Workplace fatality prosecutions in Alberta: Going down!

One of the arguments against the Bill 45 is that the penalties unions face are entirely out of proportion with other penalties found in Alberta's employment laws.

For example, if there is an illegal strike over an unsafe workplace, the union automatically gets hit with $250k in fines, $1m a day in abatement costs, a three-month dues suspension plus individual members get fined and union officers can be held civilly liable. Keep in mind that there have been 2 illegal strikes since 2005, lasting a combined total of (I think) 5 days.

On the other hand, if an employer kills a worker, the maximum fine they face under the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Act is $500k. On average, there are 137 fatalities in Alberta workplaces each year.

A deeper look at Alberta’s OHS prosecution records suggests an even starker contrast: employers are unlikely to be prosecuted if they kill a worker and they will get no where near the maximum fine.

The table below tracks prosecution numbers (not all are about fatalities, but most are) and average penalties from 2005 to December 20, 2013. The averages I calculated by hand from government data on the Human Services website. I’ve also thrown in the number of compensable fatalities reported by the WCB each year (the underestimates fatalities but is the best data available).

OHS prosecutions in Alberta, 2005 to 2013

Year	Prosecutions	Average Penalty	Fatalities
2005	12	$46,000	143
2006	10	$153,000	123
2007	12	$143,000	154
2008	22	$231,000	166
2009	7	$65,000	110
2010	11	$157,000	136
2011	20	$172,000	123
2012	9	$404,000	145
2013	5	$488,000	n/a

What this data shows is that the number of occupational fatalities has stayed roughly the same over time. Small numbers tend to vary more year-to-year, but the long-term average is about 137 a year.

The number of prosecutions (while also variable) is trending downwards over time. That is to say, employers are less likely to be prosecuted for killing workers.

The dollar value of fines is trending upwards. But the big jumps in 2012 and 2013 are a bit misleading—they are skewed because of the small number of prosecutions and for a few really big fines for incidents with multiple violations (which confuses both the numerator and denominator).

Looking at specific cases in 2012 and 2013, the average penalty for killing a worker in Alberta is now between $200k and $300k ($275k was the most recent one I saw). Overall, this is a disappointing record and shows that employers continue to face few and low fines for killing workers.

-- Bob Barnetson