ARTICLE · 16 MAY 2014

Recent Construction Industry Safety Violation Discipline Decisions: Due Diligence Means Enforcing Rules

Stewart McKelvey

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Effective health and safety programs must meet provincial occupational health and safety standards and employers must always exercise due diligence.

CanadaEmployment and HR

Clarence Bennett

Alison Strachan

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Effective health and safety programs must meet provincial occupational health and safety standards and employers must always exercise due diligence in taking steps to meet those standards. Ongoing enforcement of a health and safety program is a must. If not, it is arguable that the employer is not meeting its due diligence requirements and may face unnecessary difficulty defending an occupational health and safety prosecution. While progressive discipline is almost always followed by arbitrators, the abbreviated recent cases below provide examples of what other issues arbitrators look at when determining disciplinary consequences for health and safety violations. From where we sit, arbitrators are taking violations of health and safety rules in the construction industry seriously. Why? A good explanation can be found in paragraph 8 of the EllisDon Ltd. v. LIUNA, Local 506 2013 CarswellOnt 16244 (discussed in more detail below):

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