Earlier this summer, the Ministry of Labour (MOL) issued their new Safe at Work Ontario Sector Plans for their 2011-2012 year. Each year, Inspectors promote compliance areas across the province which they call “heightened enforcement campaigns” or “blitzes”. These campaigns attempt to focus on heightened hazard areas or those that contribute significantly to injuries or illness in Ontario’s workplaces. MOL Inspectors are then encouraged to specifically investigate these areas of compliance within all Ontario workplaces in order to decrease the number of injuries, and increase overall compliance. This 2011-2012 year, the MOL is focusing its efforts on Personal Protective Equipment, Musculoskeletal Disorders, Racking and Storage, and Violence and Harassment in the Workplace to name a few. Violence and Harassment in the Workplace (also known as Bill 168) will be a large focus since it affects all sectors of Ontario’s workplaces.
In 2010, the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) was amended under Bill 168 to deal with workplace violence and harassment. This required employers to develop workplace violence programs complete with policies, procedures and training all based off of a risk assessment of the workplace. Employers are now also responsible for protecting their workers from domestic violence that may be brought into the workplace. Inspectors already routinely check compliance with these new legislative requirements during their inspections, but with this increased focus, they may become more thorough in ensuring all policies, programs, training, etc. meet the legislative compliance standards.
Since the Bill 168 amendments have been made, workplaces have been attempting to make sense of the new legislation in how it affects their workplace and the policies and programs already in place therein. Recently, the City of Kingston held a labour arbitration with their Union for a decision to terminate a 28-year old employee for making a death threat against a union representative. The City of Kingston as the employer held that since the amendment of Bill 168, the classification of threatening language was now considered an act of workplace violence. The arbitrator agreed finding that Bill 168 changed the way in which employers have to respond to verbal threats within their workplaces. Employers must ensure that they completely understand how Bill 168 affects their workplace, and take preventative measures by making sure all of their previous policies and programs coincide with their new Violence and Harassment in the Workplace Program. For a case like this, the need for arbitration may have been avoided had the employer updated their progressive discipline policy to include threats of violence as a cause for termination.
As the Ministry of Labour Inspectors make their rounds in the 2011-2012 year, employers should focus their efforts on ensuring their Workplace Violence and Harassment Programs are meeting full compliance. Part of this should include double checking all preceding policies and programs to ensure that there are no overlapping conflicts that may cause confusion or lead to a need for arbitration.