Audrey M. Cormack

Much of the anti-worker agenda that business groups and their conservative legislative allies are pushing in the United States is already in place in Alberta with disastrous results for working families.

That was the message delivered to the Canadian Joint Conference delegates by Audrey M. Cormack, president of the Alberta Federation of Labour.

"We have become the unfortunate national leaders in the areas of deregulation, privatization, health care and education cutbacks, and poly-sector layoffs," Cormack said. "You might say that Alberta is a living testament to the rule of the marketplace. . . ."

Cormack detailed the changes in occupational health and safety and workers' compensation during the seven years of rule by Premier Ralph Klein's Progressive Conservative Party. Klein "is the poster boy for advocates of extreme fiscal restraint," she said. Cormack said Klein's government made a huge change in the way that job health and safety are enforced.

Under the previous enforcement system, government officers would inspect worksites and investigate complaints. If they found a violation, they issued an official order to the employer, which had the weight of law, Cormack said. Officials conducted follow-up inspections to check compliance. They issued fines and pursued prosecutions for employers who did not comply with their orders. Inspectors could even shut down worksites pending compliance for very serious violations, she said.

With deregulation as a government policy, Cormack said, this system is completely changed. Now officers can only issue a "voluntary compliance notice" when they find violations of health and safety rules. There are no follow-up visits, and no charges are made if an employer fails to correct the hazard. "We are essentially dealing with an honor system in which employers are expected to police themselves and ensure their own compliance with health and safety guidelines," she said.

With this new voluntary compliance set up, Cormack said, the government got rid of the department, merging it into the Department of Labour in 1993. Now the Department of Labour has been merged into a new Human Resource Department that also administers social services.

Cormack said the Klein government cut the budget for occupational health and safety by 46 percent. Klein reduced the number of officers in the field by 15 percent, leaving just 58 officers to protect more than a million workers at more than 100,000 job sites.

"The consequences of this course have been particularly grim," Cormack said. Worksite deaths in Alberta are at the highest level since records have been kept, she said, with 217 workers killed on the job in 1998. Work accidents involving disability and illnesses also are increasing, she said. She said the number of accident claims submitted to the Alberta Workers Compensation Board (WCB) has doubled since 1990.

Despite the high fatality rate, Cormack said, only 58 formal orders for compliance were issued in 1997. Only one employer was successfully prosecuted for health and safety violations in 1997 and only two in 1998. These three prosecutions involved fatal workplace accidents. There has not been a non-fatality-related conviction in Alberta since 1994, she said.

"Without a shred of doubt, the protection of workers' health and safety on the job in Alberta has deteriorated to a point of crisis," Cormack said. "And more and more workers are paying the price of this crisis."

To make the situation worse as more workers are injured and disabled, Cormack said, "the workers' compensation system is becoming less comprehensive, less efficient, and incredibly less worker-friendly right at the time when it's needed the most."

Cormack said she believes that the Alberta WCB "is engaged in a long-term systematic, intentional campaign to duck its responsibilities to injured workers in order to lower compensation costs to employers. The board is denying claims that should be accepted. It is forcing legitimate claims into an appeals process which in itself has come under increasing criticism for its bias against injured workers. It is instituting and interpreting policies in a way that is detrimental to our workers."

The WCB has amassed an $800 million surplus, partially due to good investments, Cormack said, but mostly due to workers' benefits that have been denied. In a major affront to workers, who in effect pay for those benefits through wages deferred to insurance premiums, she said, the WCB for the past four years rebated premiums to every single employer regardless of their safety record.

Cormack said the AFL has endorsed the call by injured workers and their allies for a public inquiry into the operations of the WCB. The federation also is helping injured workers to carry out their public protests against the board.

Cormack praised the activism of former Calgary 34M Pres. Brad Tilley, now a member of Edmonton 255C, and his wife Betty. Tilley, who was seriously injured in a press accident, was denied workers' compensation several times and finally took his protest to the public through demonstrations.

Thanks to the demonstrations by Tilley and other injured workers, Cormack said, the WCB issue is finally getting public attention. "There are times when we need to take our issues to the street, and when we do, we need to stand together and make sure there are results," she said.

Cormack stressed that privatization of workers' compensation – another conservative agenda item – will not fix the problems with the workers' compensation system. In fact, she said, privatization would be a "lose-lose scenario for both workers and employers."

Cormack said that "profit-seeking insurance companies will have an even bigger incentive to deny claims, and they will be even less open to public scrutiny." In numerous studies comparing various types of workers' compensation systems, she noted, the results have consistently shown that for-profit systems charge much higher premiums for lower benefits to workers with a much lower priority on rehabilitation of injured workers.

Another item on the conservative agenda is a tax cut to give away some of the $2 billion surplus that has accumulated from cutbacks in social services, health care, and education during the Klein years, Cormack said.

The Klein government's proposal is for an 11 percent flat tax. Cormack said research by the AFL shows that a single person making $30,000 a year would get a tax rebate of $1.33 a month under the flat tax proposal. People making over $250,000 would get more than $500 a month, she said.

Cormack said workers and their unions must enter the debate to support "a tax break that's geared to people making average industrial wages." Otherwise, "the final cost of this gift to the rich will be paid by working people once again when there are no funds for hospital beds, road repair, or hiring sufficient teachers."

Workers also need to increase their support for unions, Cormack said, to fight through collective bargaining the real cause for declining disposable income. AFL research shows that "it is really declining wages and not taxation," she said. Between 1983 and 1996, the average weekly wage in Alberta fell by about 7.5 percent after adjustment for inflation, she said. Over the same period, hourly wage workers suffered a 15 percent decrease. "I'll take a bigger paycheck than a tax cut any day," she noted.

Cormack said that, without lobbying, public education campaigns, and coalition building by organized labor in Alberta, "the situation would be far worse" under the Klein government. She noted the labor movement helped defeat government proposals that would have struck at the heart of national health insurance that is relied on by working families. "We hope to force the government to give more money to schools and hospitals, and we prevented the complete disintegration of labor laws, health and safety regulations, and other important laws in Alberta."

"We know that things are tough for workers here in Alberta, but we are not discouraged," Cormack said. "Come and join us, get involved, become more active," she urged. "We need your voice with us. The labor movement can be blocked. But as long as we stand together, we can never ever be defeated," she said.