08) ALBERTA BITUMEN BOOM ACCOMPANIED BY RISING INJURIES

            Alberta's fossil fuel-based economic boom has meant enormous profits for energy corporations, but heavy personal costs for thousands of workers.

            Award-winning journalist Andrew Nikiforuk, who writes for The Tyee website and others, has written a scathing article on the shocking extent of deaths and injuries in the Alberta workforce.

            Last year, Alberta saw a near‑record high of 173 deaths on the job. As Nikiforuk writes, "excluding occupational disease and vehicle accidents, Alberta, with a population of four million, now reports 5.9 times more fatalities due to workplace injury than the United Kingdom, according to Athabasca University labour expert Bob Barnetson."

            Britain also carries out 7.5 times more Occupational Health and Safety prosecutions than Alberta, where prosecutions of employers for unsafe workplaces plummeted from 22 in 2008 to a low of five last year.

            The province relies on economic activity which poses many dangers for workers, such as petroleum extraction, mining and construction, but lags behind on occupational health and safety.

            According to a 2011 study by the Alberta Federation of Labour, the province has the lowest Workers' Compensation Board premiums in Canada for industries that are "responsible for the most worksite fatalities, occupational diseases, and disabling injuries."

            Oil and natural gas exploration companies pay just $0.55/$100 payroll, the study notes, "while companies in the rest of Canada pay four times as much, at $2/$100 payroll."

            The Alberta government maintains that only 53,000 workers were injured on the job in 2009. But Prof. Barnetson calculates the number of workplace injuries annually in Alberta may be 500,000, or 10 times the government figure.

            That's because the only injuries the government discusses in public are disabling injury claims. Leaving out injuries which do not result in lost or modified work, this under‑represents the true rate of injury by a factor of 10.

(The above article is from the May 1-15, 2014, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading socialist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 706 Clark Drive, Vancouver, BC, V5L 3J1.)