Toronto Workers’ Health & Safety Legal Clinic

1.   LAW REFORM

Since the Liberal government took office in 2003, the Ministry of Labour has focused most of its attention and energy on its enforcement strategy.  200 new inspectors were hired in 2004/05 and this has resulted in more inspection visits and orders issued, but more needs to be done.  The goal of the Ministry’s enforcement strategy is to reduce Ontario’s lost-time injury rate to 1.8 per 100 workers by 2008.

Highlights of the Clinic’s activities in the past year include:

(i)                     written submission to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) advocating the introduction of an accreditation program that would require employers to meet rigorous health and safety standards to qualify for financial incentives;

(ii)                appearance before the Standing Committee on Finance to support an amendment to the Workplace Safety and Insurance Act eliminating the practice of “deeming";

(iii)           appearance before the Standing Committee on the Legislative Assembly to support passage of Community Right to Know legislation;

(iv)                meeting with Ministry of Labour officials to advocate for more aggressive enforcement of health and safety legislation on behalf of migrant workers.

2.   CASEWORK

The Clinic continued to provide representation to individual clients before various boards and tribunals.  With the assistance of Clinic staff, 6 clients received approximately $35,000 in compensation awards for wrongful dismissals under health and safety, human rights and employment standards legislation.  In addition, the Clinic successfully represented 28 W.S.I.B., CPP and E.I. claimants who collectively were awarded over $880,000 in benefits under these three pieces of legislation ― 11 of these claims are ongoing and will provide the clients with income annually. 

As the above statistics disclose, the bulk of the Clinic’s casework in recent years has shifted from s.50 OHSA reprisal cases to WSIB appeals. This seems to reflect a growing fear and/or disinterest among low income workers in enforcing their rights under OHSA.

The Clinic also provided summary advice, brief services and referrals in respect of 225 clients and opened 51 new files in 2007.

     The Clinic’s Board of Directors have also had preliminary discussions about what services, if any, the Clinic should provide to workers who become involved in investigations/prosecutions under the Criminal Code.  To this point, no requests for services have been made.

The Clinic's Community Legal Worker made 8 visits to social service and community agencies serving the Clinic's potential client base.  The purpose of these visits is to ascertain ways to make information available to their clients about occupational health and safety and the services available from the Clinic.  An additional target is to have presentations by the Clinic included in core programming, as part of any pre-employment or re-training curriculum within a specific agency.

Direct contact with front-line staff of the community and government agencies that deal with the Clinic's target client group is the most important way in which awareness about the services available from the Clinic can be promoted.  We simply do not have the resources or manpower to reach the clients themselves through advertising or other promotional means.

The strategy of encouraging inclusion of occupational health and safety information in the core programming of community agencies through direct contact has been extremely successful.  The Clinic's CLW and volunteers made 164 presentations to approximately 3703 participants in 2006.  Unfortunately, due to funding cuts by HRSDC to several agencies where the Clinic has a long and established relationship, the number of participants and presentations went down last year.  Because of the change in government, it is unclear if this trend will continue in 2007.

The Clinic was able to continue to deliver the "Young Worker Awareness Program" ―  57 workshops were presented to approximately 559 participants.

The Clinic continues to publish a newsletter with a circulation list of over 250.  Each issue is an attempt to provide information and analysis of issues pertaining to occupational health and safety.

The Clinic maintains a web-site, www.worker-safety.com, to complement its communications strategy.  The site includes information about the Clinic and its services, Clinic publications and related links.  In addition, the Clinic has organized a team of volunteers who are dedicated to establishing a database of Coroners’ Jury Recommendations that became available on the website in 2007.  To date, over 4751 visits have been made to the site since September 2003.

     We hope to make further improvements to the website this year.

The Clinic continues to work with other groups, which share similar goals and objectives.  These groups include the following:

1.   Workers' Compensation Network

2.   Toronto Injured Workers Advocacy Group (TIWAG)

3.              O.F.L. Health and Safety Committee

4.              Employment Standards Work Group (ESWG)

5.              Bancroft Institute

6.              C.P.P. Disability Work Group

7.              Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers (OHCOW)

(www.ohcow.on.ca)

4.   STATISTICAL INFORMATION

The number of open files for the period ending March 31, 2008 were as follows:

Law Reform               22

CEO                     338

Casework                149

As of March 31, 2008, the Clinic had 215 members and a newsletter mailing list of approximately 265 names of individuals and organizations.

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