Occupational health and safety reform | Unions and accident victims demonstrate in Montreal

2023-10-06 18:51:57

(Montreal) Two years following the adoption of the occupational health and safety reform, representatives of workers and injured workers continue to proclaim their dissatisfaction.

Updated yesterday at 3:47 p.m.

Lia Levesque

The Canadian Press

They demonstrated once once more, Friday noon in front of the Complexe Desjardins in Montreal, not far from the offices of the Commission for Standards, Equity, Health and Safety at Work (CNESST).

The Minister of Labor, Jean Boulet, had this reform adopted in September 2021, while the original laws went back 40 years. His reform had improved certain aspects, but it had disappointed the unions and organizations which defend accident victims by not placing enough emphasis on prevention, according to them.

And this is what they criticized once more on Friday, two years later.

The CNESST recorded 161,962 occupational injuries in 2022, i.e. 12,150 occupational illnesses and 149,812 work accidents.

“This has to stop. What we are calling for is prevention mechanisms in all workplaces,” exclaimed David Bergeron-Cyr, one of the vice-presidents of the CSN, into the microphone.

The general secretary of the FTQ, Denis Bolduc, added on the microphone: “even in unionized places, we have difficulty doing prevention. Imagine yourself in workplaces where there is no union. Imagine yourself in workplaces where there are foreign workers and temporary foreign workers on top of that.”

The president of the CSD, Luc Vachon, recalled that the construction sector is “year following year, the deadliest in Quebec”. “Can we give this sector the means to stop being part of the statistics? » he said to the hundred demonstrators gathered.

“All that we are given is the semblance of means of protection,” lamented the president of the Central Democratic Unions.

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