by Eric Bell
With temporary foreign workers currently employed at over 400 businesses across the province, some organizations are looking at ways to improve safety training for new Canadians in the workplace.
Jim Bence of the Saskatchewan Hospitality Safety Association says that “not a lot” is done when it comes to safety training for new Canadians in the hospitality industry, a sector which frequently hires temporary workers.
Bence says he would like to see mandatory safety training for all new Canadians before they get their start in the workforce.
“The vision for it would be that all newcomers in Saskatchewan are exposed to their rights,exposed to the safety culture of Saskatchewan, and what it is that they can do to keep themselves safe at work,” said Bence. “The word mandatory is a bad term for it, but if safety was an integrated component to all settlement plans, that would be a real win for everyone.”
According to Bence, most temporary foreign workers arrive at the job site with little or no safety training.
“What happens though when new workers come to the province, is that there is a desperate need for them as workers, so they get trained in the basics of their job which is hit and miss, if the english is lower,” said Bence. “Safety is one of the last things that gets trained.”
Bence says that his industry is considering mandatory safety courses, and is looking at British Columbia as an example of a province who integrated safety training for newcomers into their temporary foreign worker programs. Bence is also considering coming up with a program that would train workers before they even left their home country.
“In the Phillipines, for example, they have a post that everyone who is leaving to become a temporary foreign worker flies out of,” said Bence. “And when they’re there, the day they are flying out, they get training at that depot before they get on the plane. So why can’t we integrate and get Saskatchewan’s safety standards in a 45 minute training session that could be delivered to each person telling them about safety and worker’s rights?”
Andrew Osborne teaches several safety courses to new Canadians at the Regina Open Door Society. He says that one of the biggest barriers to worker safety is language.
“We discuss workers compensation and labour standards, but we don’t spend a lot of time on it, and I think that’s because of the language barrier,” Osborne said. “It really takes a lot of time to go through it and the material provided to us from the province isn’t that accessible for lower language level learners. But we always provide them with the contact information and explain to them what to do if they are injured.”
Osborne says that having access to translated safety documents could go a long way in addressing the language barrier. Osborne notes that new Canadians often struggle with the simplest language, including reading labels on chemicals
“When I teach chemical safety, towards the end of the course I usually take a cleaning chemical we have at the office and tell them they have ten minutes to find out what it is, Osborne said. “And generally it can’t be done. It takes a day to go through all the information and imagine something like that on their first day at work, when their boss just says ‘here are the chemicals get to work.’ Are they going to even have the opportunity to know what it is that they are using? That puts them in a terrible position.”
Bence agrees that addressing the language barrier could go a long way in terms of workplace safety. Bence says that many new Canadians want to learn English, but lack the resources to do so.
“When you interview folks, it didn’t matter if they were from Morocco or the Phillipines or any of those places, when you ask what we can do for them to make their transition better from their home country to Saskatchewan, every single person would all ask for help with their english,” Bence said. “That needs to be a priority.”
