Although employers often have a harassment policy, many may not realize they are required to have a violence prevention policy and a program to implement it, advised Norm Keith, a partner at KPMG Law LLP in a session at the Ontario General Contractors Association annual symposium.
“When we’re talking about violence, we’re talking about intentional acts to harm other people,” said Keith during the session, billed Preventing and Managing Discrimination and Harassment in the Construction Industry.
Keith explained the Human Rights Code does not address workplace violence.
There are provisions in the Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) dealing with it, the need to have a violence prevention policy and the need to do a risk assessment.
“Realize that’s not optional. You have to address this. It doesn’t have to be super long, super complicated…The point is you have to have one,” he said, adding it needs to be reviewed annually.
“My simple advice, because it respects the concept of the internal responsibility system that the act was built on, you, management, diarize it, send it to the joint health and safety committee. Ask for any recommended changes. Bring it back, look at the recommendations, if any, agree/disagree,” said Keith. “It’s management’s choice. The committee has an advisory role only. Then you read, date and sign. Post it physically, electronically, or both.”
Assessing the potential for violence
In addition to implementing a safety policy, the OHSA says every employer has to develop and maintain a violence prevention program. It also needs to be reviewed annually.
What else does the legislation require employers to do?
“You have to do a workplace risk assessment of the potential violence,” Keith noted. “It sounds very complicated. It isn’t. It’s straightforward, but you have to do it. Then you have to develop measures and procedures. It’s in response to your assessed or perceived worry about workplace violence…or in the types of construction projects you do.”
He suggested some of the risks on projects in parts of Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area could include homelessness or gangs.
“One the things I always tell people to do…when they’re doing a violence in the workplace assessment is go to the Internet and check out the local police statistics,” Keith said. “You’ll know the kind of stuff that is out there, that is close to where you’re working…You should be aware of it because it’s going to be one of the risk factors you’re looking at.”
He also advised those in attendance to consider if their workers are taking transit or driving to work
“Maybe when they drive there they can’t park there. They’ve got to cross the road that’s poorly managed in terms of pedestrian safety,” Keith pointed out.
“When you do this and then roll it out, when you communicate it with toolbox safety talks or safety orientation for a project, you’re going to find people are going to respect you as an employer. They’re going to say, ‘Wow, you actually care about us, never been to a project where they’ve done that before.’ Even though it’s required by law…Don’t try to cover every potential theoretical possibility. Look at it practically, get input from workers, get input from onsite supervisors then you’re going to have a simple, straightforward, sensible policy that might actually help protect workers.”
Threats and acts of violence may require calling the police
Keith talked about a recent hearing, where a worker, who was an immigrant to Canada, was harassed by a union lawyer because he didn’t report seeing a co-worker who was doing drugs earlier.
“He’s getting harangued as if somehow he has committed a crime because he was too afraid to turn a union brother in,” said Keith. “If you think that culture is not out there…think again. That’s unhealthy. After he’s harangued…he blurts out, ‘because I was afraid.’ Of what? ‘I didn’t want to get beat up. I didn’t want my tires slashed. I didn’t want his friends to come to my house.’”
Employers can’t forget the Criminal Code and the police may need to be called in to deal with serious threats or acts of violence, Keith added.
“A lot of employers say I don’t want to have the police come to our jobsite,” he noted. “If that’s well known, you’ve given away a very important deterrent to bad behaviour. If you’ve actually told as a policy or told indirectly as a practice to your workforce that if there is criminal behaviour here we’re never going to call the police, you’ve made, with respect, a big mistake.”
When doing a violence assessment of the workplace, employers can get a firm in to do a checklist or there are sources where employers can get an idea of what to include and customize it for their workplace.
“The point is get practical, get sensible, get your committee, get your operation’s director or your health and safety director to do this and then walk through it,” Keith noted. “If you haven’t done this you’ve been breaking the law for about the last 18 years, so it is something you have to do and you have to be able to prove it if there is a complaint.”
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