8.5 Summary
Health and safety training can play an important role in reducing the number and severity of workplace injuries. The five workers who were injured or killed at the Langley mushroom farm in 2008 were harmed because they were exposed to uncontrolled hazards. While controlling these hazards through elimination, substitution, or engineering controls would have been the best way to prevent this incident, informing the workers about the well-known risks associated with manure composting and enclosed spaces and providing them with the training and equipment necessary to do the work safely might have also prevented it. Even if a hazard is controlled through engineering controls, there is still a need to ensure workers understand the nature of the hazards that could exist if the engineering control failed. Indeed, even providing the workers with basic training about their workplace rights and the hazard recognition process might have prevented the incident or reduced its consequences.
In this case, the employer appeared ignorant of the hazards in the workplace and therefore did not see any reason to provide training. Circumstances like these—where the employer may be unqualified to run their business in a safe manner—is one of the reasons that all Canadian jurisdictions have OHS inspection programs. Had the employer been made aware of the hazard and its obligations to control the hazard, it is possible that these workers would still be alive. Similarly, if the employer had an emergency response plan, it is possible that some of these workers would have avoided injury when attempting to rescue their colleagues.
Discussion Questions
- What purpose(s) does health and safety training serve?
- Identify five different instances of health and safety training that you have experienced or have heard about. Which do you think is most important and why?
- Why might you include workers in the development of OHS training? Why might you want to exclude them?
- If you were developing OHS training, would you lean toward behaviourism or social cognition theory? Explain your choice.
- What are the major components of an emergency preparedness plan? Which is the most important from the perspective of workers?
Exercises
Go online and find the WorkSafeBC Incident Investigation Report for the mushroom farm deaths detailed at the beginning of this chapter.[1] WorkSafeBC also provided an animated video recreation of the incident that you may wish to view.[2] After familiarizing yourself with the facts of this incident, complete the following tasks:
- Identify two types of training that the employers could have provided to these workers that might have altered the outcome of this incident. In 200 words, explain why you selected each type of training and how you believe it would have altered the course of this incident.
- Go online and identify a provider of each kind of training in your area.
- Identify two non-training ways (i.e., controls) by which this incident could have been prevented. In 200 words, discuss whether you think these controls would have been more or less effective in altering the outcome of this incident than providing training and why you think this.
