The ability paradigm in vocational rehab

The Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation just published “The ‘Ability’ Paradigm in Vocational Rehabilitation: Challenges in an Ontario Injured Worker Retraining Program.” This article examines the “grey zone” between ability and disability as it affects vocational rehab for those with permanent disabilities or chronic health conditions in Ontario’s WCB system.

The short of it is that focusing on workers’ abilities in the workplace underestimates the impact of chronic and unstable health on return to work. For example, the impact of medication on workers’ ability to focus or even attend programming poses a significant barrier to program completion, let alone reintegration into the workforce. Further, the medical accommodations required by students to complete the program may not be available in the workplace, meaning program completers may not be able to function in the workplace.

WCB-related incentives (including those associated with experience rating) encourage employers to direct the least capable workers into this program. Specifically, employers are penalized for putting workers into the program (thus kept them at work on modified duties as long as possible). Those workers who were sent to the program tended to be those who could not (or no longer) be accommodated in the workplace. This creates a reverse creaming effect for the program.

The article also discusses the effect of contracting out this service and the complex communication pathways on the ability to providers to know and address the needs of workers. The net effect (and I’m summarizing some) is that workers deemed employable (which is often the point workers’ compensation benefits are reduced or cut off) may have difficulty securing employment after participating in the program because focusing on worker ability tends to ignores important environmental conditions.

-- Bob Barnetson

Globe article on Temporary Foreign Workers

The Globe had a brief article on temporary foreign workers following the death of 10 migrant farm workers in Ontario earlier this week. One of the more interesting quotes was this one:

What took Alec Farquhar aback when he arrived in Simcoe, Ont., one Friday evening in 2009 to bring a mobile medical clinic to migrants was the size of a labour network of which he’d only been tangentially aware.

“It's like a whole different town. It's taken over by farm workers. And you get this sense of this hidden community in our midst – the people who are serving our basic needs and we don’t know who they are. I found it profoundly moving. And unsettling,” he said.

Road fatalities among migrant workers occur every couple of years. The last one that comes to mind offhand was the 2007 rollover in BC where three migrant workers died and 13 or 14 others were injured.

-- Bob Barnetson

Teacher bargaining stalls

It appears that bargaining between the Alberta Teachers’ Association (ATA), the Alberta School Boards Association (ASBA) and the provincial government for a new collective agreement has broken down over the issue of workload. The teachers’ current contract expires at the end of August.

The government and the ASBA have framed this issue as being about instructional time. Consider this comment by Minister of Education Thomas Lukaszuk:

"The face time that children have with their teachers is non-negotiable. So our position on behalf of the children is that we want to make sure that there is no diminished learning time."

The ATA suggests the issue is about the broader concept of workload. This would include discussion of non-instructional duties (e.g., meetings, supervision, clerical tasks), which comprise a significant amount of teachers’ work. To bolster their case, the ATA has released a report on teacher workload.

The nub of the report is that the 20 teachers in the study worked an average of 55.7-hours a week (although there was significant variation between participants). Of the 55.7 hours worked, 80 per cent were spent on core instructional activity such as teaching, planning, assessing and reporting. Among the factors driving teacher working time are work intensification, demands driven by technology and increasingly complex student needs.

Before getting drawn into the government’s and ASBA’s framing of the issue (which is basically “oh, think of the children”), it is useful to remember that negotiations are primarily about money. Specifically, limiting teacher workloads will cost the school boards (and thus the government) more money because teachers will have a more effective way to resist work intensification.

It is also useful to see the broader political context. The government sought to resolve teacher bargaining before the spring election so as to neutralize the issue during the campaign and lock up support for the premier among educators and parents. Since this isn’t going to happen, the government is now attempting to place the blame for impasse on the teachers.

And, if provincial talks founder, then bargaining may devolve to individual school boards and locals. This gives the government some deniability if the poop hits the fan in the autumn: school boards are autonomous, although the length of their leash is determined by government funding.

And local bargaining creates difficulties for the ATA maintaining discipline among their locals. Some locals are stronger than others and if a weak local takes a crappy deal, then the ATA either has to nix the deal (which will be politically awkward) or accept a deal that starts an undesirable settlement pattern.

-- Bob Barnetson

Right to strike under the Charter

A court case in Saskatchewan has struck down a law which limited the right of public-sector workers to strike. David Doorey has a nice explanation and analysis. The constitutional protection accorded various labour rights has been in some flux for the past 10 years and this decisions is one of several recent decisions to watch.

If this decision is upheld on appeal to the Supreme Court, it raises questions about a number of Alberta statutes which preclude strike action, including the Public Sector Employee Relations Act (no strikes for public sector workers), the Labour Relations Code (no strikes for public health care employees) and the Post-Secondary Learning Act (college and university faculty).

-- Bob Barnetson

Using a labour shortage to recommodify labour

There was an article in the Edmonton Journal this weekend about Alberta’s labour shortage. The article said in part:

With low unemployment here and higher jobless rates in Central and Eastern Canada, (chair of the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce Ken) Barry said the issue of encouraging the jobless to relocate has been pushed for some time.

"(Chamber members) were in Ottawa this fall and had conversations with federal and Ontario politicians. It seems there is not a compelling enough reason to get somebody who has grown accustomed to whatever lifestyle they have, through EI (employment insurance) or whatever, to move across the country," he said Friday.

This is an example of the discouse that has developed around the recommodification of labour. Recommodification is a complicated concept, but a rough-and-ready explanation is that, by denying individuals access to the necessities of life (via reducing income support payments), governments can compel workers to be more responsive to the demands of employers, regardless of workers’ personal preferences.

Take a minute to re-read Barry’s quote carefully. It appears to contain two basic assumptions. First, individuals are defined as workers who should be (but aren't) responsive to the needs of employers. Second, where social programs assist workers to resist or ignore the demands of employers, the state should constrain or eliminate those programs.

It is useful to recall that unemployed workers are not just workers. They are members of a family and a community. They may well have good reason to resist uprooting themselves and their families to come work for Alberta employers. Perhaps they have aging parents to care for or kids in school. Or perhaps the wages offered at their new destination may be poor or the working conditions may be unsafe.

It is also useful to recall that these individuals are also citizens, with rights to certain income support programs (often programs they have funded themselves through paycheque deductions) and a right to live where they choose. Shouldn’t we respect the rights of unemployed individuals to access income support programs and choose where they want to live rather than cutting off access to social programs and using the whip of hunger to force workers to come to Alberta?

Perhaps a better approach (as Barry seems to suggest later) is to induce workers to come to Alberta? Barry's suggestions for doing so (playing up the weather, having a good transportation system) don't really resonate with me as a worker. I might prefer higher wages, job security and safe working conditions. That difference reflects the underlying conflict between the interests of employers (who want cheap, abundant labour) and worker (who want adequate compensation, the opportunity to choose between jobs, and safe working conditions).

-- Bob Barnetson

Child labour in BC

A new project has been launched to examine the impact of loosening BC's child labour laws (back in 2003). BC's child labour laws were relaxed to offload responsibility to parents, according to the government, because the laws were hard to enforce (insert sound of my head exploding).

Not surprisingly, injuries to young workers have increased significantly since that time. In fact, there was a tenfold increase in the number of reported workplace injuries by children 12-14 during the first five years after this change. It is unclear whether this is a reporting effect or an actual change, but my guess is that when you loosen the rules, hazard exposure will increase, thus driving greater injury.

The BC government has declined to alter its approach despite the upswing in child injury. Loosening the rules also has the effect of making child labour invisible as the government has no idea where children are being employed. This is politically convenient ("child labour? I don't see no child labour") but seems contrary to the basic principle that we ought to protect children from harm.

-- Bob Barnetson

Root causes of workplace in injury in Nova Scotia

I ran across “Patterns of Root Cause in Workplace Injury” by Bruce Dodge the other day. This paper summarizes a qualitative investigation of serious workplace injury events in Nova Scotia. It focuses on determining root causes (rather than proximate causes) of injury.

The article has some interesting bits:

“A picture emerges from the data of employers who have not effectively managed workplace safety or implemented comprehensive safety systems. This is not to say employers with safety systems do not have injuries, but the dominant picture emerging from the investigation data is of workplaces where safety is not a recognized role of management, or is not a priority.” (p.12)

“Leadership recognition and acceptance of their role in safety emerges as the single most important element missing across workplaces reflected in the injury based data set. A lack of awareness of safety, or lack of understanding about how to conduct work safely, identify hazards and create safe means of conducting the work is prevalent in the injury data. The technical side of how to prevent injuries is readily available for the needs of most workplaces, what appears to be absent is the decision to create safe workplaces and commit to actions to consciously and intentionally prevent injury.” (p.12)

“The imbalance of power in the workplace is reflected in activities undertaken by workers knowing they are at risk. Management commitment to safety must be demonstrated through events, not simply stated. The injury-based data reflects an underlying premise that workers are expected to do what needs to be done, without unduly concerning themselves with risk.” (p.13)

Ouch! This seems to add to the argument that employers cannot really be trusted to ensure workers' safety through self-regulation.

-- Bob Barnetson