Labour & Pop Culture: 40 Hour Week

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is Alabama’s “40 Hour Week”. This is a pretty facile tune that valourizes various occupations. What’s interesting about this song is, in labour relations terms, the ins and the outs. Basically who counts as a worthy worker in this song?

The song mentions autoworkers, steel mill workers, construction workers, cashiers, firefighters, postal carriers, farmers, coal miners, truck drivers, warehouse workers, waitresses, mechanics, and police officers.

Run through the list and look for the women (or, more accurately, occupations traditionally associated with female employment). I see cashiers and waitresses. While this may say more about my male-and-pale biases than those of Alabama, but what I see in the song is that workers—especially workers whose efforts receive praise—are mostly men in mostly blue collar jobs. 

Fair enough--that is likely who buys Alabama records! But there is school of thought that suggests that entertainment (e.g., songs and television shows) has a greater ability to influence our beliefs and values than news programming and other factual presentations because what we see and hear in entertainment tends to be integrated into our thoughts less consciously and thus triggers little conscious refutation.

Think about the TV show Friends. Chandler’s dad (Charles Bing) is a gay drag queen. Chandler is profoundly uncomfortable with this and there are lots of fairly mean jokes about his sexuality. This clearly homophobic behaviour totally got a pass in the 1990s and early 2000s because it was styled as entertainment. Would the same ideas presented as an argument have skated by as easily? Probably not.



There are people in this country
Who work hard every day
Not for fame or fortune do they strive
But the fruits of their labor
Are worth more than their pay
And it's time a few of them were recognized.

Hello Detroit auto workers,
Let me thank you for your time
You work a forty hour week for a livin',
Just to send it on down the line
Hello Pittsburgh steel mill workers,
Let me thank you for your time
You work a forty hour week for a livin',
Just to send it on down the line.

This is for the one who swings the hammer,
Driving home the nail
Or the one behind the counter,
Ringing up the sale
Or the one who fights the fires,
The one who brings the mail
For everyone who works behind the scenes.

You can see them every morning
In the factories and the fields
In the city streets and the quiet country towns
Working together like spokes inside a wheel
They keep this country turning around.

Hello Kansas wheat field farmer,
Let me thank you for your time
You work a forty hour week for a livin',
Just to send it on down the line
Hello West Virginia coal miner,
Let me thank you for your time
You work a forty hour week for a livin',
Just to send it on down the line.

This is for the one who drives the big rig,
Up and down the road
Or the one out in the warehouse,
Bringing in the load
Or the waitress, the mechanic,
The policeman on patrol
For everyone who works behind the scenes.

With a spirit you can't replace with no machine
Hello America, let me thank you for your time...

-- Bob Barnetson

CP Rail dinged for worker fatigue

A student flagged this article for me about CP Rail getting dinged by federal safety regulators for work systems that result in worker fatigue. Basically scheduling issues means workers often can’t predict their work schedule (and thus adjust their sleeping scheduling) so often arrive at work fatigued. This creates imminent danger, says the Transport Canada Report.

As Jason Foster and I note in our forthcoming OHS textbook, fatigue is a legitimate health and safety concern because workers who are experiencing fatigue are more likely to be involved in workplace incidents. Research has shown that fatigue can impair judgment in a manner similar to alcohol. WorkSafeBC reports the following effects: 

• 17 hours awake is equivalent to a blood alcohol content of 0.05 (legal limit in B.C. and Alberta) 
• 21 hours awake is equivalent to a blood alcohol content of 0.08 (legal limit in Canada) 
• 24-25 hours awake is equivalent to a blood alcohol content of 0.10

Most cases of fatigue are resolved through adequate sleep. The average person requires 7.5 to 8.5 hours of sleep a night (remember, this is an average – some require more, some less). While an employer cannot control how well a worker sleeps, they can adjust the workplace to militate against fatigue.

Shift scheduling is one of the most important administrative controls of fatigue: employers can ensure shifts are not too long and too close together as well as avoiding dramatic shift rotations. Employers can also ensure workplace temperatures are not too high, work is interesting and engaging without being too strenuous, and provide adequate opportunities for resting, eating, and sleeping (if necessary).

In the wake of this unprecedented regulatory action, CP has agreed to review shift scheduling but basically blames the workers and the union for it.

In a follow-up statement Monday, CP spokesman Martin Cej said, "Crews are not on call 24/7. Crews have significant and often unutilized opportunities to schedule rest. 

"CP has been taking steps to ensure crew members take more rest, but union collective agreements have been a barrier to change."

This explanation sits uneasily with the working conditions reported by workers:

He said a routine scenario could see him driving a train from his home community to another location between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m. but then having to wait 12 to 24 hours not knowing when he'll be assigned to drive a train back home.

"You get into your away- from-home terminal, say, at 6 a.m. in the morning. Then you go to bed, and you sleep until two o'clock in the afternoon. You get up. You're wondering when you're going to go back to work, And you look on your screen, and it's showing you not out of your away-from-home terminal now until midnight!" he said. 

That means he'll be awake for 10 hours before reporting for his next eight-hour shift, leaving him tired and, at times, nodding off at the train controls. 

"You're fatigued," he said. "You're done. Your brain is mush. You want to go to sleep. You're fighting constantly with your body. Your body is telling you one thing, but you know that on the other hand, you've got to get that train home … 150 miles of track."

One of the most interesting aspects of the CBC story is actually the correction printed at the bottom:

An earlier version of this story said CP was ordered to improve freight train scheduling. In fact, the Transport Canada order requires improvements to train line-ups, which allow employees to estimate when they'll be called to drive a train.

What this shows us is that, despite the imminent danger posed by fatigued crews, the government is only prepared to tell the employer to better communicate when the workers will work (so the workers can adjust their sleep scheduled). The government isn’t prepared to tell the employer to do a better job of scheduling trains to avoid lay overs that are often 20-hours.

This basically dumps the responsibility for being alert back on crews. In the example above, the worker would have be able to sleep (or otherwise rest) for 14- or 16-hours at a crew rest facility. That is better than the current situation (where the worker wouldn't know when to sleep longer), but it only addresses the proximate cause of fatigue (bad communication), not the root cause (bad scheduling).

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Busted

This week’s installment of labour & Pop Culture is Ray Charles’ 1963 hit “Busted” (which was also a hit for Johnny Cash the same year). 

The song is basically about unemployment during a market downturn—something many Albertans can likely relate to:

My bills are all due and the baby needs shoes and I'm busted
Cotton is down to a quarter a pound, but I'm busted

The third verse is the most interesting part of the song:

Well, I am no thief, but a man can go wrong when he's busted
The food that we canned last summer is gone and I'm busted
The fields are all bare and the cotton won't grow,
Me and my family got to pack up and go,
But I'll make a living, just where I don't know cause I'm busted.

This verse hints at two important effects of unemployment: crime and economic migration. Crime rates tend to get less attention in Alberta, but there are some suggestive and gendered effects. Alberta domestic violence, for example, was up 40% in 2015.

Abuse victims say layoffs and job hunting have ratcheted up stress in some homes, according to the domestic violence workers. 

"Whereas before the abuser might have been at work during the day" now they're home, [Andrea Silverstone, co-chair of the Calgary Domestic Violence Collective] said. Women feel more monitored and controlled if the partner stays home, she said, making it harder to leave or call for help.

This pattern seems consistent with that seen during other economic downturns, yet the underlying explanation is contested. A paper that lays out the evidence (mixed) and theories that attempt to example what (if any) connection exists between domestic violence and economic is available here.



My bills are all due and the baby needs shoes and I'm busted
Cotton is down to a quarter a pound, but I'm busted
I got a cow that went dry and a hen that won't lay
A big stack of bills that gets bigger each day
The county's gonna haul my belongings away cause I'm busted.

I went to my brother to ask for a loan cause I was busted
I hate to beg like a dog without his bone, but I'm busted
My brother said there ain't a thing I can do,
My wife and my kids are all down with the flu,
And I was just thinking about calling on you 'cause I'm busted.

Well, I am no thief, but a man can go wrong when he's busted
The food that we canned last summer is gone and I'm busted
The fields are all bare and the cotton won't grow,
Me and my family got to pack up and go,
But I'll make a living, just where I don't know cause I'm busted.

I'm broke, no bread, I mean like nothing, It's over

-- Bob Barnetson

Manager gets 3.5 years for killing 4, maiming 1

On Christmas Eve 2009, six employees of Metron Construction were repairing balconies at a Toronto high-rise apartment. All the men were newcomers to Canada, hailing from Latvia, Uzbekistan and Ukraine. They were on a swing-stage scaffolding (the type of suspended scaffolding you often see on the outside of tall buildings) working on a 13th floor balcony. 

Their project manager, Vadim Kazenelson, was on the balcony handing them tools. As Shohruh Tojiddinov, one of the workers on the scaffolding, later reported, Kazenelson decided to climb on to the scaffolding. “He said ‘where is the lifeline’ and (the site supervisor Fayzullo) Fazilov said ‘don't worry’. … (Kazenelson) jumped into the stage and the stage broke. … I had this harness and I was sort of hanging in the air. I looked up and I saw Vadim pulling me up. … I saw four deaths and one was still alive. I vomited.” 

As Kazenelson landed on the scaffolding, it split in two. Kazenelson was able to scramble back onto the balcony. The other five men fell to the ground, instantly killing four (Alesandrs Bondarevs, Aleksey Blumberg, Vladamir Korostin and Fazilov). The fifth, Dilshod Marupov, was left permanently disabled. The scaffolding had only two lifelines available for the seven men and Tojiddinov was the only one using the fall protection. The scaffolding had been provided to Metron by Swing N Scaff Inc., a scaffolding supply company.

The investigation that followed the incident revealed the scaffold was faulty and had not been designed or inspected properly by Swing N Scaff. It also found the men, whose knowledge of English was limited, were provided no training about working at heights or using fall protection. There was insufficient fall protection gear available to secure all the men. Following the incident Kazenelson attempted to cover up the incident. He instructed Tojiddinov to say that Kazenelson had been on the ground and gave him a safety manual on fall protection (in English, which Tojiddinov could not read), instructing him to say he had received it before the incident.

The owner of Metron Construction, scaffold supplier Swing N Scaff, and project manager Vadim Kazenelson were all convicted of offenses after the Toronto scaffolding collapse. Metron was fined $750,000 for offences under the Ontario OHS Act. Swing N Scaff was ordered to pay $400,000, also under the OHS Act. In June 2015, Kazenelson was convicted under the Criminal Code for criminal negligence causing death and criminal negligence causing bodily harm. He was sentenced about 10 days ago.

During sentencing on Monday, Judge Ian MacDonnell said he needed to impose a "significant term" on Kazenelson to make it clear to others that they have a "serious obligation" to ensure the safety of workers.  

MacDonnell said Kazenelson "decided it was in the company's interest" to allow men to work in "manifestly dangerous conditions." 

Court heard the work repairing balconies was behind schedule as Christmas Eve approached and that the company, Metron Construction Inc., would get a $50,000 bonus by finishing the project by Dec. 31.

Kazenelson’s sentence for negligence causing four men to die was three and a half years in jail. Successful prosecutions for OHS deaths are rare in Canada (there have been fewer than 10 since the Westray amendments were enacted in 2004). Hopefully this sentence sends a message to other employers considering trading their workers’ health for profit.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: And we thought the nation state was a bad idea

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is Propagandhi’s 1995 song “And we thought the nation state was a bad idea”. This is a thrashy (and rather preachy) song that I don’t much care for musically. But the lyrics highlight how bad employment is a consequence of the political economy.

Born, hired, disposed.
Where that job lands, everybody knows.
You can tell by the smile on the CEO,
Environmental restraints are about to go. 

You can bet laws will be set
To ensure the benefit
Of unrestricted labour laws,
Kept in place by displaced government death squads.

These verses highlight that allowing (and indeed facilitating) employers to make decisions that negatively affect workers and the environment is a choice by the state. Different economic and political decisions would yield very different workplaces.

That we have the rather unjust laws that we have suggests collusion (of some kind) between corporate and governmental actors to the detriment of the public interest. The consequences of this arrangement are covered up by corporate media.

Overall, this is fairly sharp critique of the political economy of western democracies. In a weird coincidence, Propagandhi will be playing the Starlite Room in Edmonton on February 9th.



"Publicly subsidized! Privately profitable!"
The anthem of the upper-tier, puppeteer untouchable.
Focus a moment, nod in approval,
Bury our heads back in the bar-codes of these neo-colonials.

Our former nemesis, the romance of the nation state,
Now plays fundraiser for a new brand of power-concentrate.
Try again, but now we're confused; what is "class war"?
Is this class war? Yes, this is class war.

And I'm just a kid.
I can't believe I gotta worry about this kind of shit.
What a stupid world.

And it's beautiful,
No regard for principle.
What a stupid world.

Born, hired, disposed.
Where that job lands, everybody knows.
You can tell by the smile on the CEO,
Environmental restraints are about to go.

You can bet laws will be set
To ensure the benefit
Of unrestricted labour laws,
Kept in place by displaced government death squads.

They own us.
They own us.
Produce us.
Consume us.

They own us.
They own us.
Produce us.
Consume us.

Can you fucking believe?
What a stupid world.

Fuck this bullshit display of class-loyalties.
The media and "our" leaders wrap it all up in a flag, shit-rag, hooray.

-- Bob Barnetson

OHS in small enterprises

Jason Foster and I are currently working on a new textbook on occupational health and safety. It will be an open educational resource (OER)—which means it will be free for anyone to use in digital format as well as available at a very low cost.

One of the things we’ve tried to focus on are small enterprises. Most private-sector workers are employed by companies with fewer than 100 employers (and more than a third are employed by companies with fewer than 20 workers). Small employers are largely absent from most OHS textbooks even though small enterprises have higher rates of workplace incidents.

There are many reasons for this heightened risk of injury, including the highly personalized nature of the employment relationship in smaller enterprises and a lack of safety resources, knowledge and capacity. Small enterprises are less likely to conduct hazard evaluations, which leads to higher levels of incidents. Smaller employers also often lack access to information and resources that can facilitate effective hazard assessment. They do not have in-house safety professionals to lead the process and lack training capacity.

In general the lack of knowledge and experience found in small enterprises decreases the likelihood a thorough hazards assessment will be conducted. Compounding this problem is that many of the existing hazards assessment processes and resources are aimed at larger enterprises and may appear ill-suited for a small operation. Small employers are also more likely to leave issues of workplace health and safety in the hands of their employees, which discourages effective hazard recognition, assessment and control (HRAC).

The challenge to implementing an effective HRAC in small enterprises can be significant. There are issues of resources as well as incorrect perceptions. Small employers possess fewer resources (in terms of time and money) to conduct hazard assessments which leads to inadequate assessments. Further, the cost of implementing controls can be more challenging for a smaller employer. Small employers (and their workers) may also feel like the requirements written into legislation don’t apply to their small operation and may instead rely on “informal” mechanisms for ensuring safety. These informal measures are less effective than formal HRAC processes. In general, small employers do not devote sufficient time and energy to safety.

In addition to being legally required across Canada, hazard identification is important for small enterprises because small enterprises have less margin for error than larger enterprises. Work processes tend to be completed by fewer people and in less time. This means there are fewer opportunities to consider safety issues and fewer people to monitor compliance. And, often in small enterpsies, the distance between employer and worker can also be short—often the employer performs substantially the same work alongside the workers.

One of the ways to overcome the challenges of HRAC in small enterprises is to start early. It is smart to ensure safe work processes are established at the beginning of operation because these processes can be difficult to alter once they are established. Formalizing safety processes is also very important in order to overcome peer pressure to let safety issues slide in small workplaces. While formal safety processes might feel “strange” at first, they are a crucial step to ensuring a safer workplace in small enterprises.

The closer ties between workers and employers can also aid employers in identifying hazards and hazard mitigation strategies, as it is easier for worker concerns to reach key decision makers. That said, workers in small enterprises may be reluctant to raise safety concerns when their employment is dependent upon their direct relationship with the employer. This speaks, once again, to the importance of establishing formal mechanisms for addressing safety issues.

-- Bob Barnetson

Labour & Pop Culture: Free in the Harbour

This week’s installment of Labour & Pop Culture is the late Stan Rogers’s “Free in the Harbour”. Like much of Rogers’s work, it focuses on the migration of workers from Atlantic Canada (in this case, from Hermitage Bay on the south shore of Newfoundland) west to the oil fields of Alberta.

What is particularly striking in this song is his enumeration of how migration entails leaving behind a community that continues on after one have left.

Well, it's living they've found, deep in the ground,
And if there's doubts, it's best they ignore them.
Nor think on the bones, the crosses and stones
Of their fathers that came there before them.
In the taverns of Edmonton, fishermen shout
Haul it away! Haul it away!
They left three hundred years buried up the Bay
Where the whales make free in the harbour.

The emotional impact of migration of both migrants and sending communities is rarely considered in right-wing prescriptions for reducing income support programs in order to trigger greater migration.



Well it's blackfish at play in Hermitage Bay
From Pushthrough across to Bois Island.
They broach and they sprout and they lift their flukes out
And they wave to a town that is dying.
Now it's many's the boats that have plied on the foam,
Hauling away! Hauling away!
But there's many more fellows been leaving their homes,
Where whales make free in the harbour.

It's at Portage and Main you'll see them again
On their way to the hills of Alberta.
With lop-side grins, they waggle their chins
And they brag of the wage they'll be earning.
Then it's quick, pull the string boys, and get the tool out,
Haul it away! Haul it away!
But just two years ago you could hear the same shout
Where the whales make free in the harbour.

Free in the harbour; the blackfish are sporting again
Free in the harbour; untroubled by comings and goings of men
Who once did pursue them as oil from the sea,
Hauling away! Hauling away!
Now they're Calgary roughnecks from Hermitage Bay,
Where the whales make free in the harbour.

Well, it's living they've found, deep in the ground,
And if there's doubts, it's best they ignore them.
Nor think on the bones, the crosses and stones
Of their fathers that came there before them.
In the taverns of Edmonton, fishermen shout
Haul it away! Haul it away!
They left three hundred years buried up the Bay
Where the whales make free in the harbour.

Free in the harbour; the blackfish are sporting again
Free in the harbour; untroubled by comings and goings of men
Who once did pursue them as oil from the sea,
Hauling away! Hauling away!
Now they're Calgary roughnecks from Hermitage Bay,
Where the whales make free in the harbour

-- Bob Barnetson