Forest Safety: BC's AG Says More Needs To Be Done

By 250 News

BC's Auditor General says more needs to be done to eliminate forest worker death and serious injury.

"The goal of eliminating forest worker death or serious injury has not been achieved. Strong leadership and commitment is required now to guide, complement and support efforts taken by industry," says John Doyle.

In 2006 alone, 13 workers were killed and 73 serious injuries occurred. 

Doyle concludes forest worker safety in British Columbia compares poorly to other high-risk industries, with three times the fatality rate.  In addition, injuries sustained by forestry workers tend to be more severe. 

"Government’s involvement in forest worker safety is fragmented among several bodies. Existing occupational health and safety regulations have not been vigorously enforced for all forest industry workers," he goes on to say. "There has been no detectable impact on rates of death and serious injury."

"If government is to meet its forest worker safety goals, action is required on a number of fronts," said Doyle. He makes 15 recommendations to the Ministry of Labour and Citizens’ Services, Ministry of Forest and Range and WorkSafeBC, to improve forest worker safety.


The key findings in Doyle's audit:

• Responsibility for safety has been transferred to contractors: The current expectation in the industry is that the smallest contractors and subcontractors (firms that may typically employ five or fewer workers) will carry the largest burden of worker safety. These smaller firms, many of whom are self-employed individuals, generally lack the knowledge, organization and financial resources to meet safety
  responsibilities.
  
• Planning for safety is weak: Currently, timber harvest planning does not include safety as a major goal. Plans are not developed or reviewed by safety experts, and the people reviewing plans lack the expertise to make safety assessments. In coal mining in this province, both the extraction plan and the equipment to be used must be reviewed for safety, and authorized, before any activity takes place. No equivalent process exists in timber extraction.
  
• There is not enough on-site supervision: At present, supervision in British Columbia’s forest industry is spotty and very often entirely absent. Forest industry culture still makes a virtue of working without
  supervision. Traditionally, the industry has considered some tasks, such as tree falling, as not needing close supervision. Yet some of the most serious incidents happen in this activity.
  
• Compliance and enforcement activities are not sufficient to eliminate death and serious injury: Inspections, education and enforcement activity have not been sufficient to eliminate death and serious injury. WorkSafeBC’s inspections and prevention sections cut staffing from 2002 to 2004, just at the time when large forestry firms were disappearing and many small contractors were being hired by forest
  licensees to do the most dangerous work. More recently, some small increase in personnel has occurred, but that increase has not been matched to the risk presented by the loss of forest worker safety
  infrastructure.
  
• Information is not being adequately analyzed: Because no government agency is currently monitoring all activity in the forest sector, important analytical work is not being done. No government body has the lead for monitoring the entire forest industry and reporting on progress in eliminating death and serious injury of forestry workers.
  

A copy of the full report is available at: http://bcauditor.com

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