Toronto • May 28-29, 2010 • Student Day and Workshops: May 27
Paper: Occupational health and safety measures in small businesses employing immigrant workers in the Montreal
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Session : 11. Protecting vulnerable workers (2/2)
Day/Time: Saturday at 11:15
Room: St. David Room, 3rd Floor
Objectives:
This study seeks to understand the difficulties involved in appropriating workplace-safety measures in small businesses (SBs) with a high proportion (≥25%) of immigrant workers. The following research questions are:
-Which are the strategies and arguments conducive to management’s adoption of OHS measures in a context of market globalization that threatens profitability in SBs?
-How can the adoption of safety management be sustained to create a culture of workplace safety in such small businesses?
Methods:
It’s a descriptive design with a comparative group. The study population is composed of unionized and non-unionized private-sector SBs with fewer than 50 workers, of which at least 25% are immigrants (that is, born outside Canada) (n=20). Neither immigration status (citizen, landed immigrant, refugee, or awaiting status) nor length of stay in Canada is considered. One or more professionals, from any discipline, working in the Health and Social Services Center Montagne’s OHS team has conducted an intervention since June 2008 in the 20 SBs under study. The control group is composed of 10 SBs that fulfil the same criteria but do not employ as many immigrants. The enterprises in the control group thus employ fewer than 50 workers, of which 75% of are Canadian born. A mixed methodology is used, including questionnaires, structured interviews and analysis of technical health management data regularly entered on each SB by professionals.
Results:
The preliminary results indicate that managers hold a good number of arguments in favour of OHS. Obviously, production costs are of primary consideration: SBs must continually balance investment in production against immediate returns. However, the workers and employers have problems understanding OHS regulations. Half the respondents duly recognized that their knowledge of some of these issues was average and, in some cases, limited. Communication problems with allophone personnel in the studied companies arise during safety training. The barriers to comprehension are not solely linguistic; the actors also have difficulty grasping the OHS’culture, particularly the basic principle of worker-employer parity.
Conclusions:
The employment of immigrants is a solution to the problems of labour-force renewal in many countries. However, such workers are concentrated in very high-risk industries and they know little or nothing about their rights and duties about the available prevention methods. In order to develop culturally-appropriate health and safety activities, an essential basis is missing: a mutual and democratic commitment by both employers and employees to act upon preventive health and safety work. However, actors’ recognition that their understanding of health and safety laws and regulations is at best partial can lead them to seek support for their efforts.
