Safety Ombudsman Busy
By 250 News
The B.C. Forest Safety Council says Safety Ombudsman Roger Harris is busy.
"One of the things you have in this industry is the fact that you have these large companies at the top and many many contractors and depending on the areas that you are in , not a lot of alternatives."" says Forest Safety Council CEO Tanner Elton. "There’s lots of contractors who will say I’m a Tolko contractor, I’m a West Fraser contractor, I’m a Canfor contractor, and we have a relationship." Elton says that is why the contractors need an ombudsman because if there is a problem, they aren’t likely "to raise their head above the trench".
Elton says at the time when they were developing the Ombudsman post, Canfor CEO Jim Shepperd was present. "One company rep said, contractors shouldn’t be worried about the licensee, and Jim said God if I were one of my contractors I would be afraid of me!"
Elton says there are about 30 files Harris is working on and those are only the ones we know about. He says there have been some cases where there have been complaints that a company didn’t deal with a contractor fairly, and those have been dealt with in a confidential manner.
Harris is finding and acting on some group issues says Elton "One that he has found with workers is they are very concerned about certification and how it is going to be rolled out. Some fallers think we rolled over them as opposed to rolling out the program."
Elton says the industry is very fortunate to have a person like Roger Harris to hold the post. "He has worked in every part of the industry, was a former injured worker, a member of the IWA and being a former Minister of the Crown is a credential because he knows people and knows his way around."
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I remember teaching some evening courses for small company forest workers in contract law about 15 years ago. Compared to the well developed system in the Construction Industry, the forestry situation is feudal to put it mildly.
Harris simply ain't going to fix that. The Forestry Industry is lacking the strengths of an organization such as the Construction Associations which are tied together and develop and use common documents which are the industry standard. It simply does not exist in forestry nor will it appear overnight, if ever.
In fact, I venture to say that if forestry people who are not looking at other industries are in charge of making some beneficial changes, there will be no changes. There is no need to re-invent the wheel. Tweak it maybe, but the framework is there elsewhere.
Now, introduce into that poorly working model the notion that one has to be a safe company, a notion forced onto them by BCFSC (which is merely an offshoot of WorkSafeBC, which itself is an organization that gets its authority from government, and no matter how many times it changes its name it is still WCB), and you have companies that are being hit over the head once too often through no fault of their own.
Yes, the safety record in the industry is attrocious. There are other ways by which it has to be fixed if one really wants to get serious about it.