The new workplace safety issue

As smoke from wildfires becomes a fact of life, safeguarding outdoor workers becomes a growing concern

WITH WILDFIRE SMOKE blanketing many parts of the province this summer, Ontario has been experiencing some of the worst air quality in the world. For many, it’s not much more than an annoyance ― an outdoor workout shelved or just a situation where you need to slow it down a bit.

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But if you or someone at your company works outside, it’s becoming a growing issue that workplace health and safety professionals are having to learn to navigate.

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The Ontario Federation of Labour (OFL) is currently doing research into the kinds of air quality experienced in outdoor work environments, and say they are canvassing workplaces to collect heat readings as well as talk to employees about their work environments, ahead of what sounds like a push later this year to lobby for improved workplace safety regulations in Ontario.

“When we go to (the legislature) in November and people are like, ‘Well, I don’t know what the big deal is because it’s freezing rain right now,’ we actually have data to capture what was happening this summer,” OFL president Laura Walton told the CBC. (They might look to Canadian sports unions for inspiration: in 2023, the CFL and their players’ association agreed to a third-party air quality measurement protocol.)

Part of the issue, the OFL acknowledges, is that it is such a new one. Workplaces are just starting to understand how ambient wildfire air quality concerns affect them and their labour force, and many will only now be trying to figure out how to communicate to their employees about risks and guidelines. Few workplaces want to send people out into unsafe air, but many are likely to be caught flat-footed by how quickly the issue has become a yearly reality.

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Western University professor emeritus Michael Lynk told the CBC he expects unions to start pushing this as a central issue in the coming years. Workers generally have the right to refuse unsafe work, which includes refusing to work in poor air quality, but unions (like those that represent municipal outdoor workers) would be keen to set defined policies. The City of Toronto, for one, has a policy of rescheduling work to cooler times in the day when possible, and has an indoor air quality policy for its office spaces.

Because the issue isn’t likely to go away, Lynk told CBC he wouldn’t be surprised to see this kind of model replicated in a variety of workplaces. “Just the threat of possibility of (refusing work), which is lawful under health and safety law,” he says, “is usually enough to encourage or nudge employers to take union concerns seriously.” Kieran Delamont