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Originally posted by H Vincent:

In fact more people were killed in industrial accidents (ie. construction workers) last year than were murdered by their husbands. 95% of workplace fatalities are men. And it's not the demand for action that is deafening it's the SILENCE.

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What are the stats for men / women injured on the job? How is labour divided between the sexes? For example, there's not many women in the building trades in general (I've worked on enough job-sites to tell you that). Most women have 'pink collar' jobs where the risks at work are different and might be less severe and immediate than a traditionally male 'blue collar' job. Women are less likely to have 5 tonnes of cement crash through scaffolding they're working on - but I bet they're more likely to contract lung cancer from waiting tables and tending smoke-filled bars - do you think stats can records that data in their workplace deaths? I doubt it.

[ 07 December 2003: Message edited by: Mick ]

If you really don't feel comfortable talking to your employer about the safety conditions, you should talk to your provincial Worker's Safey Commission.You can even send an anonymous complaint. They pay compensation for injured workers so they have lots of investigators to make sure workers are safe and to prevent accidents.

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Originally posted by julie_eliot:
Any guess what the most dangerous occupation in North America is?

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Edited to add: But they were wrong, it was a student at the school next door.

[ 09 December 2003: Message edited by: Mick ]

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Iit is illegal to fire a worker who refuses to work because of unsafe conditions (including in Nova Scotia). For all province-specific rights, check out this website. You also have the right to participate in making your job safer.
If you really don't feel comfortable talking to your employer about the safety conditions, you should talk to your provincial Worker's Safey Commission.You can even send an anonymous complaint. They pay compensation for injured workers so they have lots of investigators to make sure workers are safe and to prevent accidents.

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Any guess what the most dangerous occupation in North America is?

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Single most dangerous? I'd guess: wife.

Which would be rather ironic given the statement that opened this thread:

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In fact more people were killed in industrial accidents (ie. construction workers) last year than were murdered by their husbands.

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So much depends on how you frame a question.

1) Wife is not an occupation!!!

2) Even if you insist on comparing apples to oranges, when you look at the stats on a per capita basis (ie per worker or per wife), deaths from domestic violence are much lower than the top occupational causes of death.

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Originally posted by john:

So much depends on how you frame a question.

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For sure, with deaths-per-capita as your index of danger, loggers, fishers, etc. top the list. In taking Julie's bait, where I guessed she might be heading here was to lay down a different index of "danger," broader than death and physical injury. Apparently not. I am sometimes on my own strange planet.

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1) Wife is not an occupation!!!

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Right. This theme is one that irked me in the original thread too.

When Elizabeth LeReverend (author of that earlier article) took a thumping over this, it seemed to me like a charge at a straw horse.

I mean: yes, of course.

"Being a wife is a job."

Spewed as a prescription, it's sexist and disconnected with many of our realities: "Get married and thou shalt do all kinds of domestic and caretaking work -- but we won't acknowledge it as work, instead taking it as you organically being a 'good wife'."

But who's saying this? Not LeReverend. Not me.

So much depends on the framing.

"Being a wife is a job" isn't always a vile prescription. It can be a political acknowledgement, a literary ruse, both. For some, getting married has meant shouldering a huge weight of culturally-backed expectations about domestic responsibility. In this context, saying that being a wife is a job can mean, well, that being a wife is a job, dammit -- not that it should be, but that fulfilling these trad expectations is real work, as real as felling trees, jigging for cod, policing the streets.

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Originally posted by H Vincent:
Overall the most dangerous occupation in the world is fishing.

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I believe that! A bunch of my friends and I were trading bad job stories one day when one guy who is a fisherman mentioned one day he was nearly pulled into the ocean and eaten by a shark! It only let go of his (now shreaded) boot after a dozen punches to the nose.

[ 10 December 2003: Message edited by: Mick ]

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TORONTO -- The Ontario government will hire at least 25 additional workplace safety inspectors, the province's labour minister said Tuesday, noting that the previous government began the hiring process before October's election.

The announcement followed the collapse of a Toronto theatre Monday, which killed one man and injured 14 other people.

The new inspectors will start training in January, Labour Minister Chris Bentley said.

The previous Tories government cut the number of inspectors to 205 from 278 before deciding to hire some back.

The province has to decide how many inspectors it needs, and what kind of strategy will better promote health and safety on job sites, Bentley said.

The remainder of the theatre, which was in the midst of being demolished when a wall fell on a neighbouring building, may be torn down later Tuesday, officials on the scene said.

"My understanding is we'll be working with (demolition company) Priestly to complete the demolition,'' said Jim Wilkinson, a construction engineering consultant with the Labour ministry.

The rest of the work should take about 10 hours, he said.

Once the site of the historic theatre is deemed safe, officials will evaluate the condition of neighbouring buildings, including the one that housed the Yorkville English Academy, where one student was crushed to death.

The work can't begin until the coroner's work at the site is finished, said Dr. David Evans, the regional supervising coroner. An autopsy was scheduled for Tuesday on Augusto Cesar Mejia Solis, a Costa Rican who was studying at the English as a second language school.

Until the site is secured, buildings surrounding the Uptown Theatre will remain evacuated, Evans said.

Bentley promised a full investigation into the cause of the collapse of the Uptown Theatre, which was being demolished.

Premier Dalton McGuinty said he's not sure the province is supposed to inspect every demolition site, but said it should be done where appropriate.

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[ 11 December 2003: Message edited by: Mick ]

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Demo against workplace terrorism in Madrid

posted by RLAM on Tuesday December 16 2003 @ 12:55PM PST

The following is the declaration of one of the convoking anarchosyndicalist organisations, Solidaridad Obrera.

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AGAINST THE ATTACKS AGAINST LABOUR AND SOCIAL RIGHTS

JOINT DEMONSTRATION (CNT-AIT, CGT, SOLIDARIDAD OBRERA AND THE COORDINADORA SINDICAL OF MADRID)

19:30, December 18, 2003

Workplace accidents, what we call “employer terrorism”, continue to take workers' lives, ever so more frequently. Without a doubt, junk contracts, temporary employment agencies, work paid by the piece, overtime, savings made in costs of materials and security, etc. have a lot to say on this alarming increase of dead, paraplegic and physically handicapped workers. We call the Court rulings given on these accidents "judicial terrorism". The last four sentences on workplace accidents have been scandalous. The workers offer the dead and the wounded, the bosses reap in the profits without any penal responsibility. The judges take charge of accusing the injured workers of "putting their lives in danger by working under terribly unsafe conditions". 782 workers have officially lost their lives in workplace accidents in the first nine months of 2003 [in the Spanish State] and more than eight thousand were wounded. No politician or employer has been imprisoned for this.

The privatisation of the public services continue the plundering, handing profits over to private hands. It wasn’t enough to privatise State-owned companies (Telefonica [telecommunications], Iberia [airline], Renfe [railways], Repsol [petrol], etc.) or the services (education, health, etc.). Now they are attacking public pensions, reinforcing their gradual privatisation through private funds thanks to the new measures adopted by all the parliamentary political parties and the collaborating unions, CCOO and UGT, in the so-called renovation of the "Pact of Toledo" [in which the CCOO and UGT promised workplace stability shortly after Franco's death].

Unemployment and precarious unemployment (junk, temp agency and part-time contracts, etc.) already affect more than half of the active population, and more than seventy per-cent of young workers. This is the future that they outline: no rights, no fixed working day, no safety measures, no collective trade agreement, no unions... It is new modern slavery, total submission to the service of money and at any price."

From Solidaridad Obrera, together with the CGT, the CNT-AIT and the Coordinadora Sindical of Madrid, we want to show our joint rejection against this situation that the economic and political powers present as unavoidable; to this end we call all workers to the JOINT DEMONSTRATION next December 18, Thursday, at 19:30 from Plaza Atocha to Plaza Jacinto Benavente.

*Against workplace accidents and anti-worker legal rulings! *No to junk contracts, and for fixed employment without temporary job agencies ! *Against the Pact of Toledo, and for retirement at the age of sixty!

ADDRESS: Solidaridad Obrera C/Espoz y Mina, 15 28012 Madrid Spain

www.nodo50.org/sobrera

Original Spanish: http://red-libertaria.net/noticias/ modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=868

Translation: Red Libertaria Apoyo Mutuo: www.red-libertaria.net Apdo 51575, 28080 Madrid

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