The Work Environment Board and the limits of social democracy in Canada

A Work Environment Board was established to deal with all workplace health and safety issues within the Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan from 1978 to 1982. The Board was an experiment, established because of the observed deficiencies of the mandatory joint occupational health and safety committees that were legislated by the province in 1972. The administrators of the occupational health and safety program observed the problems faced by workers on these committees. An experiment was therefore established in one of the province's crown corporations that would transform the joint committee into a Work Environment Board with wider powers to deal with work environment matters within the corporation. In addition, a Work Environment Fund was established to enable the worker members on the Board to do their own research and to get the information they wanted. The Work Environment Board was frustrated by the fact that corporate leaders were not prepared to extend worker rights on the health and safety committees within the respective mines. Rather, they viewed health and safety reforms as part of an overall strategy of quality of work life. The social democratic government was not prepared to extend worker rights and to threaten management prerogatives. Now that there are three New Democratic Party (social democratic) governments in Canada, it appears that these governments are prepared to initiate technical improvements, but not the extension of worker rights in work environment matters.