The Future Culture of Mining Safety and Health In North America

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Winnipeg, Manitoba
--- Upon resuming on Friday, September 24, 1999

Plenary Session (Canada) - Partnerships For Managing Safety and Health - Séance plénière (Canada) - Les partenariats en matière de gestion de la sécurité et de la santé au travail - Sesión Plenaria (Canadá) - Las Asociaciones para la Gestión de la Seguridad e Higiene

MS. MAY MORPAW (Director, Inter-American Labour Cooperation, Federal Co-Chair): Good morning. Bonjour tout le monde. Muy buenos días.

The first session this morning is on Partnerships for Managing Safety and Health. Our moderator is Dr. José Luis Lee Moreno. He will be introduced at the next session when he is a speaker.

I will turn this over to Dr. José Luis Lee Moreno, from Mexico.

DR. JOSÉ LUIS LEE MORENO (Director General, Cámara Nacional de la Industria Minera): Muchas gracias May. May ya hizo parte de mi trabajo presentando la sesión de hoy, y dando el nombre de nuestro expositor, yo haré únicamente la presentación del Sr. Gérald Lachance, debe decirles que mi nombre es José Lee y yo soy el Director General de la Cámara Minera de México.

El Sr. Gérald Lachance, es ingeniero de minas e inició su carrera en las minas de asbestos en Black Lake en Quebec, trabajando como mecánico de equipo pesado diesel. En 1970, se convirtió en oficial del sindicato de obreros siderúrgicos, y en 1972 pasó a ser presidente de su sección local hasta 1977. En 1977 fue nombrado funcionario sindical de tiempo completo en la región de Montreal. Su trabajo consistía en actuar en calidad de negociador y de agente de salud y seguridad para defender las quejas en casos de reclamaciones de accidentes laborales o ante los tribunales de arbitraje.

En 1987, el Sr. Lachance asume las funciones de coordinador de salud y seguridad para todas las secciones locales, a partir de ese momento puede asistir a las reuniones de la Comisión de Salud y Seguridad en el Trabajo. Más adelante, pasaría a ser miembro de la misma para la revisión del reglamento de minas. Ese comité adquiriría posteriormente la condición de permanente y en este comité se encuentra todavía el Sr. Lachance.

El Sr. Lachance es miembro representante de los obreros siderúrgicos de Quebec para la federación de trabajadores de Quebec. Ha participado en la unificación de los reglamentos industriales y comerciales que con el tiempo se convertirán en el Reglamento sobre la Calidad del Medio Laboral. Es también co-presidente de la Asociación Sectorial Paritaria Metálica y Eléctrica desde hace 15 años y ha sido miembro de la Asociación Paritaria Sectorial de Minas durante seis años. Es miembro del Comité de Salud y Seguridad en el Trabajo de la oficina nacional y se encarga también de dar información en materia de salud y seguridad. Dejo con ustedes al Sr. Gérard Lachance.

M. GÉRARD LACHANCE (Responsable santé, sécurité et environnement, Syndicat des Métallos, District 5, Montréal): Bonjour. Mesdames et messieurs, bonjour. Je tiens d'abord à remercier les organisatrices et organisateurs de la conférence de m'avoir invité à faire cet exposé. Je suis très heureux d'être ici aujourd'hui pour représenter le Québec, à l'intérieur du Canada naturellement.

J'agis à titre de responsable québécois en santé et sécurité et environnement au Syndicat des Métallos, affilié à la Fédération des Travailleurs du Québec (FTQ), qui compte plus de 50 000 membres dans différents secteurs d'activités au Québec.

Je vais vous expliquer, comment au Québec, les gens de l'industrie minière et les responsables en santé et sécurité du travail ont travaillé ensemble pour améliorer la santé et la sécurité dans des mines souterraines et à ciel ouvert. Afin que vous puissiez mieux comprendre comment nous sommes organisés, je vais d'abord vous présenter les origines du régime québécois dans la santé et sécurité au travail. Je vais vous expliquer également comment se fait la prévention des accidents du travail au Québec. Vous verrez que nous avons plusieurs particularités, dont nous sommes très fiers.

Le régime québécois de santé et sécurité au travail remonte au début des années 30. En 1931, le Gouvernement du Québec sanctionnait une loi, qui s'appelait la Loi des accidents du travail, et qui a marqué la naissance d'un nouveau régime d'indemnisation pour les travailleurs accidentés.

Encore aujourd'hui, nous faisons souvent allusion au "deal" historique de '31. Les employeurs s'engageaient à financer entièrement le régime d'indemnisation des travailleurs accidentés et, en retour, ils bénéficiaient d'un régime collectif d'assurance-responsabilités, sans égard à la faute. Ça voulait dire que les employeurs ne pouvaient plus faire l'objet de poursuites individuelles devant les tribunaux de la part d'un travailleur accidenté. Depuis ce temps, la loi a été amendée à plusieurs reprises, mais le principe de base est demeuré.

En 1980, le Gouvernement du Québec a adopté une loi sur la santé et sécurité du travail, une loi avant-gardiste à bien des égards.

Le rôle de la CSST: La Commission de la santé et de la sécurité au travail, communément appelée CSST, a alors reçu mandat du gouvernement de gérer le régime québécois de la santé et de la sécurité au travail. Ceci comprend l'indemnisation des travailleurs et travailleuses qui ont subi un accident de travail ou qui souffrent de maladies professionnelles; de la réadaptation de ces travailleurs; de la prévention et de l'inspection des lieux du travail; et du financement du régime.

Une des particularités du Québec est que la CSST est un organisme paritaire. Cela veut dire que l'on retrouve sur le conseil d'administration un nombre égal de représentants des travailleurs et des employeurs, en plus du président qui agit comme chef de direction de la CSST. Je siège d'ailleurs sur différents comités à la Commission de santé et sécurité au travail comme représentant des travailleurs depuis 1980. Je représente le secteur des mines et, plus particulièrement, les travailleurs de ce secteur et d'autres secteurs aussi.

La Loi de santé et sécurité au travail, c'est quoi? Cette loi, qui régit la prévention et inspection, est entrée en vigueur le 1er décembre 1982. Il faut vous dire qu'avant cette entrée en vigueur il y a eu beaucoup de démarches. Il y a un Livre blanc qui impliquait les travailleurs et les employeurs pour arriver à un consensus pour faire cette loi.

Le but visé était d'éliminer à la source les dangers pour la santé, la sécurité et l'intégrité physique des travailleurs et travailleuses dans tous les milieux de travail. La loi établit donc un mécanisme de participation des travailleurs, des employeurs et leurs représentants à l'atteinte de cet objectif, c'est-à-dire l'élimination à la source du danger.

Au Québec, le fondement de la prévention repose sur la prise en charge de la santé et sécurité par chaque milieu de travail. Cela signifie que c'est un milieu de travail, c'est-à-dire l'employeur, en collaboration avec le travailleur, qui est le responsable de la santé et de la sécurité dans l'entreprise.

Quant à la CSST, elle joue le rôle d'inspection des lieux de travail. Elle assure l'application de la Loi et exige les corrections, si nécessaire. Je vous expliquerai plus tard comment cela s'est concrétisé pour les mines.

Pour favoriser cette prise en charge paritaire, le législateur a prévu différents moyens, dont l'élaboration d'un programme de prévention de la santé par les entreprises.

Nous avons aussi une particularité, qui est la désignation d'un représentant à la prévention, qui vient du côté des travailleurs, choisi par les travailleurs. C'est une particularité, et a force de loi.

La CSST agit en tant que chef de file en prévention. En plus d'avoir le rôle de soutien pour aider les entreprises à améliorer la sécurité, elle est responsable de l'application de la Loi. Les inspecteurs qui travaillent à la CSST doivent donc: (1) assurer le respect des lois, des règlements et des normes; (2) exiger des correctifs; (3) évaluer les programmes de prévention, les plans et devis qui leur sont soumis par les entreprises -- principalement dans les mines, c'est un point dont on a fait une vérification toute particulière; (4) enquêter lors d'accidents et, en cas de danger immédiat, agir rapidement pour arrêter les travaux dans un établissement, ou mettre des scellés sur les machines. Ce sont les pouvoirs de l'inspecteur.

Au Québec, toutes les entreprises n'ont pas à mettre en place ce mécanisme de prévention. Mais je dois vous dire que dans le secteur minier, c'est un mécanisme qui est là depuis le tout début, ainsi que dans la construction et plusieurs autres secteurs.

Par sa nature, le secteur des mines a été classé comme un secteur dit prioritaire. Étant donné le nombre d'accidents qui étaient là auparavant, ceci avait fait en sorte qu'on mettait une emphase spéciale, c'est-à-dire que tous les mécanismes de la Loi s'appliquent. Ainsi, chaque mine doit élaborer un programme de prévention, mettre sur pied un comité paritaire en santé et sécurité au travail, et désigner un représentant à la prévention. Je vous ai expliqué le mécanisme. Le représentant à la prévention vient du côté des travailleurs et a été élu par les travailleurs.

L'approche en prévention et inspection: La CSST peut compter sur quelques 280 inspecteurs pour environ 215 000 établissements, et 2,5 millions de travailleurs actifs. Ce n'est pas seulement le secteur minier, c'est l'ensemble des travailleurs de la province. En plus de voir à l'application de la Loi, les inspecteurs ont un autre rôle très important à jouer, celui du soutien auprès de l'ensemble des entreprises.

Depuis quelques années, on préconise au Québec une approche de prévention et inspection, basée sur la collaboration avec les entreprises et les syndicats, justement pour favoriser la prise en charge par le milieu. Cette approche se résume en trois mots clés: Convaincre, soutenir, et si ça ne fonctionne pas, contraindre.

Des inspecteurs de la CSST tentent de convaincre les employeurs et les travailleurs des avantages de la prévention. Ils les incitent à s'occuper eux-mêmes de la sécurité dans leur milieu de travail en leur expliquant les mesures à mettre en place. On recherche avec les employeurs et les travailleurs des solutions pour corriger rapidement, de façon définitive, les situations dangereuses.

Les inspecteurs jouent un rôle conseil. Par exemple, pour la préparation des programmes de prévention, les inspecteurs posent des gestes correctifs, si cela s'impose. Ils utilisent le pouvoir que leur confère la Loi, c'est-à-dire l'arrêt des travaux, demander des corrections immédiates, et imposer des amendes. C'est une provision de la Loi.

Comme le champ d'action en prévention est vaste, la CSST ne peut agir seule. Elle doit compter sur l'appui de nombreux partenaires, dont un, l'Institut de recherche en santé et sécurité du travail, les syndicats, les associations patronales, et le réseau québécois de la santé et les associations sectorielles paritaires.

Pour ce qui est des associations sectorielles paritaires, depuis le tout début, c'est un organisme qui va dans chaque milieu pour voir à établir des programmes de prévention, pour voir à établir où se situent des problèmes particuliers dans les usines et dans les mines. Ils ont mandat de faire de la prévention.

Comme vous pouvez le constater, la prévention des accidents de travail et l'inspection des lieux du travail sont bien encadrés au Québec, et les règles sont clairement définies. Rien n'a été laissé au hasard pour assurer la sécurité des travailleurs et la participation de tout l'assainissement des lieux du travail.

Je vais vous faire une petite historique de la prévention dans les mines.

Pour le secteur des mines, je dois d'abord vous dire que, chez nous au Québec, le secteur minier fait preuve de dynamisme en matière de santé et sécurité. Cela fait déjà plusieurs années que les employeurs et les travailleurs travaillent ensemble pour régler les problèmes de sécurité dans les mines. C'est d'ailleurs pourquoi la situation s'est grandement améliorée ces dernières années. Mais tout ça ne s'est pas fait toutseul. Malheureusement, comme ça arrive trop souvent, ce sont des accidents graves qui ont provoqué une réflexion et amené les gens à se prendre en main.

En effet, malheureusement l'industrie minière a fait face à une série noire d'accidents dans les milieux des années 90. Onze accidents mortels sont survenus dans les mines au Québec entre 1994 et 1995. Nous n'avions jamais eu un bilan si négatif. C'est alors que les représentants syndicaux avons sonné l'alarme et dénoncé la situation d'insécurité dans les mines.

Il en a résulté un débat de toute l'industrie minière et parmi les personnes qui s'occupent de prévention. Dès le départ, on s'est rendu compte d'une chose: Il fallait régler les problèmes, et il fallait que tout le monde y participe pour rechercher des solutions.

La CSST a donc amorcé sans tarder une série de rencontres avec les principaux intervenants pour identifier les problèmes présents dans ce secteur. Ces rencontres unissaient les représentants de mon syndicat, le Syndicat des Métallos, l'Association minière du Québec, qui regroupe les propriétaires de mines, et l'Association paritaire de la santé et sécurité du secteur minier, qui conseille les membres, entre autres, sur l'organisation de la prévention, et qui offre de la formation.

Deux membres du conseil d'administration de la CSST, un représentant patronal et un représentant des travailleurs, moi-même en l'occurrence, avons reçu mandat de poursuivre ces travaux. Ces rencontres ont débouché sur un plan d'action en vue de régler des problèmes des mines souterraines. Ce plan d'action a été préparé par la CSST en étroite collaboration avec les représentants syndicaux, et également avec les représentants patronaux. Le but visé était d'éliminer les risques reliés principalement aux roches instables, au danger de chutes dans les mines.

Il prévoyait différentes choses: L'ajout d'inspecteurs dans ce secteur; le maintien d'un programme d'intervention par risques, qui existait déjà depuis deux ans; et la création d'un comité paritaire présidé par un vice-président aux opérations de la CSST, qui est chargé d'assurer le plan de suivi.

La poursuite du comité paritaire: Le comité a été formé en 1995, et existe toujours. Il est composé de représentants du Syndicat des Métallos, de la FTQ, la Confédération des travailleurs syndicaux nationaux (CSN) et l'Association minière, qui représente les employeurs et les entrepreneurs miniers, ainsi que l'Association paritaire pour la santé et la sécurité dans le secteur minier.

Ce mandat consiste à assurer le suivi du plan d'action de la CSST. Dans les mines souterraines, il doit favoriser l'échange d'information pour faciliter la mise en place de mécanismes ou de mesures de prévention appropriées au milieu.

Le comité doit également proposer des solutions répondant aux besoins du milieu de travail en matière de formation. Aux yeux de l'industrie, l'importance de ce comité ne faisait pas de doute. Ses membres devaient soumettre au ministère du Travail du Québec, au bout d'un an, un rapport d'évaluation de la situation en ce qui a trait à la santé et à la sécurité dans les mines souterraines.

Entre-temps, d'autres actions se sont déroulées en parallèle. Par exemple, un autre comité paritaire du conseil d'administration de la CSST a révisé la réglementation en vigueur concernant la sécurité dans les mines. Là-dessus, nous avons, comme plusieurs provinces au Canada, un comité permanent qui amène tous les sujets d'actualité pour modifier les normes et s'assurer qu'il y ait un suivi. Je suis le co-président de ce comité.

La CSST a également veillé à la mise en place du plan d'action, notamment du principe de tolérance zéro, face au danger. Cela voulait dire qu'on ne voulait plus d'accidents, mortels ou autres. Cela signifie que, lorsque confrontés à un danger, les inspecteurs doivent prendre des mesures immédiates, comme l'arrêt des travaux.

On pensait avoir la situation bien en main. Or, après six mois d'intervention dans le milieu, on s'est aperçu que l'objectif d'amélioration de la sécurité avait pris du retard. Cela a conduit la CSST a revoir sa stratégie d'intervention.

Des inspecteurs ont commencé à visiter les mines une par une, pour faire un bilan de la prise en charge. Ils ont rencontré la direction de chaque mine en présence d'un représentant des travailleurs, et parfois d'autres membres du personnel de la mine, s'ils jugeaient nécessaire.

Chaque rencontre comportait une visite sous terre pour valider les renseignements recueillis. L'inspecteur dressait ensuite un portrait sommaire de la gestion de la santé et de la sécurité du travail, ainsi que la liste des points forts et ceux à améliorer.

Il y retournait une deuxième fois, pour rencontrer l'employeur et le personnel de la mine et leur soumettre un rapport d'intervention. Il restait aux gens de la mine à faire le plan d'action dans les 30 jours suivants, pour corriger les points faibles identifiés.

Par exemple, pour illustrer ce qui est ressorti de cette analyse de la situation dans les mines, on a noté parmi les points forts que presque toutes les mines étaient dotées de structure de gestion de la santé et sécurité au travail, et les plans et devis étaient disponibles sur chaque lieu où s'effectuaient des excavations.

Parmi les points à améliorer, on a remarqué notamment la nécessité de mettre en place des moyens de communication, d'identifier des procédures à suivre dans les cas d'un comportement inhabituel de terrain, le besoin d'améliorer la communication entre les directions des mines, les contremaîtres et les travailleurs. Ceci s'est fait par une formation spécifique qui a été donnée par l'Association sectorielle paritaire.

Lors de cette opération d'envergure, on a fait beaucoup de travail pour sensibiliser les gens et les inciter à agir. On a rencontré les directeurs de mines, les membres de l'Association, entrepreneurs miniers du Québec, des coordonnateurs en santé et sécurité au travail, des surintendants, et des travailleurs. On a rappelé le même mot d'ordre à tous: Tolérance zéro face au danger, et tout cela selon les principes de la prise en charge de la prévention par l'industrie.

Un autre exemple pour la seule année 1996: L'Association sectorielle des mines a consacré 75 jours à des activités de conseil auprès de ses membres, concernant surtout l'organisation de la prévention, l'élaboration des plans d'action et le fonctionnement du comité de santé et sécurité.

Quant à l'Association minière du Québec, elle a élaboré une carte de travail pour que les travailleurs et les superviseurs aient un guide sur le contrôle de la qualité et de l'installation de soutènement minier. Entre-temps, le comité paritaire chargé de réviser la réglementation a poursuivi ses travaux.

Il s'agit du règlement sur l'examen de la santé pulmonaire des travailleurs des mines, qui précise les éléments nécessaires à la surveillance homogène des travailleurs en vue du dépistage des maladies reliées à l'exposition de l'amiante ou à la silice, et du règlement sur la santé et sécurité au travail dans les mines. Encore une fois, ce règlement est établit paritairement pour ensuite être déposé dans la Gazette officielle.

Bilan positif: Je dois dire que le bilan de toute cette opération est des plus positifs, même si nous savons qu'en tant que représentants des travailleurs, il faut demeurer vigilants. Il y a eu une baisse des accidents depuis 1994. La gestion de la santé et sécurité s'est améliorée dans les mines. Il s'est établi une relation de confiance entre les inspecteurs de la CSST, les patrons, et le syndicat de l'industrie minière, et les intervenants concernés en santé et sécurité.

Ces résultats positifs, nous les avons obtenus en grande partie parce que le plan d'action pour améliorer la sécurité dans les mines résultait d'un consensus parmi les intervenants, c'est-à-dire les travailleurs, les employeurs, les entrepreneurs miniers et les associations du secteur.

D'autres facteurs sont essentiels au succès d'une telle démarche, par exemple, la qualité de la communication entre la direction d'une mine et les mineurs, de même qu'entre les instances supérieures des organisations syndicales et les membres.

Je veux aussi signaler l'engagement des travailleurs, qui est primordial en santé et sécurité. Sans eux, on ne pourrait pas faire de vraie prévention. En ce sens, le rôle exercé par mon syndicat et la Confédération des syndicats nationaux auprès de nos membres respectifs demeure crucial.

En conclusion, nous savons que tout n'est évidement pas gagné. Il reste encore beaucoup de travail à faire pour éliminer les dangers dans les mines du Québec. Il faut notamment augmenter la contribution des comités de santé et sécurité, et voir à ce que les mines réalisent de façon adéquate le plan d'action qu'elles se sont donné.

Il faut également continuer d'appliquer avec rigueur les mesures de sécurité mises en place et poursuivre nos actions pour changer les attitudes et les comportements face au danger.

Une chose est certaine: Nous l'avons prouvé, la réussite de toute intervention visant la prévention des accidents du travail repose sur l'engagement des parties.

Je suis convaincu que la résolution des problèmes dans le secteur minier passe par la prise en charge de la santé et de la sécurité au travail. Il faut intégrer le volet santé et sécurité à la gestion courante, et en faire un élément essentiel de processus de qualité et de performance. C'est la voie qu'a choisie le Québec en mettant de l'avant, dans le milieu de travail, une loi très avant-gardiste basée sur une véritable collaboration entre les travailleurs et les employeurs. C'est exigeant, bien sûr. C'est surtout une formule gagnante dont nous sommes très fiers.

Merci.

Question Period - Période de questions - Período de Preguntas

DR. LEE MORENO: Muchas gracias Sr. Lachance, por esta excelente presentación, ¿hay alguna pregunta o comentario, sobre la plática del Sr. Lachance?

NEW SPEAKER: Mencionaba usted que el plan de acción tiene como objetivo eliminar los riesgos originados por el terreno inestable, ¿los 11 accidentes fatales a que usted hace mención fueron originados por este tipo de terreno?

M. LACHANCE: Pour répondre à votre question, oui, le plus gros des mortalités qui sont arrivées dans les mines a été par des roches branlantes, des chutes, et aussi des terrains instables. Ce sont les principales causes de décès des travailleurs miniers. Est-ce que ça répond à votre question?

NEW SPEAKER: Sí contestó la pregunta, lo que sucede es que hay muchísimas otras causas en la minería subterránea sobre todo, que originan accidentes.

M. LACHANCE: Oui. Il y a plusieurs autres causes dans les mines souterraines. C'est sûr que les roches branlantes, les chutes, les travailleurs dans les puits ou dans le fonçage, sont des travailleurs exposés. Cela fait en sorte qu'il y a un danger réel qui existe pour ces travailleurs-là. C'est pour cette raison qu'on a fait des programmes de prévention pour donner la formation à ces travailleurs.

NEW SPEAKER: ¿Qué resultados les ha dado el diseño de los software para rocas discontinuas?, tengo entendido de que en Ontario aquí en Canadá, diseñaron el dips (sp) para fortificaciones y darle estabilidad a los terrenos minimizando así la probabilidad de que éstos se desprendan atrapando a los trabajadores, perdón el dips, para los esterogramas (sp) y el unway (sp) para el sostenimiento de los techos, ¿qué resultado les ha dado el manejo de esos software en este país?

M. LACHANCE: À date, on peut dire qu'on a un bon résultat, sans être parfait, parce qu'on a vérifié le boulonnage qui se faisait dans l'ensemble des galeries. À des endroits, on a même cimenté pour empêcher des roches de descendre, et on a vérifié ce qu'était le terrain comme tel avec les plans et devis.

Il était fort important de connaître, avec un géologue, exactement la teneur du terrain.

NEW SPEAKER: Thank you very much. Thank you, Gérard, for your excellent presentation.

Gérard, I understand in Quebec that under the prevention plan there is also a provision that deals with removal of a pregnant worker. Maybe you could explain that one, if you know it.

Secondly, I also understand that under the prevention plan the Occupational Health and Safety Committees in the Workplace have a right to choose the physician of their choice to perform medical monitoring.

M. LACHANCE: Au Québec le travailleur a, en cas d'accident, le choix de son médecin. Ce choix-là va aussi pour ce qui est de la travailleuse enceinte ou de la femme qui allaite.

Si vous avez une prescription médicale qui mentionne que la travailleuse ou le travailleur ne peut plus exécuter ce travail-là, il doit arrêter. S'il y a un danger pour sa sécurité et son intégrité physique, il ne retournera pas travailler à cet endroit.

NEW SPEAKER: Good morning. Congratulations, Mr. Lachance, on the cooperation being exhibited between the workers and the unions and the employers in the Quebec mining industry.

I would like to ask what is being done in Quebec to get the cooperation between the worker and the supervisor in the workplace. I see this as being a very important interface in the recognition of risks and in the prevention of harm due to those risks.

Could you please talk a little about the interface between the worker and the supervisor, and what is being done to make that work better?

M. LACHANCE: Pour débuter, je vais répondre à la première question. Cela a été une sensibilisation des travailleurs et des employeurs par le biais de la formation.

De prendre connaissance des dangers, c'était un. Souvent, avec les travailleurs, nous avions l'impression de prêcher dans le vide. Ils nous disaient, "Ça fait des années que j'entends dire ça, et c'est pas mieux".

L'information, principalement celle qui a été donnée par l'ensemble des travailleurs et des employeurs, a fait en sorte qu'il y a eu une prise de conscience des dangers. C'était fort important. En plus, lorsqu'il y a des fatalités ou des amputations de membres, on prend plus facilement conscience du danger. Par la suite, c'était plus facile de passer le message à nos travailleurs et à l'employeur. Personne veut aller au travail pour se tuer.

Est-ce que ça répond à votre question?

NEW SPEAKER: Thank you.

NEW SPEAKER: Felicidades por su presentación, usted mencionaba tres palabras claves: convencer, apoyar y obligar. Me gustaría saber cuál estrategia utilizó y cuánto tiempo se llevó y si a algunas de las empresas las tuvo que obligar.

M. LACHANCE: Lorsqu'on a passé les deux premières étapes, la contrainte est toujours là.

Comme je vous ai mentionné dans ma présentation, nous n'avons pas à nous rendre à la contrainte s'il y a des modifications suite aux conseils. C'est le point principal. Et lorsque ça ne fonctionne pas, on y va par la contrainte et souvent le travailleur est d'accord.

NEW SPEAKER: Sir, do you have any particular strategy that works well with small mines and contractors to larger mines?

M. LACHANCE: Une bonne question.

Vis-à-vis la sous-traitance, cela a toujours été important pour nous de faire en sorte que celui qui prend un contrat de travail du gros employeur respecte exactement les mêmes règles. Je ne vous dis pas que toutes les petites le font, mais on s'assure dans plusieurs industries que la santé et sécurité va être respectée autant du sous-traitant que de l'employeur maître. Ça, pour nous c'est important et on fait des revendication continuelles vis-à-vis la CSST là-dessus.

Pour ce qui est des stratégies comme telles, la stratégie a été de l'information et de la formation. Pour nous ça a été fort important pour que les gens comprennent bien de quelle façon la prévention se fait.

NEW SPEAKER: Mr. Lachance, thank you very much.

Could you say a few words about the modular training program that you have recently instituted in Quebec for miners?

M. LACHANCE: D'ailleurs, j'ai travaillé avec le groupe de Val d'Or pour la formation modulaire des mines. Cette formation a été donnée à l'ensemble des mineurs, qu'ils aient 15, 20 ou 25 ans d'expérience et qui avaient peut-être de mauvaises pratiques de travail. La formation modulaire s'adresse comme telle aux mines souterraines et aux contracteurs qui vont sous terre.

Cette formation modulaire, bien qu'encore jeune, a apporté de bonnes choses. Et on peut dire qu'on a copié nos confrères de l'Ontario sur certains points pour arriver à ce résultat.

DR. LEE MORENO: ¿Alguna otra pregunta para el Sr. Lachance?, bueno en ese caso les pido que me acompañen con un caluroso aplauso para agradecer su participación y presentación.

General Session - Performance Measures in OSH - Séance générale - Mesure du rendement en SST - Sesión General - Medidas para Evaluar el Rendimiento en el Programa de Seguridad e Higiene Ocupacional

MR. TED REDEKOP (Chief Occupational Medical Officer, Workplace Safety and Health Division, Manitoba Labour): (off microphone) I hate to interrupt your conversations, but I think we will get this session underway.

Good morning. My name is Dr. Ted Redekop. I work for the Department of Labour, Safety and Health Division in Manitoba. I am the Chief Occupational Medical Officer for the Province, and a member of the organizing committee of this conference.

This morning we have a very interesting group of speakers to talk about performance measures. Hopefully we are going to learn where we are going, where we have been, whether we have got there yet, how we know when we arrive there. I think our speakers will be able to enlighten us in that capacity.

Just a little housekeeping. If you can hold your questions until the end of the three sessions, then the speakers will try and answer any questions you have.

Our first speaker today is Dr.José Luis Lee, who comes to us as a Director General of the Mexican Chamber of Mines. He has a long history of work in geological exploration and environmental geology and geochemistry, and has worked worldwide in exploration projects, although I don't know if any of this has included Canada -- no, not Canada? Today is his introduction to that.

He has been on a variety of committees in Mexico looking at regulations and standards, and also has dealt with a number of international agencies, such as the International Council for Metals and the Environment and the Business and Industry Associations Committee, setting up standards and regulations.

Dr. Lee is going to speak about the performance measures that are prevalent in Mexico, particularly relative to providing for awards in safety and health in the mining community.

DR. JOSÉ LUIS LEE MORENO (Director General, Cámara Nacional de la Industria Minera): Muchas gracias Ted, dice la introducción del tema tanto compañías como instituciones de reglamentación gubernamental necesitan probar la eficacia de sus intervenciones en cuanto a la seguridad e higiene. En esta sesión se discutirán varias medidas que se están utilizando para evaluar el rendimiento del programa de seguridad e higiene. Lo que yo pretendo compartir con ustedes durante unos cuantos minutos de esta mañana, es un sistema que se ha establecido en la Cámara Minera de México, para otorgar reconocimientos especiales a las empresas que han tenido un mejor desempeño durante el año inmediato anterior en asuntos de seguridad e higiene en minas.

Hemos observado nosotros en la Cámara Minera, que además de que este sistema nos permite tener acceso a una estadística directa de las empresas afiliadas a la Cámara en materia de seguridad e higiene, también es un programa de enorme estímulo en todos los niveles de trabajo en la mina para llevar a cabo un mejor desempeño en la seguridad. Hemos notado que realmente existe un deseo enorme de los supervisores por supuesto, de seguridad, de los supervisores de mina, pero indudablemente, y tal vez es más grande el deseo que hay en los trabajadores dentro de la mina por saber que con su esfuerzo y con su comportamiento adecuado en cuanto a la seguridad su unidad minera se hizo acreedora a un premio que de hecho es un premio nacional que se otorga a la seguridad.

Este sistema, nos sentimos muy orgullosos de haberlo implantado y nos sentimos muy orgullosos de los resultados que año con año vemos y que ustedes verán más tarde. Nos ha conducido parcialmente, porque también hay otros factores que han ayudado a reducir nuestros índices de siniestralidad y demás índices relacionados con la seguridad.

El objetivo como lo había mencionado, es estimular los esfuerzos que llevan a cabo las empresas mineras y metalúrgicas en el campo de prevención de accidentes, esto realmente lo hemos logrado.

¿Quiénes pueden obtener los premios? Los premios pueden ser obtenidos por empresas del sector minero-metalúrgico que obtengan el menor índice de siniestralidad durante el año inmediato anterior al concurso y adicional a esto no deben de haber tenido ningún accidente fatal, porque el índice de siniestralidad no incluye necesariamente el monto de accidentes fatales como ustedes lo saben, son medidas internacionales y la vamos a mostrar en un momento.

Mencionamos que este concurso es exclusivamente para las empresas afiliadas a la Cámara Minera de México. Debo decirles que el 98.5% del valor de la producción minera nacional en México, es producido por empresas afiliadas a la Cámara Minera de México. El otro 1.5% tal vez 2% varía, se encuentra en manos de pequeñas empresas que no se encuentran afiliadas a nuestra Cámara.

Las empresas deben entregar toda la información que solicita el formato, dentro de un plazo requerido. La participación en el concurso no es automática, tienen que entregarnos los datos conforme a los formatos establecidos.

El primer formato es un formato general que únicamente identifica a la empresa y a la unidad minera específicamente, a la persona que es responsable de la información y luego la clasificación dentro de la cual va a participar en el concurso de seguridad. Tenemos unas categorías que les muestro después de la siguiente lámina.

El promedio de trabajadores, las horas total hombre trabajadas, los accidentes no incapacitantes, los accidentes incapacitantes, los accidentes fatales, el por ciento de incapacidades permanentes por accidentes y enfermedades profesionales, los días perdidos por accidentes incapacitantes y se consideran 1000 días por accidente fatal y diez días por cada 1% de incapacidad permanente para los cálculos, en esa forma es como lo hacemos.

Más tarde pedimos a cada una de las empresas que nos haga directamente el cálculo del índice de frecuencia, el índice de gravedad y el índice de siniestralidad con los parámetros internacionales que ustedes bien conocen.

Las categorías en las que entregamos nosotros premios son tres: minería subterránea, minería a cielo abierto y plantas y fundiciones, sin embargo dentro de la categoría de minería subterránea hemos hecho dos subgrupos, uno para las empresas que tienen hasta 500 trabajadores y otra para las que tienen más de 500 trabajadores.

Como en mucho otros lugares del mundo nuestras empresas mineras a menudo son grupos corporativos que tienen varias unidades mineras o varias minas dentro de su operación y administración, cada una de estas unidades mineras participa individualmente dentro del concurso de seguridad. No es un concurso de unidades corporativas, de corporaciones, es un concurso de unidades mineras y dentro de las categorías que mencioné antes, si una misma unidad minera tiene dos categorías, puede tener subterránea y a cielo abierto, o puede tener también planta de beneficio, pude participar en las categorías que tengan.

Se entrega un trofeo a la unidad minera que tenga el menor índice de siniestralidad y quiero decirle que estoy siendo un poco repetitivo con la lectura de la proyección para facilitar que ustedes reciban la traducción. El trofeo es entregado al ganador que lo conserva durante un año y si alguno de ustedes es seguidor de la Copa Mundial de Soccer, conocerán que el sistema con la Copa Jule Reimer (sp) se entrega al que la gana tres años aunque no sean consecutivos, nosotros le prestamos esta idea a los organizadores de la Copa Jule Reimer y también la establecemos en esa forma.

Esto lo había mencionado anteriormente, un trofeo para cada una de las categorías que comenté con anterioridad.

Quién hace la evaluación de los ganadores, una vez que recibimos todos los datos de las empresas que desean participar en el concurso, porque hay algunas que indudablemente no participan tal vez porque en el año inmediato anterior tuvieron alguna mala fortuna de algún accidente o consideran que sus registros de seguridad no les van a permitir realmente estar dentro de los aspirantes al premio. Entonces los datos que recibimos de los concursantes son analizados por un comité que está integrado por personal de la Cámara Minera, por personal del sindicato único de trabajadores mineros y metalurgistas de la República Mexicana y hace un momento platicaba con Steve y le decía que nosotros tenemos solamente un sindicato, una unión sindical para toda la República Mexicana que está regida por regulaciones federales tanto para la relación laboral como para todas las demás regulaciones relacionadas con la industria minera. También participan con nosotros algunas autoridades en la materia.

Esto es lo que utilizamos para la calificación. Es bien simple, todos ustedes lo conocen pero nos da una indicación directa, real, fidedigna y pronta para evaluar el desempeño de nuestras empresas mineras y nos da números que nos permiten ir directamente a la entrega del premio.

Las fórmulas para la evaluación de estos índices son bien conocidas de todos ustedes y simplemente las menciono ahí para ver que estamos trabajando básicamente con parámetros sencillos internacionales y de amplio conocimiento.

Además, entregamos nosotros otros premios complementarios - esto es un diploma- a todas aquellas empresas que participaron en el concurso y que redujeron en 25% o más, su índice de siniestralidad con respecto a la del año próximo anterior.

Hemos encontrado que muchas empresas no ganan el premio porque no lo pueden tener todos. Lo gana el que está en primer lugar, pero otras han hecho un esfuerzo grande y esto es reconocido también con diplomas, estos premios se entregan en un evento especial que se lleva a cabo anualmente en el que están presentes altas autoridades de la Cámara Minera de México.

Cada dos años en México, tenemos una convención nacional a donde asiste toda la industria minera. Este año se va a llevar a cabo del 20 al 24 de octubre en la hermosa ciudad de Acapulco. Todos ustedes están invitados. Y el año de la convención, la entrega de estos premios se hace justamente en el ámbito de esta convención nacional y en presencia de los representantes de la industria minera, de las más altas autoridades de México porque a menudo tenemos la presencia incluso del Presidente de la República Mexicana y de los secretarios del ramo involucrados.

Estas son algunas estadísticas generales de seguridad, Steve también me decía que aparentemente no había conseguido unas estadísticas, ¿dónde está Steve?, bueno es una pena porque aquí podía haber visto las estadísticas que me decía que no había conseguido con anterioridad de algunas otras fuentes que había solicitado de México.

Nosotros con mucho gusto podemos compartir no sólo las estadísticas de nuestro concurso, sino las estadísticas generales de seguridad. El Dr. Alberto Aguilar el día de ayer hizo una presentación de estadísticas también según los registros del Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social adonde por ley, todas las empresas de México tienen que reportar sus accidentes de mayor o menor grado, o sea tenemos un banco de datos estadístico muy completo y muy actualizado que definitivamente, podemos con quien nos lo solicite. Nosotros podemos ayudarles en caso de que no tengamos esta información.

Ustedes ven ahí las cifras generales, el número de trabajadores, les recuerdo que esto es de los registrados dentro del concurso, no representan todos los trabajadores en la industria minera.

Ahí tenemos los accidentes fatales registrado en 1998. Si ustedes lo ven, tuvimos 11 accidentes fatales en todas las empresas que participaron en el concurso y el total de los accidentes fatales en 1998 en la industria minera fue de 13 como lo reportó el Dr. Alberto Aguilar el día de ayer. Los otros dos simplemente significa que ocurrieron en empresas que no participan en este concurso y además están las gráficas del total de accidentes, los incapacitantes y los accidentes no incapacitantes.

Las estadísticas generales de seguridad con los índices numéricos de lo que obtuvimos en 1996, 1997 y 1998 no voy a aburrirlos con la lectura de los números únicamente quiero enfatizar que la gráfica va en descenso del 1996 al 1998 y como al principio lo dije, sentimos que además del cuidado que tienen nuestros trabajadores mineros, en alguna forma aunque sea pequeña, nuestro concurso los estimula también para esmerarse más en su desarrollo en el trabajo.

Estas son las estadísticas de cada una de las categorías que voy a pasar un poco más rápido, más de 500 personas con los índices respectivos. La anterior era de menos de 500 personas en minas subterráneas. Si alguien tiene interés en estos números, los hemos entregado al comité organizador de esta conferencia e indudablemente en algún momento nos serán entregadas también copias de las presentaciones.

Esta es para minas a cielo abierto, plantas de fundición que es la cuarta categoría, y éstos son los índices de las empresas que ganaron para que se den ustedes una idea de con qué números se han ganado los premios dentro de las empresas de cada una de las categorías desde 0 en una de las minas hasta 6.2 en una de ellas, pasando por un 0.5, hablando del índice de siniestralidad.

Estas son las ventajas colaterales del concurso que en alguna forma es señalado durante esta charla. La Cámara Minera tiene acceso directo a las estadísticas de seguridad durante la entrega de los premios de cada compañía ganadera. Se ha hecho costumbre además, que la compañía haga una presentación pública de su sistema de seguridad enfatizando los puntos y las medidas que ha tomado, que sientan los encargados de la seguridad en cada compañía, que han coadyuvado para la obtención de este premio, es un ejercicio muy completo en el que se lleva a cabo un intercambio de ideas entre los ganadores del premio y todos los demás interesados en seguridad en la industria minera.

Este es el trofeo - un casco minero de plata con unas placas grabadas que indican el nombre de la compañía o de la unidad minera y la categoría en la que ganó el trofeo, este es el que cada unidad minera, cada ganador conserva por un año y si lo gana tres años es de ellos para tenerlo por el resto de la vida de la unidad.

Es todo, si tienen alguna pregunta con mucho gusto puedo contestarla ahora aunque Ted dijo que las iba a acumular para el final de la sesión. Lamentablemente yo tendré que salir dentro de un momento al aeropuerto o sea que este sería el momento Ted, si tú estás de acuerdo.

MR. REDEKOP: Thank you very much, Dr. Lee.

Our next speaker is Dr. Larry Grayson, who is the Associate Director of Mining at NIOSH in Washington. Dr. Grayson has attained this position coming through a life from being a miner to being a professor of mining engineering. So he brings a lot of experience and a lot of knowledge to this presentation.

Please, Dr. Grayson.

DR. LARRY GRAYSON (Associate Director of Mining, NIOSH, Washington): Thank you very much for the introduction.

I do want to bring a historical context to the experience in the United States, but also look into the future a little bit as I address the performance measures in occupational safety and health.

There are some major transformations of course that occurred in the United States, as with every country. The 1969 Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act is certainly one of those, with major impact.

The 1977 Federal Mine Safety and Health Amendments Act, which brought the metal and nonmetal sectors basically into the same regulatory scheme -- there are some differences, but pretty much under the regulatory scheme -- as effectively, if you will, as the coal side.

Since 1978, there really has been a worldwide economic competition that has just been intensifying ever since that point in time, and certainly affects the bottom line prices for the products that are being produced. That is also having a major impact along with the acts. If you look at the convergence of the 1977 Act and also this whole global competition aspect of it, it certainly forces our hands, if you will, in many ways.

Let's talk a little bit about using performance measures in occupational safety and health, and examine for just a little bit what has been the impact of these forces and, no. 2, how should the performance changes be measured and tracked now that we are in this great level of intense pressure. Then, ultimately we will ask the question: Has the health and safety culture changed? I would submit, at least in the United States and it appears from what I have seen in the other countries as well, it has.

What safety performance measures should be used? There are many of them. My predecessor presenter here certainly presented a number of them: Numbers of fatalities, loss time accidents, incident rates for each of these categories, rates of change of the various IRs over time, indicating maybe progress and a little bit better perspective, various severity measures, or there are various measures of risk that we could use.

Basically, risk is the probability of occurrence of particular events or outcomes, if you will, that occur to the miners times the magnitude of the loss. It can also occur to the operations in general, so equipment losses, any unplanned events that just are not supposed to happen, we want to control those. So we take a total loss control perspective too as we look at risk.

We can look at working a lifetime likelihood of an outcome to an individual or to the mine. We can certainly do it either quantitatively or qualitatively. There are fairly good qualitative risk assessment methods that can be part of a risk management approach at operations, and for government.

We can prioritize by frequency, severity, cost. We can compare and target various safety and health outcomes. We cannot do everything all at one time, so we indeed do need to target, and probably those who are having the largest impact are the ones we deal with first. This gives us a way of doing that.

If I look at the bottom line occupational safety and health impact in the U.S. mining industry, from 1971 to 1975, indeed after the 1969 Health and Safety Act, there was significant change. What I have done is I have based each of the five year periods that I will be presenting here on the previous five year period on a comparison basis.

In 1966 through 1970, the fatal IR, for instance, which was 0.109, and that is per 200,000 normalized hours, is smoothed by using these five year averages. So you get sort of a better idea on a comparative basis instead of single year peaks. The fatal IR was down 25.7 per cent to 0.081 during the next five year period of 1971 to 1975.

The coal fatalities, as you would expect, because it was a Coal Act primarily, went down very significantly, from 246 to 151. The non coal fatalities, however, sort of hovered around the 180, 170 level, and not as much progress was there.

The Sunshine Mine fire in Idaho, where 91 miners died, stimulated the next reaction, if you will, in our Congress and the outrage of the citizenry of the country itself. In 1977, the Amendments Act then encompassed the metal and nonmetal side as well.

What happened after that Act? We could look at the first five year period, which has the 1977 Act in it. There was more significant change. As a matter of fact, it was so significant that it was the single greatest drop in the fatal incident rate in the history of our country, at least to the extent that I have examined it, and that goes back to the turn of the century.

So, 39.4 per cent in the fatal IR, it dropped to 0.049 at that point in time. The coal fatalities went down a little bit, but the metal and nonmetal fatalities went down from 171 to 122. Again it was a specific to metal, nonmetal Act in this case.

At the same time, and this is phenomenal, the employment rose 31.5 per cent. So you can imagine, a new work force coming in but still achieving that kind of a reduction on the fatal incident rate. Most of that was in reaction to the oil embargo.

There was continued improvement in the fatal IR. I know that in our country we have been talking about sort of hovering around a plateau on the fatal incident rate, especially recently, but if you note for the different five-year periods, the rate of change, 1981 to 1985, there was still an 18 per cent reduction in the fatal IR. It went down now to 0.04. The total fatalities in both coal and metal and nonmetal were 177.

If you go to 1986 to 1990, still a 15 per cent reduction, again very good, down to 0.034 and 122. If you go to 1991 to 1995, again a close to 15 per cent reduction. So still the impetus is there for change in the fatal IR. Now we are down to an average of 98 minor fatalities across the country.

Each sector, for the very first time in 1986 through 1999, had less than 100 fatalities -- first time in history. In 1991 to 1995 there was another first in our country. That was that the average total fatalities were less than 100. You can see the average for coal and non-coal there.

The success was mirrored, if you look at the non-fatal injury rate. If I look at 1989 through 1995 and the reduction in non-fatal injury -- the reason I had to look at 1989 was because the last change of the definition of an accident occurred, legally, in 1986, and also right around that time-frame there was a general accounting office, sort of an arm from Congress, that looked and examined the accident reporting in mines. They did find some under-reporting of accidents in some mines, particularly smaller mines. That certainly had an impact, with a rise in the non-fatal incident rate.

What that did is it stabilized in 1989, from 86 to 89. Then in 89 to 95 there began the trend that you will see here. If you look at underground coal, the non-fatal injury rate went from 12.39 to 9.9; metal, nonmetal, underground, you see again a good reduction. Surface coal, again went down. Surface metal, nonmetal went down. It is a good success story on the non-fatal injury rate as well.

If we look at cases of co-workers pneumoconiosis, in our country we are still paying about 1.2 billion dollars a year in benefits to those who suffer from co-workers pneumoconiosis and/or their families, if the families, the wives, survived them.

If you look at the mortality factor, in other words, on the death certificate it is listed as a contributing cause to the death of the individual. That is the interpretation of the mortality factor. You see here also, from 1979, 1980, down to 1991, 1992, and this is the NIOSH publication, it shows a reduction, from 2,445 cases per year to 1,852 in the latest period of time. Although we do not have this published yet, there had been about 1,500 or so cases per year, looking at death certificates. So, improvement in that as well.

Today's rule, as all of you know in the industry and at government agencies too, because we are not immune to this, continuous improvement is the rule. We must improve our performances and demonstrate that. We could look certainly at fatalities and disability, and we have had the improvements over time, continuous, injuries and disease, but also in productivity and cost. It is absolutely driven by all of these performance measures.

Cultural change indeed has occurred, because of this coalescence of the 1977 Act, along with the economic competition. What we are seeing now on the scope and the culture of continuous improvement is that we look at loss control. We say basically the following. We use the general definition of an accident, so anything that was not planned, whether it is downtime, additional cost, a fatality, a near miss, is something that we want to control.

We eliminate or reduce all unplanned events in many, many companies now. It is not permeated completely through the industry, but certainly the impetus is there to do it.

There has been a bigger focus on risk management, whether it is on the environmental side or whether it is the occupational safety and health side, as well as loss of equipment or plant.

Further, I would say that we are to the point where we prioritize the areas of focus. My own agency, in prioritizing the research that is going to be done, will look at the various work time likelihoods of incurring disease or injury, take the stakeholders' inputs, including our sister agency over in MSHA, and prioritize the research that will be done and target it to those that have the biggest impact at any point in time.

Successfully we try to address those targeted areas with planned interventions. We want to evaluate the incremental improvements as we go, by whichever measure was mentioned earlier.

Finally, it works well when we empower our expert employees in solving our problems. That is when it really works very, very well.

We must have a high level commitment obviously in order for this to happen. We talked a little bit about that on the ergonomics side yesterday. Resources have to be dedicated to support these group efforts for improvement.

Finally, culturalization basically equates to changed behaviours in the workplace in addressing whatever problems challenge them.

The goals of course are not only no fatalities at this point in time, but we also want no accidents, especially no loss time accidents, and many companies have actually been adopting -- we don't even want near misses at this point in time.

The challenges and impediments to achieving continued improvements are many. Fatality problem areas that we are still seeing are powered haulage in surface and underground, ground control, primarily in underground, equipment and machinery related fatalities. We also have injury rate problem areas. Some of these you would expect -- handling materials, especially with strains and sprains and things of this nature -- maintenance and repair tasks, construction tasks or support of production. Roof bolting is still a problem area.

And finally, other areas as targeted, and MSHA had targeted here fairly recently conveyor belts as a particular problem that needed to be addressed.

There are continuing problems in small mines in our country, where we have maybe 80 per cent of the mines in certain sectors, and in some sectors it is even more than that, such as in sand and gravel and stone. 80 per cent of the mines are small mines, with 50 or fewer employees. They have a higher risk for fatalities and/or serious injuries, which are 20 days lost or more at work.

The same problem is common with contractors. So we are trying to get our arms around those problems and how to better disseminate information to these small mines and contractors, in particular within the various sectors. It is a challenging problem. "How do we help these miners?" is the bottom line question we ask, and we are still looking for the answers on getting it down to that level.

There are lingering health problems that we have. Co-workers pneumoconiosis, we are still seeing roughly between 2 and 3 per cent prevalence rate among miners who have worked even after the 1969 Health and Safety Act. No prior experience until that time.

Silicosis -- we found it in surface mine drillers at an alarming rate. Hearing loss -- just as an example, 90 per cent of the underground miners, coal miners in particular, by the time they reach age 51 are having a 25 decibel loss in their hearing. This is new. This is a newly recognized -- and there is a new impetus on handling this problem, with a noise regulation in place, to take effect next year.

Finally, musculoskeletal orders, sort of systematically starting to look at that whole area.

Some emerging realities at the same time: These are the problems we need to solve, but if we are going to solve those, we are still going to be facing, particularly in the underground setting, physical conditions are going to degrade rather than improve. In our country, we certainly have mined the best reserves first. So it will be tougher that way. There will be deeper and thinner seams and/or veins, discontinuous reserves, which means oftentimes the better technology that can mine on a broader scale will not be able to use. Even tougher global competition is certainly going to put more pressure on the miners, who are working longer hours, more days, and the operators as well.

Fewer and more international companies. We have seen this trend for a long time. There is no sign that it is going to let up just yet. When it will let up, I don't know.

To continue our improvements, the industry is going to have to do a number of things. We are going to have to employ new mining techniques or variations on those techniques, and new technologies that can make what we do a little bit easier. We are going to have to organize our work more effectively among our workforce. We are going to have to demand more health and safety features on the mining equipment, to better protect the people working with that interface of the equipment and the conditions.

We are certainly going to have to ensure that the best work practices are integral to accomplishing work. There are a number of toolboxes I have seen on the MSHA web page that are doing a good job on that.

Seek breakthroughs: We really need some breakthroughs, like dust control, for instance, is a problem, where we need some breakthroughs in handling some of these most persistent problems. We are going to have to take a fresh look. We are going to think out of the box when solving some of those problems.

We need to incorporate health, safety and environmental aspects in every facet of planning, from day one, using the system's perspective, if you will, because one thing does impact another. Even though we get new technologies or maybe modify work practices or something like that, there are still people who are there, and they impact other aspects of the operation.

Systematically setting goals and objectives to drive this continuous improvement across the board in a prioritized way. Productivity, safety, health and cost, all of those will factor in.

Certainly global change is accelerated. We have been pressed up against the walls, miners, for quite a while. We must act accordingly and redouble our efforts, in spite of how hard we are working now.

In summary, let me just say that continuous improvement in occupational safety and health performances has occurred since 1969 in the United States and what I have seen in other countries as well. Industry has always met the challenge -- meeting this challenge of being pressed against the wall -- quite well, as a matter of fact.

The prospects for the future, in my humble opinion, is that we are going to meet those challenges, we are going to again succeed, and we are going to have an even more sterling performance as the years come by.

One thing, and this was the theme of the earlier session today: Partnerships. We very much believe in this, that extensive partnerships, including global ones with our partners in North America in research and development, and application of those results, linking operators, labour and government together, all three, will be a key in continuing our improvements. Also I would admit that improvements in productivity and cost will accrue as we handle the occupational and safety health side.

Thank you very much.

MR. REDEKOP: Thank you, Dr. Grayson.

Our next speaker this morning comes to us from Canada, from Saskatchewan.

Mr. Nelson Wright has worked his way through the potash industry from a miner to Manager of Safety and Health. He will bring us the picture from Saskatchewan regarding the measurements of health and safety, particularly related to audits.

MR. NELSON WRIGHT (Manager, Health and Safety, IMC Kalium): Occupational and Health and Safety Performance Measures in the Saskatchewan Potash Industry - The mining community in Saskatchewan is committed to continuing improvements in the level of safety in the industry. On a monthly basis, representatives from various mining operations meet under the auspices of the Saskatchewan Mining Association's Safety Committee to discuss health and safety issues facing the industry, and to share information about incidents and accidents that we have experienced.

The potash mining industry has always been a major supporter of the Saskatchewan Mining Association, along with the uranium and coal mining operations. In order to help us improve our safety performance, it is imperative that we understand the significance of the performance measures that we use.

First, a brief overview of the Saskatchewan potash industry and the Saskatchewan regulatory structure.

Along with nitrogen and phosphorous, potassium is an essential element for life. It plays a key role in various enzyme reactions which regulate plant growth, and after calcium and phosphorous is the third most abundant mineral in our own bodies. Approximately 95 per cent of the world's potash production is used as an agricultural fertilizer, with the remainder used for industrial purposes.

The province of Saskatchewan covers over 650,000 square kilometres, and has a population of about 1 million people. Between 350 and 400 million years ago, sizeable beds of salts were precipitated from an evaporating inland sea. Among the salts, sylvite and carnillite were deposited in a band more than 50 miles wide and up to 450 miles long. It is estimated that the province has about 5 billion tons of potash reserves.

The potash ore beds are found approximately 1,000 metres below the surface, along the northern edge of the deposit, which deepens as it extends to the south and to the west. Five conventional shaft mines and one solution mine are located within 100 kilometres of Saskatoon. Three conventional shaft mines are located in the southeastern part of the province, and one solution mine operates approximately 30 kilometres west of Regina.

Many of the overlying strata contain water, with the Blair-Moore formation representing the major initial challenge to the industry. But in the 1960s, through the use of a technique that involved freezing the Blair-Moore, the mines were able to sink shafts down to the potash deposits.

Since then, several operations have experienced water inflows, particularly from the Dawson Bay formation. In one case, at the former Potash Corporation of America mine near Saskatoon, the underground workings were eventually flooded and the operation was converted from conventional mining to solution mining. Another operation continues to handle several thousand gallons of inflow per minute, while mining operations continue in backfilling and grouting is underway.

The shaft mines use large boring machines, often referred to as miners, to cut the ore and deposit it on conveyor belt systems that transfer the ore to the shaft for hoisting to surface. The size of the miners varies with the size of the ore bed, from eight feet in height in southeastern Saskatchewan to over 11 feet high in the Saskatoon area mines. Drifts are cut from 30 to 60 feet wide, with ore extraction rates typically around 40 per cent.

The ore is hoisted to surface, where it is crushed, and the insoluble clays are scrubbed from the ore. The potash crystals are separated from the salt crystals through various processes, including heavy media separation and flotation.

The KCL is then dried and screened, with the undersize reporting back to a compaction circuit. The Saskatchewan Shaft Operations hoist about three tons of ore to produce one ton of finished product. Typically, red and pink potash is marketed as 0060 fertilizer, while crystallized white potash is marked as 0062, although the latter is often used for industrial purposes.

At the solution mines, wells are drilled from surface to the potash deposits and water is circulated through the formation to create KCL-rich brine. The brine is then pumped to surface and precipitated or crystallized.

At the International Fertilizer Industry Association annual conference in 1998, it was estimated that the world demand for potash was in the order of 40 million metric tons of KCL. The Saskatchewan potash industry has an annual capacity of well over 12 million metric tons of KCL, and as reported to Sask Labour at the end of 1998, directly employees nearly 3,000 people, not including sub-contractor workforces.

According to information provided by Sask Labour on the 20th anniversary of the legislation, in 1972 Saskatchewan pioneered comprehensive occupational health and safety in Canada. Except for those industries under federal jurisdiction, all Saskatchewan employers, including the potash industry, are governed by the standards contained in the Occupational Health and Safety Act of 1993, and the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations of 1996.

Along with other mining operations, the potash industry is also governed by the Mine Regulations, which came into force in 1978 and are currently in the process of revision.

The Saskatchewan legislation creates a requirement for employers to establish Occupational Health committees at all workplaces with 10 or more employees. The committees are limited to 12 members, and include equal worker and employer representation. The two solution potash mines and at least one shaft potash mine operate with a single committee, drawing members from the various operational areas. Other potash mines operate with separate committees for surface and underground areas, although one operation has a total of five committees plus a subcontractor committee, which meets and tours jointly with one of the operations committees.

In Saskatchewan, the employer is required to develop various health and safety programs in consultation with the Committee, although the Occupational Health committees and their members do not have legal liability for controlling workplace hazards.

With the groundbreaking legislation of 1972, a new regulatory agency was formed. In a speech at the Saskatchewan Safety Seminar in early 1998, the Executive Director for the OH&S division described the organization changes that occurred: Industrial hygienists and radiological safety staff from the Department of Public Health, safety inspectors from the Workers' Compensation Board, and mines inspectors from the Department of Mineral Resources all moved to the Occupational Health & Safety Division in the Department of Labour. As a result, all regulatory responsibilities for worker safety are now coordinated through one entity.

As of June 1999, the Mines Safety and Radiation Unit of the Occupational Health and Safety Division has a Chief Mines Inspector with five mines inspectors and a provincial mine rescue coordinator working with the 27 mining operations in the province. Along with the potash facilities, Saskatchewan also has uranium, gold, coal, salt, sodium sulphate, and clay producers.

The Occupational Health and Safety Division updated the OHC Manual in August 1998. The manual describes the Saskatchewan approach to occupational health and safety as one that stems from a philosophy that the responsibility for occupational health and safety is contained within the workplace. The legislation sets out a structure that supports the concept known as the internal responsibility system.

In a nutshell, an internal responsibility system means that the legal responsibility for identifying and solving occupational health and safety problems rests on the shoulders of the people in the workplace. This is the opposite of a system where people do nothing until ordered to do so by a government inspector.

On the one hand, the Saskatchewan legislation provides for three basic rights of workers: The right to know about hazards in the workplace and how to deal with them, the right to participate in occupational health and safety decisions through occupational health committees, and the right to refuse work that is believed to be unusually dangerous, without fear of discriminatory action.

On the other hand, the Act and Regulations set out duties for the workplace parties, specifically for employers, for workers, for self-employed persons, for owners, for suppliers, and for contractors.

Given that every person involved with the workplace is required to integrate health and safety into their regular activities, the legislation envisions that one of the primary roles of the Occupational Health Committee is to function as an internal auditor of the IRS, through regular workplace inspections and discussions with workers.

In like manner, according to the Saskatchewan Occupational Committee Manual, Saskatchewan Labour inspectors are the external auditors of the internal responsibility system -- they are not the system itself.

The OHC Manual concludes the discussion on responsibility by pointing out that accountability is proportional to responsibility. The employer is ultimately responsible and accountable for health and safety.

Mine employers are required to report injuries on a monthly basis to the Saskatchewan Department of Labour. In January of 1994, the Chief Mines Inspector issued a directive to the mining industry establishing a classification scheme for reporting injuries. This scheme created five categories of workplace injuries.

A first-aid injury occurs when a worker is able to return to full duties after receiving treatment on site.

A medical consultation is when a worker is able to return to full duties on the next regular work day, but did not receive any treatment. He was assessed, but did not receive treatment.

A medical incident occurs when a worker receives treatment from a physician.

Modified work injury occurs when a worker is unable to return to work at his full and regular duties.

A loss time injury occurs when the worker is unable to work in any capacity as a result of a workplace injury.

For those mining corporations with operations in both the United States and Saskatchewan, it had been difficult to establish statistical comparisons across the border. With the distinction made between a medical consultation and a medical incident in Saskatchewan, it is now possible to use the Saskatchewan numbers to roughly emulate the American OSHA and Bureau of Labour standards numbers.

This chart shows the injury rates that the Saskatchewan potash industry has experienced over the past several years, as reported by the Quarterly Accident Statistics Report issued by the Mines Safety and Radiation Unit.

For purposes of this presentation, the numbers for the solution potash mines have been added in with the conventional potash mines. Loss time accidents, modified work injuries and medical incidents which require treatment have been added and expressed as a frequency per 200,000 person-hours worked.

The occupational injury and illness rate for the U.S. nonmetallic minerals industry, SIC Code 14, as reported in the National Safety Council 1998 Edition of Accident Facts, is shown for comparison purposes.

The chart shows, on average, that between four and five workers per hundred have sustained workplace injuries which required at least medical treatment over the past five years. As a trailing indicator, this frequency shows us how often potash people get hurt. It does little to inform us about the seriousness of the injuries sustained, and does nothing to help us to know what needs to be fixed.

Another measure of the potash industry's performance can be found within the Saskatchewan Workers' Compensation Board assessment rate structure. Unlike some other North American jurisdictions, all costs associated with any workplace injury are paid by the Saskatchewan WCB.

A worker is free to seek medical assistance from any physician within the province, and if the physician is satisfied that the visit is a result of the workplace injury, the WCB is billed for the costs. These costs are then recorded against an employer's experience account with the WCB.

Employers are then placed in pools with other employers with similar risks. In the case of the shaft potash mines, the pool consists solely of the eight shaft potash employers. The solution mines are pooled with some other similar employers.

The Saskatchewan Workers' Compensation Board is required to administer each pool on a break-even basis, allowing for administrative and actuarial costs. Employers with very low claims costs may receive rebates of up to 20 per cent of their assessment. Employers with very high claim costs may be surcharged up to 40 per cent of their basic assessment.

As can be seen, at 40 cents per hundred dollars in salary, the solution mines experience the 5th lowest assessment rate, and the conventional potash mines, at 77 cents per hundred dollar salary, experience the 12th lowest assessment rate among the 60 rate codes that were established for 1999 in the province.

It is my understanding that the assessment model used by the WCB attempts to use recent historical information to predict the future costs that will be incurred by any particular pool. In a pool that contains very few employers, it is in their individual best interest to assist each other to reduce the rate of injuries, since another employer's poor performance will impact the WCB assessment for the rest of the pool.

It is within this framework that industry associations, such as the potash section of the Saskatchewan Mining Association, function to raise the standards in the industry. Ultimately, however, the WCB assessment rate is also a trailing indicator. In the Saskatchewan model, the rates may say something about the relative average cost of injuries, but in fact aggressive return-to-work programs, as urged by our WCB, may mask the true extent of the dollar cost of the injuries. The WCB rates also do not identify what improvements are required.

Although injury rates and Workers' Compensation costs are often referred to when discussing safety performance, a safety conscious organization will seek upstream or leading indicators for safety performance. We have already reviewed the Saskatchewan perspective that our properly functioning Occupational Health Committee can serve as an internal auditor, and the Mine Safety and Radiation Unit can serve as an external auditor of the facility's internal responsibility system.

It is my understanding that PCS uses a form of the five star audit program as developed by the former international LOS (sp) control institute. Various personnel from PCS Operations are trained as auditors by the DNV organization and participate in LOS (sp) control audits at their sister operations. ICM Global, the parent corporation for the IMC Kalium organization, conducts environmental health and safety audits at all its facilities, including the four Saskatchewan potash operations, using protocols based on OSHA, MSHA and the Canadian regulations, as well as established best business practices.

There are several offshoots of a comprehensive corporate audit program. Most of the potash operations use some form of safety observation on a regular basis. These observations might include workplace inspections, task observations, or interactions modeled on the DuPont stop system.

I would suggest that there is a significant challenge to the utility of these programs as a health and safety performance indicator. By its very nature, management must measure an activity in order to manage it. Unfortunately, what is measured may not equate with what is to be managed. For example, if a workplace inspection program is implemented and the standard for compliance is the number of inspections completed, then most subordinates will meet that quota.

The challenge of course is that this program is meant to improve the quality of the workplace through identifying the causes of substandard conditions and activities, and correcting them. If the measure for compliance is based solely on the quantity of inspections, then the fact of compliance may not contribute to improvements within the system.

The senior members of an organization, with the authority to establish policy, set goals and deploy resources, are generally held accountable for final results -- costs, profit, share price. The result of successful safety policy, goals and resources, is that fewer people get hurt, and the injuries are less severe.

The trailing indicators may be suitable at this level, although due diligence requires the implementation of effective monitoring for actual compliance with policy. The site management implements the policy and manages towards the goals. At this level, it is important to understand what is causing the substandard performance. While usually being accountable for safety performance as measured by trailing indicators, site management must, in fact, focus on the upstream indicators to ensure that root causes of substandard performance and conditions are identified and eliminated.

Often, the limited scope of control of first line supervisors makes the use of injury rates inappropriate. If an organization has a safety management system that results in an injury frequency of 5 and wishes to improve, a 10-person crew, on average, would work two years between injuries. In the intervening time, a focus on injury rates would conclude that that particular crew is contributing to an improvement, when in fact the crew could be continuing to operate at a level that generates a frequency of 5.

A preferred performance measure for first line supervisors would focus on the quality of their participation in the programs that are implemented as a result of policy.

The Saskatchewan potash industry has traditionally attempted to measure safety performance through the use of trailing indicators, such as injury frequency, severity, and compensation cost. In addition to the efforts of the Occupational Health committees and the Mines and Radiation Safety Unit, most operations have implemented programs that attempt to identify deficiencies in the internal responsibility system, before the deficiencies are identified as losses. This is evidence that the industry has recognized the value of leading indicators in evaluating safety performance.

Thank you very much.

Question Period - Période de questions - Período de Preguntas

MR. REDEKOP: Thank you, Mr. Wright.

Are there any questions? Dr. Grayson and Mr. Wright would be willing to answer any of them.

NEW SPEAKER: For Mr. Wright. What are your measures for measuring improvements in health, as opposed to safety injuries?

MR. WRIGHT: Within the Saskatchewan mining industry, I do not believe we have an effective measure for measuring health, only as reflected by, perhaps, the frequency of modified work injuries or days lost in some way in that effect. In terms of objectively and separately measuring health separately from injuries, I do not believe that our industry has yet got an indicator for that.

MR. REDEKOP: Dr. Grayson.

DR. GRAYSON: I think really Marge had directed that towards Mr. Wright, and Saskatchewan in particular.

Basically, we have had a hard time. What we have had to look at is exposures as a surrogate for it, and a certain change in prevalence rates is what we have had to focus on, on the government side.

As far as the industry side, there are some fairly proactive companies that are doing health screening on a regular basis, and they are trying, through the health screening on an annual basis, maybe even more so if necessary, they are trying to screen out those who need help before the disease occurs. Those are not, by any means, accumulated into a database that we can actually use. That's the problem.

NEW SPEAKER: A question for Mr. Wright.

Thanks for your presentation. It was informative. I think part of the objectives of this conference is to share our successes. It seems to me that Saskatchewan -- I have some knowledge about Saskatchewan -- is doing some good work with respect to health and safety and committees and the internal responsibility system.

Some of us do not always believe in the internal responsibility system. It was once describe to me like communism: It looks good on paper, but it doesn't work.

In some jurisdictions in Canada it does work. In the American jurisdictions, there is no internal responsibility system, because in many places there is no health and safety committees. Likewise in Mexico.

Could you explain, first off, the mechanism that brings the two sides together?, and then the third party would be the enforcers, the training and such, briefly. I think the key point is, what do you do in Saskatchewan, or what is your experience with a committee that fails? In other words, if the internal responsibility system fails, what happens and what steps are taken to try to correct that problem?

MR. WRIGHT: In my own personal experience, I have not experienced a failed occupational health committee, although I think I have participated at three operations in attempting to improve occupational health committee activities. The source of these improvements, I would suggest, is based in training and information. I saw earlier a slide that referred to expert employees. To some extent, what management needs is input from the people on the floor. They are expert in the activities they undertake.

However, once we have occupational health committee representatives, all of us can benefit by the level of knowledge and expertise that the committee members share and have available to them to genuinely identify root causes as opposed to superficial issues in the workplace.

Regarding the first part of your question, the perspective of the internal responsibility system, as it is understood in Canada, is that the responsibility for safety is not someone else's job. It is not the government's job, in our opinion, to keep our workplaces safe. They are part of the solution, along with the employers, along with the workers who, on a regular basis, can inspect and seek out deficiencies and ensure that they are corrected.

I hope that answered your question.

NEW SPEAKER: One of the things we run into in the States with some of our local unions and their employers is when they move to a measurement system that looks at behaviour, I guess. There has been a big tendency in some of those companies to begin to look at behaviour and changing behaviour as the best means of improving basically our lost work days (inaudible) rate and safe procedures and so on.

We have seen in a number of those companies what happened is that becomes the main means of determining what is wrong, and correcting things, basically by correcting employees, very occasionally supervisors.

We also end up, in some of those companies, with a marked decrease in how much they are willing to pay for engineering controls and other methods which really get at the root causes of problems.

Could you maybe comment on that, whether that is becoming a tendency in Saskatchewan, and perhaps what NIOSH is seeing too or, if not, how you have managed to avoid doing that?

MR. WRIGHT: Actually, that is interesting, I think it was two or three months ago there was an article discussing exactly that point in Occupational Health and Safety Canada Magazine.

Certainly we would have to look at what are the issues in a particular workplace. As I understood part of what you may have been asking me was about the appropriateness of behaviour based safety when you exchange it for engineering controls.

Clearly, if you have a workplace that has significant engineering and safety process deficiencies, if you do not have a well built structure, if you do not have safe mine designs, if you do not have good ventilation capacity, if you do not have good training programs, I personally cannot see how behaviour based safety is going to improve things.

However, there might come a point, and I believe there does come a point, once an organization has the fundamental safety engineering components in place, often we see plateaus in performance. That means we have now run into some barrier where we have to change the way we think to continue to improve. I think if there is any place where behaviour based programs may be the most significant, is that when you have systems that are down controlling incidents in the rate of, say, three to five, that is your OSHA frequency, it may be limited in the amount of benefit that safety engineering can provide to improve that rate, and perhaps then it is appropriate in fact to start looking at systems like behaviour based safety because obviously there is some component that yet has not been addressed.

I do not believe that it is a proper use of behaviour based programming to exchange it for safety engineering, but I believe each may serve its own role in overall helping to improve the safety.

The significance about the behaviour based implementation, of which I am aware, is that it is essentially done by the work force, at least the successful ones that I have heard of. The unsuccessful ones may have been implemented by management. That may be an interesting dynamic as well.

NEW SPEAKER: There are indeed variations on behaviour based safety process, and there have been some good achievements, where the expert miners, the way I look at it, are intimately involved along the way. However, it would appear to me, and this is NIOSH's official position, that the technologically feasible controls ought to be implemented first.

Then, if indeed those technologically feasible controls are not able to do the job, and there are a mixture of factors involved on the various problems that are being analyzed for injuries or whatever. Some of those obviously are human factors -- human-machine interfaces, sometimes not remembering steps in the job, especially non-routine situations or conditions that deteriorate fairly quickly while they are doing the job, things of this nature.

Not always will engineering controls be available to handle those, but if indeed the process is set up so that the expert miners are involved in that process and they then basically can adopt, if you will, from the consensus based reaction -- it is reaction at that point in time -- to the problems that are there, then it will be adopted better, and can be transformed into behaviour changes.

If it is not that way and they are sort of on the side, if you will, not intimately involved, then there is a major hurdle there indeed to change the behaviours at all. So I would sort of challenge the behaviour based safety concept as being even effective in those situations.

NEW SPEAKER: What would follow as a comment to that too is clearly one of the problems we see that one of the big behaviours which influence health and safety, basically decision-making as to expenditures, seems to be totally removed from workers' abilities to look at behaviour, investigate behaviour, and I am not sure if there are any companies around that go to that point of allowing, when they do have worker based behaviour teams, to look into that issue.

MR. REDEKOP: Thank you very much -- one more question.

NEW SPEAKER: This is for Dr. Grayson.

Mr. Wright spoke of leading and trailing indicators. I think we all believe that leading indicators impact directly and indirectly on the trailing indicators. In order to improve the leading indicators, they have to be measured, they have to be quantified.

Do you have any comments on the ability and the need to quantify and measure leading indicators as a measure of occupational health and safety performance?

DR. GRAYSON: Again, I would just come across on that whole idea of any unplanned events occurring and taking a hard look, every single day, that things may be showing up -- as conditions change or whatever, things are going to happen that you did not want to happen.

Taking a regular look at those on a day-to-day basis is the best way to get ahead, if you will, and not wait for accumulation of statistics later on. That whole approach, the systematic approach, to addressing things as quickly as possible and taking care of the problem then is primarily it.

I do not have a whole lot of experience with leading indicators. Most of it, on the government side especially, has been more incident rates and things of this nature, prevalences. That philosophy that the operator -- when I was an operator, I tried to do the same exact thing. Look at those events and curtail those events in the early, early stages, is the best approach.

MR. REDEKOP: Thank you very much to our speakers for their excellent, innovative and thoughtful and interactive presentations. Thank you very much.

Luncheon Address - Allocution du midi - Discurso del Almuerzo

MR. GEOFF BAWDEN (Executive Director, Manitoba Department of Labour, Provincial Co-chair): It gives me great pleasure today to introduce a gentleman who has been involved with the labour movement for quite a number of years, and who has a significant profile and distinguished history in the labour movement in the province of Manitoba.

Rob Hilliard graduated from Sir George Williams University in Montreal with a B.A. in Honours Sociology. He first became a member of the United Steelworkers of America in 1969. He was active in northern Manitoba as a trade unionist, holding a variety of positions, including local union president in Leaf Rapids. For those who do not know, Leaf Rapids is several hundred kilometres north of here, and is a small community that is surrounded by the rocks and trees of the Canadian Shield.

He was hired by the Manitoba Federation of Labour as Health and Safety Representative in 1987. First elected as the President of the Manitoba Federation of Labour in 1995 and re-elected in 1997. The Manitoba Federation, ladies and gentlemen, is the organization which represents workers in the province of Manitoba.

Previously, he has worked very hard as a worker before becoming a chief of Labour in the province of Manitoba. I am sure you will find his talk stimulating. He is a very articulate speaker.

Without any further words on my part, Mr. Rob Hilliard.

MR. ROB HILLIARD (President, Manitoba Federation of Labour): Thanks very much, Geoff. I hope I can live up to those kind remarks.

I would like to thank everybody for having the opportunity to be here this afternoon and to address delegates from Mexico, the United States and Canada, on a topic that is very important to the labour movement of course, but it is also important to me on a personal level.

As Geoff has indicated, I have history in the mining industry. I spent 12 years of my working life working underground in mines in northern Manitoba. I certainly saw first-hand and dealt first-hand with many of the risks that miners have to deal with when they go to work every day.

I also saw some of my co-workers get hurt on the job, some of them quite seriously. On two occasions, two of my co-workers were fatally injured. I had the very sad experience of trying to console a young widow with two young children of one of those co-workers. The mining industry has indeed claimed too many victims over the years.

I think it is fair to acknowledge that there have been improvements in the industry. I first began my career in 1969. When I first went underground, when I first put a lamp on my hard hat and went to work, I and a number of other rookie miners were herded into a lunchroom underground. The shift boss there proceeded to give us a two-day orientation on what to expect.

One of the first things they did was hand us a manual about this thick, the size of the New York City telephone directory. We were informed that there was a procedure, and a safe procedure, for doing absolutely everything there was to do underground, and that if any of us were in an accident, it would be because we did not follow that procedure properly.

Well, I have learned a lot since then. I have learned in fact that it is far better -- first of all, I think I should point out that any health and safety system that is designed to require human beings to be vigilant and alert and to always do things correctly all of the time is a system that is designed to fail. Human beings simply are not made that way. We have other things on our minds. Perhaps we have had a fight with our spouse, perhaps we have a sick child at home, maybe a parent has passed away, maybe we are having financial difficulties, maybe we are just thinking about who might win the Grey Cup -- or the Superbowl, for our guests from the United States.

The fact is that human beings have other things on their minds. I did learn, as a miner, and I think it is true, that most miners are very much more alert when they are on the job than a lot of other workers. You get attuned to listening for something very different and to react quickly to it, to see anything differently. You cannot see much when you are underground, of course, but even when you feel something different, you react quickly.

I can recall an example I had when I was drilling with a partner on a muck pile and we felt a sudden blast of air hit our legs, almost knocked us over. We couldn't hear anything, because our drills were going. We dropped our drills and we headed out of there without even looking to see what had happened, because you have to react that way when you are a miner.

What had happened is that the far end of the stope had come down and had created a gust of air that had almost knocked us off our feet. So miners do have to be alert, and they are alert, but they cannot be totally alert all of the time, and they cannot do everything right all of the time.

What makes far more sense in health and safety is to find out where the hazards are and what they are, and to try to control the hazards rather than trying to control the workers.

Ideally you would try and eliminate hazards, and where you cannot eliminate hazards, you try to control them. That is a far better approach to health and safety management than telling workers to be ever alert and to always do things right, especially from a manual that is that thick.

There are a few other things I learned as well over the years. I learned that health and safety should not just be a management prerogative. When it was a management prerogative, we got handed these big manuals and told to act safety, and that if we were in an accident, it was probably our fault.

What makes far more sense is for workers to be directly involved in the process, to participate in identifying hazards, to participate in how to manage them, to be part of the decision-making process that controls and ideally eliminates them.

In Manitoba, we have had legislation here since the mid-1970s that has required workplaces to have joint labour-management workplace health and safety committees. But the mining industry here in Manitoba frankly was a trailblazer, because we practiced that at many of the mine sites in Manitoba well before there was a legislative requirement. There was a negotiated provision in our collective agreements where we had a requirement through the bargaining process to have joint labour-management workplace health and safety committees.

It should not be surprising that in a mining environment health and safety would perhaps take a higher priority than it does in other kinds of workplaces. For those reasons, workers prioritized health and safety higher, and bargained hard to ensure that they had a role in that.

There is a good reason workers and miners feel it is important to be involved. It is not that we believe employers and managers don't care. The truth of the matter is, we have different priorities. When a manager is looking every day at his production schedule and is being told by his superiors and his board of directors that he has to turn a profit, that he has to reduce costs and increase production, those are the things that are uppermost in their minds. It is not that they don't care, it is just not their first priority. But for miners, it often is. That is why miners and workers need a say in the process.

The difficulty we have with the joint workplace health and safety committees, the structural flaw that exists with them is that workers have their say in the process, but it is an advisory role. Joint workplace health and safety committees will pass along recommendations to management. Management makes the final decision.

If managers have other things on their minds, they may say "that's not as important as increasing the production over here", and that is the decision that gets made, but it is not the decision that the miners would make.

I know there is a lot of health and safety professionals in this room. I have been involved in the field myself over the years, and I have had many conversations with people, where they will argue that, yes, but investment in health and safety now pays off down the road. You have fewer injuries, you have fewer problems to deal with. Those are expenses.

I had a conversation like that with a mine manager up north once. He very quickly turned around to me and he said, "I don't have the luxury of looking down the road. The board of directors in Toronto wants to see black ink on next month's financial statement, and I have to do that." He was a nice guy, certainly did not want to hurt anybody, but that was his priority. It was necessary for him to keep his job for that to be his priority.

If that is not a good enough indication for some folks here about where managers' heads are at, I want to refer back to a quotation that a former CEO of Ford Canada said in a public speech shortly after the first Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement was negotiated. In a public speech in Toronto, he got up and said: "I urge Canadian governments, provincial and national, to relax health and safety regulations and to enforce them more liberally, because 'they were a drag on profits'". I didn't say that, the CEO of Ford said that.

Under those kind of conditions, government plays a key and vital role. Government must move into that difference of priorities and be prepared to regulate, to pass good regulations that protect workers when they are at work, to protect miners when they are underground, and they also must be equally prepared to enforce those regulations vigorously, because when they don't do that, workers get hurt, because managers have a different priority.

There is one graphic example here in Canada that illustrates what can happen when in fact government withdraws from their role and when managers are simply unconcerned about health and safety. This example happened in a mine in Nova Scotia, the province in our eastern side. It is called Westray. That mine blew up in 1992. When I say "blew up", I mean that quite literally -- it blew up -- and it killed everybody that was underground at the time. Twenty-six miners died all at once. I think there are still about a dozen of them down there. They have not been able to retrieve the bodies.

Westray was a mine in a hurry. It had unrealistic production schedules. It had a management that was frankly incompetent, and particularly mean spirited. It fired miners who complained about safety problems. In fact, there was more than one miner that was fired for reporting safety violations to the provincial inspectorate, and there were many violations -- many, many violations.

The provincial inspectorate did not get as involved as it should have. When it did get involved, reluctantly, and wrote orders, it never saw that they were followed. And the management did not follow them. They did not care -- production came first. The inspectorate simply did not follow up.

It was so bad in this particular mine that the miners actually got together in the homes of one of the miners just a short while before the fatal explosion. They met and they talked with a miner who had just been fired for reporting violations to the provincial inspectorate. That miner's name was Carl Guptal (sp).

In the testimony before the Westray Mine Public Inquiry, he described that meeting. These miners were talking about not the problems in the mine as if they were something that might happen, they talked about them as if they were going to happen. They did not talk about what might happen if the mine might blow up, if there might be an explosion, they talked about what would happen when it blew up.

I want to just quote to you what Carl Guptal testified in that public hearing about what one of the miners had said, one of the miners who is no longer here: "If we die in that mine, you go public, as soon as she blows, and you tell the world what you know. Do it for our widows."

The miners knew what was going to happen. They were afraid. They still went to work. They calculated, actually, that they had a 25 per cent chance of being underground when she blew, because there were four crews. They still went to work. Well, the inevitable did happen, and the mine blew and killed 26 miners.

I think it is also important to realize that that mine, that Westray mine, just a few short weeks prior to this accident, was the recipient of the John T. Ryan Award from the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, for having the safest mine in Canada. It had the safest mine in Canada on paper. In reality, it was a death trap.

I have a colleague of mine who often refers to Canadian workplaces by saying "It's a Westray world out there". He does not mean that all Canadian workplaces or all Canadian mines are as hazardous as the Westray mine, because of course they are not. And he does not mean that all managers are as incompetent and as mean-spirited as the Westray managers were, because they are not.

What he does mean is that there are great competitive pressures applied to employers and managers, and that those pressures cause managers to prioritize health and safety lower than miners and workers would, the people who are really at risk. And it does mean that managers make the final decisions about health and safety. If that is followed up with government lack of will to pass regulation and lack of will to enforce strenuously, then there is an inevitable conclusion. That conclusion is that Canadian workers, indeed Mexican workers, workers from the United States if they are faced with a similar system, will be hurt and sometimes killed on the job. Frankly, that is the crux of the matter when it comes to organized labour.

It is unrealistic to expect employers to prioritize health and safety concerns high enough. The pressures that are brought to bear on them lead them in a different direction. They push them somewhere else.

Any system that relies on managers to make those final decisions is a system that is saying: Workers being hurt, and even killed occasionally, is a cost of production.

If government does not move in to fill that void and be the regulator and a very vigorous enforcer, then that will be the only logical and inevitable consequence that can arise.

It is no secret to many of the people in this room that organized labour in Canada and the United States were not crazy about NAFTA. Truthfully, we opposed it. We opposed it because it promoted an environment of letting the marketplace decide things, of government stepping back and letting managers run the show. It will be good for the economy, that's the theory.

From a worker standpoint, that is going to cost us a lot. We are going to get hurt on the job, some of us are going to get killed. That system will not promote workplace health and safety.

NAFTA does have side agreements, the NAALC. They have been around now for a few years. We have had a lot of meetings. But organized labour really is not here as a significant player. We are taking a stand-back approach to it. Meetings are not enough. We need to be directly involved. There has to be a philosophical approach to the problem, that says: Government has a legitimate and important role to play here, and they must do it.

Frankly, if you are not prepared to accept that notion, honestly I think you are not doing much here. You can have a lot of meetings, but you are not going to accomplish much really in workplaces. We would like to be involved. We would not like that to be the result. We want to be involved, we want to see this be real. I guess that is our challenge to you: Make it real. And we will be there.

Thank you very much.

MR. BAWDEN: I want to thank you, Rob, for your frank and articulate comments. Thank you very much, sir.

Concurrent Session - Setting Standards - Séance simultanée - Établissement de normes - Sesión Simultánea - Establecimiento De Normas

DR. ALEJANDRO GALINDO BARAJAS (Director de Asistencia Técnica, Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social): (off-microphone) …me tocó coordinar esta mesa que siguiendo un poco lo que indicó el expositor del almuerzo, es la responsabilidad del gobierno, el establecimiento de las normas, soy el Dr. Alejandro Galindo, Director de Asistencia Técnica en seguridad e higiene de la Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión y Social de México.

El primer expositor para tratar este tema, es el Sr. James LeBlanc, de Canadá quien es un higienista titulado, graduado de la Comisión Americana y el Consejo de Inscripción canadiense de Higiene Ocupacional, ha ocupado diversos puestos en comités de salud y seguridad, ha dado asesorías, en las provincias marítimas de Canadá, en salud y seguridad en el trabajo, actualmente es el director ejecutivo de la división de salud y seguridad ocupacional del Ministerio de Trabajo de Nueva Escocia. Le cedemos la palabra al Sr. LeBlanc.

MR. JAMES LEBLANC (Executive Director, Occupational Health and Safety, Department of Labour, Nova Scotia.): Thank you very much for the introduction. It gives me great pleasure to be here today to speak to the delegates at this international conference on mining safety and health.

It was an interesting presentation that our lunch time speaker talked about the Westray mining disaster in Nova Scotia, because that is a topic that I wish to talk to you about this afternoon.

I would like to start by raising the issue that the question of standard setting for performance in health and safety needs to reflect not only objective criteria and statistical measures that look at activity and outcomes, but it needs to measure stakeholder satisfaction with the content of the regulations, with the content and the delivery of the services of an organization.

As an agency responsible for workplace health and safety and as a provider of a service, you need to understand or at least appreciate your clients' expectations of your service. The story that I would like to recount this afternoon is one where those expectations were not matched.

We, as an agency responsible for enforcement in a jurisdiction in Canada, were not able to meet those expectations and it resulted in a catastrophic disaster. Sometimes, from those failures there is an opportunity to learn.

In this case, one of the important issues to identify is that for us as regulators, the culture changed around health and safety, and we did not notice. When I speak of culture, I see at least four components that we might want to address, the first being the public, and I would include the media in that concept of culture around health and safety, and what is the public expectation, what is acceptable in relation to workplace health and safety, and what is acceptable in relation to risk.

The second area of culture is around the occupational safety and health agency itself, the culture within the regulator; when does coaching stop, and when does enforcement begin. I think we have heard, through the course of our couple of days, that obviously both of those efforts need to be in place, but there has to be a line where you leave the coaching exercise behind and move into the enforcement mode.

The culture on behalf of the employer, the culture around the willingness to comply with the standards, the introduction of innovation into workplaces, and the ability or the need to go beyond the requirements of the regulation.

Finally, the last area of culture is the one around the employee and their attitudes towards health and safety in the workplace and, more importantly, their expectations of us as regulators and of employers in relation to the health and safety that they expect, and indeed demand, in their workplace.

To put the presentation in perspective, I come from a province on the east coast of Canada, a reasonably small jurisdiction. The population is roughly a million residents, a workforce of approximately 400,000. To put the issue in perspective from that of mining, the province has had a history of coal mining that goes back to the early 1800s. At this point in time, there are roughly 3,000 people employed in mines, and roughly half of those would be employed in coal mines.

Because of that history in mining, the province is no stranger to mining accidents. Prior to this 1992 accident in Nova Scotia, the last mine explosion occurred in the late 50s, early 60s.

The Westray project that was referred to in the lunch time discussion, to provide a little bit of detail around it, it really involved a coal scene that had been mined probably in the late 20s. In the early 1980s, interest developed in again mining coal from the scene and by the late 1980s it was apparent that the project would proceed.

The project itself, because of some socio-economic conditions -- a high unemployment rate, it was an unexploited resource that existed in the province, there was political support for this project, there was a market for the coal. So those conditions were ripe for this project to proceed.

In terms of the state of the mining industry in the province, it is probably fair to say that the mining industry was in a downturn in the province, and had been that way for some time. There had been no new coal mines opened in the province for probably 20 years, other than some surface stripmines that were operated. But in terms of an underground coal mine, this would have been the first underground coal mine in 20 years that was going into production.

The last point in terms of the project itself is that there was a certain amount of government involvement at both the federal and provincial levels, in that loan guarantees were provided to assist the company become financially viable, there was a contract put in place to ensure that there was a market for a large percentage of the production of coal that would come from the mine. Finally, there was a taker-pay contract that was put in place by the provincial government to ensure the economic feasibility. So from the perspective of an environment, there was a desire to see the mine proceed, and there was support at all levels to see that it went ahead.

Some of the problems that I would like to identify in terms of the environment that we were operating in, first and foremost would be the legislation and the regulation around underground mining. In Nova Scotia, we were working with a set of regulations that were 40 years old. Many of the rules would have actually prevented the mine from operating, because the technology had long since left them behind. There had been an active process to try and revise these rules. It had gone on for ten years, but it had never become the priority in terms of having it completed.

There was some uncertainty in terms of which government agency was responsible for what. As a result, there were some gaps in terms of how the agencies delivered their services.

New technology. We have talked about technology over the last couple of days. The mine was going to use technology that had never been seen in the province before. There was a reliance in this workplace on that technology in terms of it doing what it was supposed to do. In reality, certainly some of the facts that have come out since that time have identified that the performance of the new technology was not everything that it was promised to be.

An issue of staff expertise. From the perspective of familiarity with the new technology, the culture of enforcement and the issue of coaching versus enforcement. From the part of the employer, the desire and the ability to upgrade staff to deal with these new technologies and new work methods that were being introduced in the province. In terms of the question of resources, financial resources for plan review, plan approval, contractual expertise to deal with design.

These were a number of areas that had to be addressed all around this new facility coming into the province.

The issue of training in the workplace. I think we have identified on a number of occasions the importance of training for the employees in the workplace. In this case, the infrastructure that had been in place to provide trained workers to underground coal mines was not readily available, and there was not a commitment on the part of the employer to bring the skills to bear in this workplace that were required.

The next slide identifies that in May 1992 there was an explosion. The bullets that are identified characterize the events that followed. Obviously the first and foremost was the rescue and retrieval efforts that went on in terms of the workers that were believed to be trapped underground in attempting to save the mine. That happened immediately.

Within days of the explosion, there was a Labour investigation that began in terms of the health and safety issues around the explosion. There was also a police investigation that began.

Within a matter of weeks, there was an official inquiry that was announced, and within months there were civil suits that proceeded as a result of the accidents.

To review briefly what happened in each of those cases, in terms of the Labour investigation, as I mentioned, it began as soon as the rescue and retrieval process was underway. It involved officers, inspectors, that were not involved in directly servicing the workplace. It also involved external expertise. To the credit of the mining industry and the regulators across the boundaries and the jurisdictions, at the time of disaster and the time of need, all jurisdictions assisted in bringing expertise to bear to help address the circumstances.

That investigation resulted in 52 charges against five parties, including the employer, the mine manager, the underground manager, and a number of supervisors.

About two years down the road those charges were withdrawn, to avoid compromising the criminal investigation. In hindsight, it is probably safe to say that those charges would have stood the best chance of being successfully prosecuted.

In terms of the police investigation, it began during the course of the rescue and retrieval, when issues of document destruction were raised. It involved the police and assigned Crown attorneys. There was some external expertise contracted to provide service. At one point in time, the RCMP actually trained as a mine team to go down into the mine to recover evidence.

That investigation resulted in six charges against three parties: The employer, the mine manager and the underground manager. That set of charges was set thrown out by the courts, and another set of charges was refiled against the parties.

The trial began. It was eventually stopped because of disclosure of information problems, and eventually the Supreme Court of Canada ordered a new trial. The prosecution, serviced by the Crown attorneys that would have been involved in the prosecution, decided not to proceed after about six years, based on their evaluation that a conviction would be extremely unlikely.

The next item was a civil litigation and a civil suit naming the province, the employer, suppliers, individuals, including inspectors and supervisors, was begun by the families. This action was put on hold while the other court actions were proceeded.

There have been a number of settlement conferences during the course of this seven-year period. The initial request was 130 million dollars in costs for settlement. The latest request for settlement is actually 13 million dollars. Over the period, there have been a number of investigations and a number of attempts to try and get to the basic cause of the accident.

The last investigation and inquiry that went on is the public inquiry. It was established under the legislation of the province. Initially there were some legal arguments that while this thing was before the courts, the inquiry could not proceed, but at the end of the day, in 1995, the inquiry actually had got off the ground and began its investigation.

The inquiry's report was insightful. It basically said that the fundamental and basic responsibility for safe operation of an underground coal mine, and indeed any industrial undertaking, rests clearly with the management. In this specific case, management failed, the inspector failed, and the mine blew up.

Probably the most quoted quote from the inquiry is the next line, that talks about how this was a complex mosaic of actions, omissions, mistakes, incompetence, apathy, cynicism, stupidity, and neglect.

The public inquiry identified some things about the company: The officials lacked appropriate qualifications in commitment to safety, little real attention being paid to the training and safe work practices in the workplace; the identification of major problems with ground control, and the mismanagement of those issues in a drive to produce; violations and unsafe practices, which were documented; poor management in worker relations. The judge, in his report, concluded that the disaster was inevitable. It should have been foreseeable and preventable.

In terms of us, the Department of Labour, as a regulator, it identified that inspectors were inadequately trained to meet this workplace, performance was inadequate in terms of the services they provided, and we had a flawed view of this internal responsibility system that we have talked about earlier and that I am going to mention in a few slides.

The inspectors were too close to management, and they failed to support the workers when issues were raised. Our earlier speaker at lunch time referred to one of the employees who came forward. That was one of the issues in terms of the level of support that we, as a regulatory agent, provided to the employees when they raised health and safety concerns.

In total, there were 74 recommendations made by the inquiry. They are broken down roughly, according to those numbers, with some for the OSH regulator, some for the resource regulator, some related to corporate accountability, but the majority directed to the specifics of regulations.

Government, from the perspective of the OSH regulator, has responded to the inquiry's recommendations, in that we have addressed the five recommendations that were directed at us as a regulator and the one that dealt with revision to the Occupational Health and Safety Act for corporate accountability.

The Government's Response has introduced the policy respecting no notice on inspection. It has conducted its review of the Occupational Health and Safety Division. It is in the process of transferring all responsibilities to the Department of Labour for health and safety to avoid confusion. It has negotiated with the federal government to put in place some resource-sharing capabilities in relation to mine inspection. It is in the process of revising its mine regulations, and Public Prosecution System, Special Prosecution Unit, has been established within government to deal with health and safety issues.

In part of its response, government basically recognized that in relation to health and safety, employers and employees have to be the first line of defence for the workplace, and government's role is there to step in and ensure that the system works, to provide the enforcement w