| While enjoying lunch at The Keg a while back I overheard an interesting conversation at the next table. Four guys, who evidently worked in the oil and gas sector, were talking about all the "green" crews working out in the field. There was almost an explosion at a well-site, one of the diners said, because the crew was so inexperienced. He then went on to say that he was surprised there have been no deaths yet because the labour shortage has forced companies to hire workers who don’t really know what they are doing.
This is the price we pay for lack of government foresight and planning: dangerous working conditions; overworking that can lead to stress, injury or even death. Did the Klein government even consider this when it gave the go ahead to all those oil sands projects? Did anyone at the cabinet table ever consider that all those multi-billion-dollar projects going ahead at the same time would suck workers out of other construction projects, other industries? Who would replace them? How well trained would they be?
Take the case of 26-year-old Alex Eisenkrein. He was blind in one eye and without any fall protection when he fell from a fourth floor balcony (without a guard rail) during construction of a condominium project. His employer, H& H Stucco, was recently fined $354,000 for failing to ensure his safety — the largest penalty ever imposed in Alberta. Or the two fourteen-year-olds who have died on the job in Alberta in the last few years. One was crushed to death by a machine at a small privately-owned museum; the other plunged to death on a multi-storey construction site. Who was looking out for them?
Besides the danger to workers that is part and parcel of an overheated and under-regulated economy, there is the danger posed to vulnerable people who need to be looked after by qualified workers. If the oil and gas sector has trouble finding qualified workers, what is it like for employers who need people to look after the sick, the disabled, the ailing elderly or children in day care? Their salaries can’t possibly match those of the energy sector. Nevertheless, the work they do is essential.
Last summer the Alberta Council of Disability Services called the situation a "crisis." The employee turnover in government-funded community agencies that provide support for the disabled is over 40 per cent a year. The Council said if wages don’t improve the turnover rate will get worse and increase the risk of injury for both those receiving and giving service.
Nurses are in short supply as well. The government is trying to play catch-up after the devastating cuts to health care in the 1990s. Hospitals want to open more beds but there aren’t enough nurses. According to the nurses’ union, the Calgary Health Region is offering nurses double-time pay to fill empty shifts but even at that rate some shifts can’t be filled. Nurses are stressed from working overtime. Patients are stressed because they don’t get the care they need. Is it any surprise then that some women needing immediate attention because they were undergoing miscarriages were left to wait for hours in a hospital’s emergency waiting room? Is it any surprise that the CHR can’t find enough nurses to work under those conditions?
Could the Klein government have done any worse? First it cut budgets to the bone so workers were left without protection. Government spending on occupational health and safety (adjusted for inflation) was slashed by 40 per cent during the 1990s. As a result the number of prosecutions dropped off sharply: from 1985 to 1988, there had been an average of 39 prosecutions a year, but from 1989 to 1994, there were only 10. In 1997, there was one. And over the next eight years, there were just 52 – an average of 6.5 a year. The Klein government prefers what it calls "voluntary compliance" for industry rather than inspectors and prosecutors with teeth. The workers, of course, were left to fend for themselves.
And then, when the price of oil started to soar that very same government welcomed all bidders, the more the merrier. So let me get this straight; first the government gutted programs designed to give workers protection on the job, and then it gave the go ahead to all those oil sands projects. Didn’t it occur to anyone that the demand for workers would create chaos? That a shortage of workers would mean more people doing work for which they were completely unqualified? Didn’t they think about the danger this would pose to workers and those that depend on them? And didn’t it occur to them that all these new arrivals from other parts of the country would need doctors and nurses? That long-term care patients and the disabled would still need people to care for them?
A while back, Premier Klein admitted that his political opponents were right and that his government had been lax when it came to planning a sound economic strategy. That’s one way to look at it. But as I’ve said here before, my guess is Klein and his cabinet (and that would include several of the candidates now seeking his job) thoroughly enjoyed being budget slashers, destroying programs designed to improve people’s lives. They thought those programs made people too dependent on government, less self-reliant. So they cut and cut and cut. But when it was done they found the rest of the job a bit boring so they didn’t bother.
Gillian Steward is publisher of Alberta Views. |
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