Quote:
Originally Posted by stewie
Forgot to add, all the wcb safety officer people that surprise us at job sites...we don't get handed violation tickets, the entire crew gets a 5 day immediate suspension without pay, even if it was just 1 guy doing something wrong.
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Normally what happens if is they do their inspection they notice a whole bunch of minor things. They summarize these quickly to your site safety person, then they head back to their office and generate a huge report.
This report is sent off to the company, as well as filed away by Worksafe. Do poorly continuously on these reports, or on multiple sites, and your premiums start to go higher and higher.
On the subject of premiums:
For those that don't know the way Workers compensation works here in canada is that it is a mandatory program for all employers. Your business is seperated into one of 551 classifications, and then further classified into one of 51 or so sub classifications. Based on this you are assigned a "Base rate" this base rate is then futhur affected by your work history, company history, claims history, and a bunch of other factors. The idea being that roofing is a much more dangerous business to run than accounting, and further to that if you have a bad record you are at even more risk. So then this rate your company gets will be a dollar figure. Lets say its like $5.42. That means that for every $100 you pay an employee you must pay Worksafe $5.42.
In return for this $5.42 they protect you from lawsuit, they will pay out any injury claims to an employee on your behalf. In return for having this quick and guaranteed payout, the worker forfeits their right to sue the employer for damage done.
So think of Worksafe like insurance for workers safety claims.
However their mandate goes farther then that, they are also tasked with the responsibility of worker safety. Which is why they care about stuff like Fall Protection for roofers, and proper PPE and such. Its not just because if something happens they have to pay for the injury, its because they are mandated to help improve worker safety in this fine province of ours. This is also why they help with accident investigations, and also conduct inspections.
Back to that inspection that the WorkSafe inspector conducted, if he notices something of inherit danger, or one of the "7 deadly sins of Worksafe" he will either send the crew home, or shut down the site.
Normally when this happens it is bad news for the company responsible.
For information sake, the 7 deadly sins in construction are stuff like:
- excavations above worker height with no shoring (or engineering),
-Working near live power lines
-asbestos
-Confined space
-etc.
Source: I spent 2 months learning about this BS in some godawful construction business administration class.
EDIT: My point in all this is that Worksafe does not ticket employees, if they see something wrong it lands in the lap of the employer to deal with. This goes back to some of the fundamentals of worksafe and worker responsibilities vs employer responsibilities.