Manitoba Federation of Labour encouraged by Kinew government’s new bill to protect workers on the job

This bill is a first step to make workplaces safer across our province. The Manitoba Federation of Labour is encouraged to see that this bill will bring in new penalties for bad employers, including cracking down on employers that change their name to weasel their way out of consequences for putting worker safety at risk, new penalties for employers who fail to report serious workplace safety and health incidents, and new measures to ensure workers receive wages owed to them as a result of unfair employer reprisals.

We also support the measures in this bill to better support workers in exercising their right to refuse dangerous work as well as the bill’s improved definition of psychological health. We need to ensure that employers are responsible for preventing injuries to workers’ mental health on the job, just as they are responsible for preventing physical injuries. Changes included in this bill will help to do that.

The MFL will continue to push government to take additional steps to strengthen our workplace health and safety laws to better protect workers on the job, including:

• Stopping the epidemic of workplace violence in this province;
• Ending Manitoba’s Wild West approach to asbestos by strengthening our woefully inadequate rules to protect workers when it comes to doing the hazardous work of asbestos removal and remediation;
• Reducing the alarmingly high injury rates in health care and the broader public sector to protect workers and help address staff shortages;
• Making sure that employers provide menstrual products in the workplace the same way they are required to provide other hygiene products like soap, toilet paper and paper towel; and
• Adapting our health and safety laws to the realities of climate change by better protecting workers from extreme temperatures.

We hope that government will make rule changes soon to provide these additional workplace health and safety protections for Manitoba workers.