is your job." Most, in fact almost all, of the students in my course were astonished to discover that they had the right to refuse unsafe work under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, and most had dealt with their workplace hazards by toughing it out or quietly looking for another job.
These students undertook unsafe work because they were young and inexperienced, lacked awareness and confidence, because they were vulnerable (probationary, immigration status, low-income), and many because they were keen to do a “good job”. One spent “months begging my parents to let me quit” and one had parents who told her she should have quit sooner.
Need to prepare students
There has been a move in the schools to teach students life skills. I know from my background in workers compensation the statistics for serious or critical injury among new and young workers. It is very common for a young worker to be injured, even critically injured, on the first day or the first couple of days on a job. They may have not yet received their mandatory safety training, but are asked to or take on a task. My undergraduate students made it clear to me how common these issues are for them, and how little they understood about their rights and the risks involved. If we are teaching high school students about financial literacy, budgeting, family studies or food prep, this is my pitch for spending an hour, two, or three on occupational health and safety before they are launched onto the job market.
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