If you think war is bad, wait until you see capitalism

[sabotabby]

Workplace deaths on the rise.

A new study shows the daily grind can be hazardous to your health, with an average of five Canadians dying on the job every work day.


Dec. 12, 2006. 07:33 AM
TOBI COHEN
CANADIAN PRESS

A new study shows the daily grind can be hazardous to your health, with an average of five Canadians dying on the job every work day.

A report released Tuesday by the Centre for the Study of Living Standards found a record 1,097 people in Canada died as a result of an accident or disease suffered at work in 2005 — an 18 per cent increase over the previous year.

The statistics were calculated based on the average Canadian working 230 days each year.

"I was very surprised when the numbers were that high," said the centre's executive director, Dr. Andrew Sharpe. "We haven't had that high an increase in a long time — possibly ever — in terms of the absolute number of percentage increase."

Sharpe said most of the increase is due to occupational diseases, which accounted for half the deaths, with one-third of those fatalities directly related to asbestos exposure.

Since many of the workers were over the age of 65 and retired at the time of death, the statistics could just be playing catch-up, he said.

"Part of the reason for the increase in the worker fatalities is the aging of this cohort that was exposed to asbestos in the past," he said, noting the approximately 2,000 remaining asbestos miners in Quebec now have adequate protection.

"In that sense, it's a problem that we've taken care of. It's just because of the latency period we're seeing more deaths now."

The study was based on provincial workers' compensation data obtained from the Association of Workers' Compensation Boards of Canada.

Because each province has its own rules regarding claim eligibility, Sharpe said the spike could also be related to changes in provincial regulations, such as the acceptance of more claims linking certain professions — such as firefighting — with various types of cancer.

The most dangerous jobs include fishing, mining, oil wells, forestry and construction, the study said. Finance and insurance posed the lowest risk of death.

"It's kind of a negative aspect of our prosperity boom," Sharpe said. "Part of the reason we haven't been able to get the accident rate down is due to increased employment in high-risk industries."

Fatality rates differed across the country, with the highest occurring in Newfoundland, where there were 11.7 deaths per 100,000 workers in 2005, compared to the national average of 6.8 deaths.

Ontario experienced the largest number of workplace fatalities with 412, followed by Quebec with 223 and British Columbia with 189.

Sharpe said Canada is one of the few economically developed countries experiencing a rise in workplace deaths rather than a decline.

Since mounting deaths in Iraq have convinced many Americans that they should pull out, and mounting deaths in Afghanistan have convinced many Canadians that we should pull out, do you think that mounting deaths in the workplace will convince workers that we need to come up with an exit strategy to pull out of capitalism?

Comments

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

It's still a relatively small number. The 2002 estimate for deaths from cancer was 66,200 of which 30% were smoking related so smoking is 20 times more dangerous than capitalism! Even driving is three times more dangerous than working.

[sabotabby]

Okay, so capitalism is more dangerous than war (at least where the invading country is concerned) but less dangerous than smoking. But how much cancer is capitalism-related?

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

But how much cancer is capitalism-related?

An excellent question.

One might also ask how much war is capitalism related.

[sabotabby]

That too. ;)

[bike4fish.livejournal.com]

Virtually all smoking-related cancer is capitalism-related. (This may get me going on one of my favourite rants - about how so many self-identified anti-capitalists can't make the effort to give up that epitome of capitalist product, tobacco. Unless you grew the tobacco or bartered with the grower, if you smoke it, you are supporting capitalism at its worst.)

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

Of course, on-the-job fatalities are not the only ones caused by work. In New York City Transit, workers can retire with their full pension benefits at age 55, if they've been in the system for 25 years. This was one of the benefits that was defended in the recent strike. Many do, but in the highest-stress occupations, like bus driver and train operator, it's notorious for the retirees to drop dead within a few years of heart disease brought on by high blood pressure. (The very short meal breaks they get, forcing many to subsist on a diet of fast food rapidly wolfed down, doesn't help.)

[sabotabby]

I know. The article is quite limited in scope. It was on the front page of the free daily on the streetcar this morning, though, which I found interesting.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

Metro never ceases to amaze me with its workingclassness, even though it's not really.

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

That's odd. In New York, there are two free daily commuter newspapers, and Metro's competitor, AM New York, tends to have its coverage more slanted toward appealing to elementary working-class consciousness. The Metro here tries harder to ape the low-cost tabloids, with their usual mix of police blotter reportage and second-hand celebrity gossip.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

When Metro came into the Toronto market, the Toronto Star decided not to be squeezed out of the free daily market and launched its own free daily. Eventually Metro had to reckon with the strength of the Star, and both papers merged into the "new" Metro. The Star is a centre-left paper so that already gives a good article base for the Metro, although they have some columnists of their own, including the immigration law column, the job search column, and the comic book reviews!

The third player in the free daily market, Sun Media (similar type of Sun as in Britain) folded their original attempt and then relaunched a new all-colour-glossy gossip paper, 24. So that got that corner of the market covered.

[dobrovolets.livejournal.com]

When I was in Toronto, I definitely enjoyed reading the Star. I may feign to say that it's the best English-language daily paper in North America.

[frandroid.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I haven't seen enough American papers to tell, but it's definitely in the top 3. The Star reprints a lot of the NYT's stuff during weekends, which annoys me to no end. (Maureen Dowd? We don't need bloody Dowd!) One thing that counterbalances that though is that they reprint/publish many column/ists from La Presse, which is a similar French-language paper in Montréal (although a bit more to the right at the editorial level), which makes it one of the only newspapers with a good view on Québec. In that way, even though it's explicitly a Toronto newspaper, it's kind of more of a national newspaper than our actual national newspapers, the National Socialist Post (thumbs up sabotabby haha) and the Globe & Mail.

[threepunchstuff.livejournal.com]

"One of the things I would do if I were president would be to sit the owners and the workers down and say, 'Stop the bullshit,'" said Mr. McCain.

[sabotabby]

Look, he doesn't believe in indentured servitude for workers. He's a moderate!

[terry-terrible.livejournal.com]

God, that guy is such an asshole. Too bad most people can't see right through "I'm a straight-talking moderate" song and dance.

[arthabaska.livejournal.com]

Wait, there aren't any real canadians where I work...so I guess I'm safe?

[sabotabby]

I don't know. What are U.S. workplace death rates like?