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Giving thanks to workers on Labour Day

As we prepare to celebrate Labour Day 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought into laser focus the vital role that workers play in keeping us safe.
Andrew Mercier

As we prepare to celebrate Labour Day 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought into laser focus the vital role that workers play in keeping us safe.

In Canada, the Labour Day statutory holiday was the result of an 1886 Royal Commission that looked at ways to ease conflicts between labour and capital. It was a difficult time for workers. Unions had only been legal for 15 years and it was common for workers to spend 12 hours a day, six days a week doing their job.

The commission made many recommendations that would have improved worker safety and reduced workplace fatalities, but the proclamation of a new holiday to honour workers was the only one accepted. From health-care workers, custodians and child care providers to grocery clerks, construction workers and bus drivers, workers are the reason B.C. has been able to flatten the curve.

Most people understand these workers to be essential and agree they should be compensated accordingly. A recent poll by Community Savings Credit Union showed that 88 per cent of British Columbians support permanent “levelled up” pay for long-term care workers. CSCU is hoping to build on this public support and has initiated the 7:01 Movement to lobby for better pay and benefits for the workers who take care of some of the most vulnerable people in society.

The pandemic has also revealed deficiencies in working conditions, with construction providing some of the most notorious examples of inadequate sanitation. In the pandemic’s early days, we heard from construction workers across the province who believed they were putting their lives at risk going to work.

Some sent us photos and videos to help tell their stories: these showed crowds of workers failing to physically distance, a garden hose attached to a piece of wood as a washing station, dirty portable toilets void of either hand sanitizer or toilet paper, workers standing shoulder to shoulder in corridors and elevators.

These are unacceptable conditions, pandemic or no pandemic.

In fact, B.C. has excellent occupational health and safety regulations on the books that already require workers be provided sufficient sanitation facilities. The problem was that no one was enforcing them. Our calls for WorkSafeBC to enforce the regulations resulted in the establishment of a special inspectional initiative with a focus on construction.

Prior to the start of the pandemic, 40 per cent of the agency’s officers were already dedicated to the construction sector, including more than 70 officers exclusively working with employers and contractors to ensure they fulfilled their obligations to provide safe and healthy workplaces.

By the third week of March, however, almost all of WorkSafeBC’s more than 300 officers were focused on COVID-19 inspections, including 120 dedicated entirely to construction. By July 31, these officers had conducted more than 2,800 COVID-19-related inspections of construction sites and issued 85 compliance orders. To put that into perspective, only the manufacturing (102) and service (146) sectors were issued more orders.

To say sanitation in the construction sector is an issue is an understatement, and that’s why we’re also calling for a public inquiry into health, safety and sanitation practices in the sector. These workers are building our province – the roads we drive on, the homes we live in, the buildings where we work, our schools and hospitals. They don’t deserve the second-class treatment they’ve been getting.

So this year on Labour Day, let us recommit ourselves to keeping the workers safe who keep us safe, and give thanks for all they do, every day.

Thanks to the health care workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thanks to the grocery store workers ensuring we have food and other supplies necessary to stay safe at home.

Thanks to the transportation workers delivering those goods.

Thanks to the construction workers building and maintaining vital infrastructure.

And thanks to all the other thousands of essential workers who continue to help our province fight this deadly pandemic.

Andrew Mercier is the executive director of the 35,000-member BC Building Trades Council.