EMPLOYERS – An active Health and Safety Committee can protect you from liability under Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act:
"An Ontario court has dismissed charges under the Occupational Health and Safety Act after two incidents which the joint health and safety committee did not identify as posing a high priority safety concern.
The charges arose from two incidents on an assembly line at Magna Seating Inc. in which workers were struck by a partly-manufactured vehicle seat that had fallen forward from an upright position, which is not unlike when someone releases the lever on a seat in an automobile and the seat falls forward due to the tension of the seats springs.
The two charges were: failing to ensure that things were transported so that they would not tip, collapse or fall; and failing to ensure that a machine (the conveyor that transported the seats) was guarded.
The court noted that almost two million seats had been built on the assembly line with only two documented occasions in which a seat had fallen forward. In one incident, a workers lip had been cut; she required only a Band-Aid. In the second incident, the seat had struck a worker in the chest; she was taken to the hospital but was released two hours later with a prescription for painkillers.
The Justice of the Peace noted that the Joint Health and Safety Committee, comprised of management and workers, were aware of the two incidents but had not considered the seat falling forward issue to be of high priority; also, the possibility of guarding being implemented was still being investigated by the joint health and safety committee.
Ultimately, the charges were dismissed because the Justice of the Peace decided that the conveyor was not a machine within the meaning of that term in the regulation, and Magna had taken all reasonable care to ensure that workers were not injured from seats falling forward.
The case shows that having a well-functioning and active joint health and safety committee can actually help an employer defend against Occupational Health and Safety Act charges. If the committee was aware of and considered a safety issue and determined there was no or a minimal hazard, that is evidence that can assist an employer to show that it acted with due diligence.
Ontario (Ministry of Labour) v. Magna Seating Inc., 2015 ONCJ 7 (CanLII)"
Credit: Dentons, Adrian Miedema, reproduced without permission from Lexology, Feb. 19, 2015
