Labour Minister orders OHS to increase random workplace safety inspections

The minister of Labour Relations and Workplace Safety says he’s ordered Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) to increase random inspections of work sites around Saskatchewan. 

On Wednesday morning, CBC’s iTeam revealed that in October 2013, OHS decided to back away from random inspections and instead focus almost exclusively on 62 businesses with high injury rates. 

Don Morgan, the minister of Labour Relations and Workplace Safety, saw that story and gave his ministry new marching orders. 

“The direction we’ve seen from the stats and the things that have come out, in particular today, is that we are not doing as many random inspections as we have been in the past,” said Morgan. 

“And we want to do more of those to make sure that we’ve got good public awareness; that the occupational health workers are out there.”

Morgan said he knew his ministry was in the midst of trying out a new, more targeted approach and he approved of that. He also said he felt that approach was working.

But he has also concluded that it may have gone too far in scaling back random inspections. 

“The direction we’ve given them is ad hoc inspections on a random basis are important. We’ve used them for years. They are a significant tool. They raise public awareness, public safety in a general sense.”

Morgan said he’s not in a position to micromanage OHS, so he was unable to explain what “more random inspections” would look like. 

“We don’t tell the occupational health workers who to inspect or even what particular industry to inspect,” Morgan explained. “They are equivalent to police officers. We don’t tell police officers who to stop or where to stop. We tell them we want increased visibility. We want increased safety.” 

The move away from random inspections drew widespread criticism. 

Former OHS officer Pat Bowers said “I think it’s disgusting.”

On Twitter, Larry Hubich of the Saskatchewan Federation of Labour said “Using the Saskatchewan government OHS logic, the way to slow down drivers is to have police stop enforcing the speed limits. Workers are put at risk.” 

And NDP Labour critic David Forbes also took the government to task in the legislature, demanding more random inspections. 

Morgan said today he heard the critics and responded. 

“We had people saying, ‘Should you be doing more random inspections?’ So we said, ‘Yeah, let’s make sure we’re doing some of each (random and targeted inspections).’”