The North Bay and District Labour Council hosted its annual Health and Safety Awards Dinner December 6th at the Best Western in North Bay.
Steve Boyle won the Prevention Link Award for his dedication to the OFL's Ontario Disability Response Training program and Health and Safety and Wendy Sechtell won the Health and Safety award for her dedication to the health and Safety needs of local OPSEU 635.
“Unions have a great record for ensuring safety in the workplace,” says Henri Giroux, Labour Council president, “because when workplaces are safe and workers and employers consider the overall health of workplace, then everyone benefits, including the whole community.
“Health and safety awareness is an investment in the future of the community,” adds Giroux.
Every year North Bay Labour invites local unions to put the names of health and safety activists forward as a way to honour their involvement in union work. The executive of Labour Council selects the two annual recipients, the WSIB award and the Health and Safety award. Recipients are advocates for injured and disabled workers.
This year the banquet highlighted the importance of ending workplace and domestic violence by giving out white ribbons.
Many workplaces mark December 6th and the 1989 massacre of 14 women at the École Polytechnique de Montréal engineering school. Gunman Marc Lépine entered the university and shot 28 women, killing 14 mostly engineering students before turning the gun on himself. The Montreal community and the rest of the world later learned that he let men leave classrooms and hallways. A suicide note confirmed that Lépine killed the students because they were women.
Men and women wear the white ribbon this time of year as a way to highlight the importance of ending violence against women and girls. Started in 1991 by a group of men from Toronto, the White Ribbon Campaign and its educational resources help thousands of educators teach the importance of healthy relationships and ending gender-based violence. Statistics show that the impact on children who witness domestic violence is alarming; children experience the violence against their parent as though it happened directly to them.
“We have to do what we can to end domestic and sexual violence,” says Giroux. “That’s why I’m supporting London-West MPP Peggy Sattler’s bill 26, Domestic and Sexual Violence Workplace Leave, which will allow victims up to ten paid days to take care.”
