A Worker's Guide to Health and Safety

Dirk Leemans, P.Eng., lived in Toronto.

This small book (a real pocket book) is a collaborative effort of the Windsor Occupational Safety and Health Council and the Ontario Public Interest Research Group. Its viewpoint is clearly defined: this is a worker’s guide to the field of occupational health and safety. As such, it is very good. It starts with a list of hazards in the work place and the means of identification of these hazards and their effects. It then proceeds to outline possible lines of action and discusses the health and safety problems of clerical workers in some detail. Finally, it includes a quick review of workers’ compensation in Ontario, a summary discussion of control of the workplace hazards and an excellent chapter on resources, filled with all kinds of sources of support for the workers.

The presentation of all this material is really quite fine. The text remains clear and readable throughout and is not obscured by complicated jargon. There are only two minor quibbles with this work. The first relates to the chapter on the control of workplace hazards. The three pages allocated to this topic hardly do justice to this issue. While the reviewer shares the authors’ apprehension of engineering controls as a means of regulating hazards in the work place, nevertheless this issue requires more analysis than was given in this booklet. The other disagreement is that it should have been made clear that this book is more useful to Ontario workers than to Canadian workers in general. Only Ontario’s Bill 70 and the Canadian Labour Code are discussed. Information on Workers’ Compensation is restricted to Ontario. Problems in the fishing and lumber industry are not highlighted. Obviously, a pattern is evident. Notwithstanding these two minor quibbles, a lot of information is packed in these 84 pages and the package wears very well.