CALGARY – For many years, Alberta working people were routinely denied rights other Canadians take for granted, Alberta Labour Minister Christina Gray said last weekend in a bluntly worded speech on labour relations policy in Alberta. The speech provided insights into the direction the NDP government of Premier Rachel Notley
Continue readingTag: Occupational Health and Safety
Alberta Politics: Today’s Day of Mourning pieties aside, Alberta workplace injuries are vastly underreported
Today is the International Day of Mourning. Who we mourn are the untold, uncounted numbers of women, men and children who have been killed, injured, disabled or sickened while doing their work. The occasion is mostly marked with modestly unobtrusive ceremonies where organized working people gather – union halls, lunchrooms,
Continue readingdaveberta.ca – Alberta Politics: Sexual harassment firing is a gloomy cloud over Jason Kenney’s by-election victory parade
Photo: UCP MLA Jason Nixon endorsing Jason Kenney’s bid for the leadership of the United Conservative Party. United Conservative Party leader Jason Kenney is expected to slide to an easy victory in Thursday’s by-election in Calgary-Lougheed. But the skies over Kenney’s victory parade will be gloomy thanks to an Edmonton
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Bill 30, Alberta NDP’s workplace safety and Workers Compensation legislation, steps bravely into 21st Century
PHOTOS: Alberta Labour Minister Christina Gray, in a shot taken by the author at last summer’s Premier’s Pancake Breakfast on the Legislature grounds. In the background, media camera crews mob Premier Rachel Notley as she flips pancakes on the griddle. Below: UCP leader Jason Kenney and Joe McCarthy, some guy
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Insightful Parkland Institute study of how media covers workplace injuries helps put yesterday’s tragedy in perspective
PHOTO: An Alberta Occupational Health and Safety officer on the job. (Government of Alberta illustration.) Below: Athabasca University labour relations professors Bob Barnetson and Jason Foster, authors of a new study on how media coverage distorts our…
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Never mind the ‘Fuddites,’ Alberta needs Bill 6, although Bill 6 needs fixes
PHOTOS: NDP Labour Minister Lori Sigurdson chats with anti-Bill-6 protesters in front of the Legislature on Friday. Below: The crowd of protesters at its zenith and members of the Legislative Press Gallery interviewing a turkey, not for the first time,…
Continue readingAlberta Politics: Bill 6, Alberta’s new farm safety legislation, will be a test both for the NDP Government and the Wildrose Opposition
PHOTOS: Down on the Alberta farm, successive Conservative governments have made sure farm animals had more rights than farm workers. Below: Alberta Labour Minister Lori Sigurdson and Agriculture Minister Oneil Carlier, who may be about to fix this. It’s an embarrassing blot on the record of successive Progressive Conservative governments
Continue readingAlberta Diary: The only sector where you can’t have a union is the only one with no health and safety rules? Explain, please…
Alabama farm workers in 1935 – not so different from Alabamberta farmworkers in 2012. Below: Premier Alison Redford. LETHBRIDGE, Alberta Literally everybody – and that includes Alberta Premier Alison Redford – knows that permitting an industry to “voluntarily” self-regulate the health and safety of its own workers amounts to a
Continue reading