| Article Index |
|---|
| Workplace violence: evolving OHS obligation |
| Page 2 |
| Page 3 |
| All Pages |
Page 1 of 3
Workplace violence in Canada is a growing and prominent concern. Based on latest published statistics on Criminal Victimization in the Workplace, over 365,000 violent incidents are reported annually at Canadian workplaces. Almost 1/5 of incidents of violent victimization in Canada occur in the workplace.
Most readers are aware of highly publicized incidents of workplace homicide. In the Sears Canada matter in 1996, Theresa Vince, a senior human resources administrator, was killed by her own boss after a prolonged period of harassment and stalking. In the OC Transpo matter, Pierre Lebrun, a long-service bus driver, went on a shooting rampage at his workplace in Ottawa in 1999, killing four employees and two others before committing suicide. Co-workers had taunted him because of a stutter. In 2005, Lori Dupont, a nurse at Hotel Dieu Hospital, was stabbed to death by her ex-boyfriend, who worked in the same hospital. The perpetrator subsequently killed himself by drug overdose.
Workplace violence is a multifaceted problem that involves so much more than the fortunately rare and extreme examples above. Day in and day out, workers may be threatened, bullied, hurt by their own co-workers, supervisors, clients and customers, or by criminal intruders into the workplace.
Violence can result in complex responsibilities for employers, with overlapping legal obligations and potential liabilities. There are numerous legal avenues available to workers who are the targets of objectionable workplace behaviours. Those avenues include: police contact and the commencement of Criminal Code charges; human rights complaints where a protected human rights ground is violated; civil actions and grievances where collective agreement provisions are violated.
A victim of alleged violence in the workplace often has available several possible means of legal action before multiple forums. Internal company processes may be in place to investigate and deal with objectionable behaviour pursuant to violence or harassment policies. But increasingly, workers are turning to OH&S work refusals, complaints, requests for government compliance orders and potentially, even requests for prosecution of employers where workplace violence-related OH&S legal obligations are not met.
Workplace violence defined
The answer to the question, “What is workplace violence?” depends on the context, as employer duties to prevent workplace violence and harassment span numerous statutes and forums.
In the OH&S context, legislation and regulations across Canada are increasingly including obligations for employers to protect workers from workplace violence. The scope of those obligations is in part determined by how broadly the notion of “violence” is defined in the statute.
Several jurisdictions in Canada have no current definition of workplace violence. This is the case in New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Northwest Territories, Nunavut, Yukon, Ontario and Quebec. Where violence is defined, interestingly, there is growing recognition that violence extends beyond physical acts to include psychological violence, such as harassment and bullying.
In the federal jurisdiction, recently amended Canada Labour Code (CLC) Occupational Health and Safety Regulations contain a broad definition of workplace violence which does not restrict violence to “physical injury”.
In Manitoba, protection of workers against workplace violence includes protection against “any threatening statement or behaviour that gives a person reasonable cause to believe that physical force will be used against a person”. Manitoba legislation also contains specific provisions on the protection of workers against harassment, which is broadly defined as any objectionable conduct, comment or display by a person, directed at a worker in a workplace, based on specific, protected grounds (such as sex, race, religion, etc.) and which creates a risk to the health of the worker.
In Ontario, a private member’s bill (Bill 29) introduced in December 2007 would create a definition of violence with significant breadth, to include “the threatened, attempted or actual use of physical force that endangers the physical health or safety of a worker, and includes threatening statements or behaviour a worker reasonably believes may cause physical injury”. Bill 29 also contains specific provisions defining harassment. While this is not a government bill and therefore unlikely to become law, it has been a factor in spurring recent Ontario government action to consult on this issue, including consultation on a potential definition of workplace violence in the Ontario OHSA.
Next: Right to refuse work
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
