Chapter 1.1 Canada’s Mobile Labour Force

Mobility as Work

It is well documented that mobility as work in ground transportation is associated with multiple hazards and high rates of injuries and fatalities relative to other types of work (Christie and Ward 2019; see also Boufous and Williamson 2009).1

Working in moving vehicles obviously involves hazards relating to road traffic (Bidasca and Townsend 2014) but also raises ergonomic issues and issues related to motor vehicle safety. Providing a complete overview of OSH hazards to those working in vehicles goes beyond the scope of this book, but an important body of literature does exist on various industries involving workers who use or travel within vehicles as part of their work.

Injury and fatality rates (related in part to traffic crashes) are very high in trucking (discussed later) and taxi driving. Ride-hail driving in the gig economy (including among those with multiple jobs) appears to be particularly risky, as is gig economy courier work (Lefcoe, Connelly, and Gellatly 2023; see also Bartel et al. 2019; Christie and Ward 2019; Salmon et al. 2023). While less at risk of collisions with other vessels, fishing and seafaring are also high-risk sectors (Walters and Bailey 2013; Roberts 2010; Driscoll et al. 1994). The relationship between risk and mobility in these sectors is mediated by momentum, vibration, technology design and maintenance, remoteness, locational and sometimes jurisdictional transience, and exposure to fluid working conditions linked to payment systems (as with piece work in the gig economy) and other social-organizational factors. Environmental conditions and reliance on public infrastructures—such as roads, harbours/wharves, and waterways—and on weather forecasting also play a role.

Specific industries, like long-haul trucking, have been studied from an OSH perspective (see, e.g., Bigelow et al. 2014; Crizzle et al. 2017), and those studies have identified time pressures, long hours, and work-family interference to be hazards associated with that work. Other studies have identified whole body vibration, musculoskeletal disorders, fatigue and sleep disorders, falls, and obesity as adverse health consequences of long-haul driving (McDonough et al. 2014; NASEM 2012; see also Sieber et al. 2014). Mayhew and Quinlan highlight the high rates of documented injuries and fatalities in the sector across countries and some of the ways workers’ compensation claims data, coupled with limited research, understate the health effects of trucking:

In Australia, the European Union and North America road transport accounts for the largest number of work-related fatal injuries and multiple fatality incidents (most occur on highways) of any industry and large truck-involved crashes are also costly. . . . In terms of fatality incidence the occupation of truck driver ranks between the fourth and eighth most dangerous. . . . A similar ranking applies to non-fatal injuries and occupational diseases although workers’ compensation claim records (and other data sources like accident reporting) understate injuries because self-employed drivers lack coverage and there are disincentives (time, cost, fear of losing work) for firms and employee drivers to report minor incidents/injuries. . . . Injury and fatality statistics also fail to take account of more insidious and under-researched health effects, including the impact of long hours and job pressures on work/non-work balance, work-related stress, and occupational violence/road rage, or indications of premature death and above-average suicide rates amongst drivers. (2006, 216; see also Crizzle et al. 2017) [Original references omitted.]

A recent Canadian study focused on fatigue for long-haul truck drivers and, more specifically, on the location and patterns of fatigue-related crashes, noting that additional truck stops and rest areas are needed in Saskatchewan to ensure that these drivers have more opportunities to rest in order to reduce fatigue and the risk of fatigue-related crashes (Crizzle, Toxopeus, and Malkin 2020). In Australia, despite evidence of the hazardous conditions in which both self-employed and employee truck drivers were engaged, the government abolished the tribunal that had jurisdiction to hear disputes, and a recent report on the current working conditions of truckers in that country provides a bleak portrait of working conditions and adverse health outcomes, with little space for workers to give voice to their concerns in order to protect their own health (Macquarie University 2017; see also Patty 2017).

Within trucking and other transportation sectors, divisions of labour coupled with issues of race, gender, and citizenship mediate exposures and outcomes. The women in a trucking association in the United States reported that only 11 percent of women truckers would recommend their industry, company, or field to others, while 75 percent of men would agree to make a recommendation. Safety was the primary issue, and “women cited the lack of separate bathrooms and showers, cleanliness, laundry facilities and shower and bathroom stalls with locks as reasons why truck stops were undesirable and sometimes unsafe locations for women” (American Society of Safety Engineers 2018, 22). The same article noted that women represent only 7 percent of the trucking workforce in the US (American Society of Safety Engineers 2018). Hanson (2014; 2020) found that women are more likely to be found in short-haul than long-haul trucking in Prince Edward Island and thus confront somewhat different hazards.

In her in-depth study of trucking in BC, McLean (2017) documented the dynamics and some of the impacts of sexism and racism for women and primarily Southeast Asians in the sector. She also documented tensions between regulatory constraints on driving, including their impact on income, and organizational pressures to exceed these constraints. An important finding from this research was insights into psychological injuries among BC truckers associated with coping with both the incidents they were directly involved with and their interventions as voluntary first responders at crashes they encountered on the road. She showed how responding to incidents is a common and largely unacknowledged expectation the truckers have of themselves, which is also often shared by professional first responders, and how such interventions could result in post-traumatic stress disorders (McLean 2017).

Bus drivers are also confronted by hazardous conditions. Workers in this profession have started to speak up about the safety of their working conditions, notably in light of recent busing catastrophes such as the Humboldt Broncos collision that left sixteen dead and led to criminal charges against the truck driver whose vehicle collided with the bus. The driver and the owner of the truck were charged with dangerous driving under the Criminal Code and for failing to maintain logs for driving hours of service under the federal Motor Vehicle Transport Act, among other charges (Giles 2018). Bus drivers from Québec reacted to the accident by revisiting the hazards of their trade in an interview with a journalist in which they questioned whether they could continue as professional drivers of groups of youths, such as those in hockey teams, given the conditions they face: bad weather, long hours (sixteen hours from the beginning of the drive on a given day, maximum thirteen hours driving), variable hours, and limited power to refuse requests of the hockey trainers who treat the drivers like “robots” (Teisceira-Lessard 2018).

Bus drivers in many Canadian cities are also moving targets when it comes to incidents of workplace violence, to the point where the Canadian Criminal Code was recently amended to add to the sentences of those found guilty of assaulting bus drivers (Mallen 2015).2 Other behaviours of passengers may also lead to injury. For example, a Québec bus driver received compensation for laryngitis attributed to exposure to cigarette and marijuana smoke, to which he was exposed despite rules banning smoking in buses.3 Ambulance drivers and others who spend a long time in vehicles in the course of their employment can develop health problems attributable to their work. For example, an ambulance technician who travelled for eight hours, both as a driver and as a passenger, developed phlebitis as a result of the prolonged sitting position required, which was unusually long because of bad weather. The Commission des lésions professionnelles accepted the claim as an accident arising out of employment, with the bad weather contributing to the demonstration of unusual working conditions.4

Hazards and risks in ride-share work, such as taxi driving, and among digital platform ride-share drivers, such as those working for Uber and Lyft, are understudied. Existing research has identified multiple hazards, including violence, crash risk, weight gain, muscle pain, fatigue, and stress. Digital platform ride-share workers appear to be at particularly high risk because of the precarity of their employment, the limited control over incomes, and the effects of monitoring and surveillance (Bartel et al. 2019; Lefcoe, Connelly, and Gellatly 2023; Mao et al. 2021).

A recent Québec study examined jobs requiring the use of bicycles. These jobs go beyond couriering of packages and parcels and have become more diverse over the years, including, in particular, the delivery of meals and other services, such as moving services. The authors point out that little is known about the risks these cyclists incur, that biking accidents are not a rare occurrence, and that a majority of their sample is composed of self-employed workers, with a majority of delivery drivers (59 percent) and couriers (56.5 percent) having no form of accident insurance (Lachapelle, Laberge, and Cloutier 2020). Their respondents note that the majority of accidents are caused by road conditions, the behaviour and interaction with other users of the road (including “dooring” by vehicle owners but also the risky behaviour of pedestrians and cyclists), and their own inattention (Lachapelle, Laberge, and Cloutier 2020, 41). They highlight the realities of this type of job, including

the strong preponderance of commission-based wages, problems with worker legality, and the lack of insurance coverage for work that is generally done year-round and often constitutes the main source of income. While companies offering gig economy shifts justify their activities by suggesting that these paid activities can be good sources of extra money, the picture presented here is one of difficult and even questionable working conditions. Especially since few of the workers actually use it as a source of extra income. It is often their main or only source of income; however, it is important to distinguish between gig economy activities, especially food delivery, and other types of activities, sometimes carried out in more traditional structures, start-ups or social economy enterprises. (Lachapelle, Laberge, and Cloutier 2020, 57 [our translation]; for Ontario, see Bartel et al. 2019)

Those who engage in mobility as work, such as ride-share and courier workers, truckers, and others, can also experience hazards related to sanitation (accessing washrooms and showers), food, and accommodations (as indicated by the presence of “cab-living” among long-haul truckers), what we call here the hazards related to “living at work” (Gregson 2017; see also McLean 2017). These kinds of threats to their well-being became more severe and visible during the COVID-19 pandemic (see chapter 6).

An important source of vulnerability for courier workers is their lack of unionization and related constraints on these workers’ voice. It is worth mentioning that couriers and drivers working for Foodora in Toronto and Mississauga, Ontario, were granted the right to unionize. The Ontario Labour Relations Board concluded not that they were self-employed but that they were, in fact, dependent contractors.5 After this decision, invoking a highly saturated market, Foodora left Canada and decided not to conduct business there anymore. The union representing the workers filed an unfair labour practice claim, and the case was settled out of court (Canadian Press 2020).

Airline personnel, seafarers, and fishermen also engage in mobility as work. OSH is understudied in these occupations, but research indicates they are associated with multiple hazards and often high risk. In the case of aviation, for instance, McNeely et al.’s (2014; see also McNeely et al. 2018) cross-sectional study of the self-reported health of US flight attendants notes that there are not many studies on hazard exposure and the health of flight attendants. Their study identifies health problems that are more prevalent among flight attendants than in the general population, including chronic bronchitis, cardiac disease, fatigue and sleep disorders, depression, and reproductive cancers. Sexual harassment is also said to be pervasive in the airline industry, according to an article relating to a class action brought by flight attendants working for WestJet (Seucharan 2018). Similar allegations have been made regarding sexual harassment of flight attendants working for Air Canada (Harris 2018; for the European Commission’s guidelines on radiation protection for aircrew, see Fernandez, n.d.). In the case of pilots, René David-Cooper’s (2019, 119) 2016 Canadian study on regulation governing flying hours draws the portrait of pilots who are exposed to “grueling work schedules.” David-Cooper reports that since the 1990s, the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB) “has cited pilot fatigue as a causal factor in 34 separate aviation occurrences” (121).

Maritime work, including seafaring, fishing, aquaculture, and longshore work, is associated with varying requirements for mobility to and as work and with relatively high accident rates (Neis et al. 2025). Seafaring, despite the well-known problems of the underreporting of injuries (and even fatalities), remains one of the most hazardous occupations according to official statistics and specific studies (Walters and Bailey 2013; Nielsen and Roberts 1999; Roberts and Marlow 2005; Hansen, Nielsen, and Frydenberg 2002). In the British merchant fleet, for example, the relative risk of mortality caused by accidents at work has been reported to be 26.2 times greater than for all workers in the UK (Roberts 2002), while in the Danish merchant fleet, the fatal accident rate was 11 times higher than for shore-based industries (Hansen 1996). Moreover, the hazards of work at sea are not only those associated with sinking ships or major accidents to individuals engaged in obviously dangerous activities. While these are serious enough, the poor health and safety outcomes of work at sea pose significant risks of ill health from everyday exposures to chemical and physical hazards. As is also the case on land, little is known about the full extent of work-related ill health resulting from these exposures, but what is known suggests a similar degree of comparatively poor outcomes. Ergonomic and psychosocial hazards are also prevalent, including the risk of exposure to violence at sea. Mental health problems and high rates of suicide in seafarers have been reported, although it appears that the situation has improved in recent years, at least prior to the pandemic. The pandemic’s serious effects on seafarers’ OSH are discussed elsewhere (see chapter 6; Mellbye and Carter 2017). Those working on the sea are disconnected from land-based infrastructures and assistance, which means that seafarers, like truckers, may need to act as firefighters and first responders in the case of serious incidents potentially threatening their mental health.

Shan and Lippel (2019, 375) discuss the different challenges that seafarers on the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Great Lakes face being mobile while working (constraints on their ability to leave the work site, extreme weather conditions, and living and working on a moving platform) but also in order to get to the work site when they commute between home and the ship (see “Hazards”), a question far less explored. In their research, the authors show that fatigue is a particular challenge for these workers, both because of the long working hours and long rotations and because workers often travel long distances to meet up with their ship, hours that are not considered in the determination of shift length and maximum working hours. As David-Cooper (2018) found in his study of pilots, the issue of fatigue is particularly important for workers with less seniority, such as relief seafarers (those who are taking short-term contracts to cover holidays of permanent employees), who are more likely to accept several rotations in a row in order to increase their seniority as quickly as possible (Shan 2018; Shan and Lippel 2019).

Seafarers also face particular challenges when sleeping on ships. Shan and Lippel (2019, 376) point out that the ship operator controls work schedules, work hours, food choices, and accommodations on board a ship: As a result, “while working, the safety, health, and well-being of all aspects of seafarers are largely subject to the management practices as well as the hierarchical control on board.” Seafarers have intensive shifts, resulting in often reduced and broken rest hours (Shan 2020a, 198). Fatigue is, therefore, an important but understudied OSH risk: “Lack of, or poor-quality sleep, long working hours, excessive workloads, as well as noise, vibration, and motion on board may all contribute to fatigue among seafarers. Increasing numbers of seafarers report that the motion of ships leads to lack of sleep on board” (Shan and Lippel 2019, 376; see also Sampson et al. 2017). In Arctic environments, sleep might also be disrupted by the noise caused by ice-breaking operations (Shan 2020a, 197, citing Sillitoe et al. 2010).

Within Canada and globally, fish harvesting is also one of the most dangerous occupations (McGuinness et al. 2013; CDC 2010). Pettursdottir, Hannibalsson, and Turner (2001) assessed occupational fatality rates for developed and developing nations in the 1980s and 1990s (see also FAO, n.d.). They found that fishermen are much more likely to be killed on the job than land-based workers.

Compared to countries like Norway, Canada has very weak statistical information on injuries and fatalities associated with fish harvesting, including information necessary to compare across fisheries and fishing activities and with other sectors and countries. A Globe and Mail investigation that sought to calculate traumatic injury fatality rates by occupation in Canada—an exercise abandoned by Statistics Canada in 1996—found the rate in fishing was the highest: The top three of six occupational rates were for people who fished, and the rate was 77/100,000 for deckhands versus 5.4 for police officers between 2011 and 2015 based on the Association of Workers’ Compensation Boards of Canada (AWCBC) data. This investigation also showed that this was underestimated by comparing the twenty-seven recorded deaths in AWCBC data to fifty-two fatalities in TSB reports for the same period (Grant 2017). Marine commercial fishing has been on the TSB Watchlist since 2010; key issues for the TSB include vessel modifications that impact stability, lack of or failure to use lifesaving equipment (for example, personal flotation devices), unsafe work practices, and inadequate regulatory oversight (Smith 2018).

The Canadian fish harvesting sector is diverse in terms of vessel size, design and construction, species-targeted and related fishing gear, seasons, ownership structures, work organization, hours of work, and working/living conditions. ERGM and related hazards vary across fisheries and sectors. Day trips are common in coastal fisheries such as lobster and inshore cod and halibut fisheries. Multiday trips are common in other fisheries, including those for pelagic fish (capelin, herring), snow crab, shrimp, and turbot. Work rotations on board large, offshore factory freezer trawlers of up to one month or longer are common; trips can start and end with fairly long commutes by truck (small scale) or taxi and plane (offshore and interjurisdictionally mobile harvesters) from departure and landing ports to and from home residences. Fishing wharves in NL have been shown to be associated with multiple hazards and incidents (Jackson et al. 2013). In addition to a high risk of fatality from falls overboard and vessel capsizing and foundering, noise exposures are a significant but understudied hazard in Canadian commercial fisheries, including in the small-scale sector (Burella, Moro, and Colbourne 2019). Marine weather is a widely acknowledged but poorly understood hazard associated with commercial fishing (Rezaee, Pelot, and Ghasemi 2016; Rezaee, Pelot, and Finnis 2016). Weather can also affect safety during travel on land or by vessel or plane between home and ports of departure and arrival, but this has not been studied.

Hazards Associated with Multisite Work Arrangements

Truckers and other ground transportation workers are not the only workers at risk of injury from collisions and other traffic-related injuries. Workers in other sectors also often drive between sites as part of their work and may be at higher risk than professional drivers. For instance, in the US between 2003 and 2009, the work-related motor vehicle fatality rate for oil and gas extraction workers was 8.5 times that for all private sector workers. Those from small establishments and employed by well-servicing companies were at highest risk, and 51.1 percent of the crashes involved pickup trucks. Risk factors in this sector include driving between well sites, travel on rural roads, low levels of safety belt use, and “long and irregular hours of work that contribute to driver fatigue” (Retzer, Hill, and Pratt 2013, 168).

Some types of workers are called upon to visit multiple clients in their homes on a given shift. These include home care workers6 and ambulatory health care professionals.7 Research has highlighted the hazards associated with working remotely and often alone in diverse and changing client homes. Fitzpatrick and Neis (2015), for example, reported on the situation of unionized home care workers in NL. They and some other researchers point out specific OSH challenges, such as the isolation, hazards associated with poor maintenance of premises including icy walkways, musculoskeletal disorders associated with lifting clients in the absence of adequate equipment, exposure to violence (and it’s underreporting, since violence may be more tolerated by these workers when the clients have dementia, for example), and exposure to communicable diseases (49). Similar findings regarding OSH challenges for home care workers were found in the province of Québec (Hamel-Roy 2019; Boivin 2014). Hamel-Roy (2019) reported a lack of access to adequate lifting and transfer equipment, disposable gloves, and adequate cleaning equipment but also situations of violence and psychological and sexual harassment. Visiting new homes and clients, as with visiting different ports in seafaring, visiting different airports or loading sites, changing vessels or vehicles, and doing cleaning work in multiple buildings, can raise OSH challenges similar to those experienced by new workers: Every work site is a new workplace with potentially unknown hazards.8 These hazards and challenges are not, however, limited to the work sites. As in other sectors, there are also hazards associated with travelling to and between work sites, often in their own vehicle. The Nova Scotia team of researchers with OTM explored the mobility experiences and related issues, including for their mental health, of mobile health care workers from the perspective of workers and managers. Issues include dealing with hazardous weather, pressure to choose between not getting paid and going to work in dangerous conditions, and not being adequately compensated for maintenance of their vehicle (Jackson et al. 2020; Jackson, Price, et al. 2019; Leiter et al. 2018; Price et al. 2019). NL home care workers talked about travelling with clients as part of their work and about risks related to car crashes, public transit, and slipping and falling on public sidewalks. Fitzpatrick and Neis (2015, 55) noted that interviewed home care workers “reported feeling drowsy driving home after the last shift of the day and drank coffee to stay alert. NL roads and highways can be treacherous during the winter months, and some homecare workers reported feeling uneasy driving in snowy weather.” Limited control over their work/travel schedules is another source of stress (56).

Daily Commute Hazards

Daily commutes entail travelling from home to work and vice versa. In Canada, commute hazards and injuries are generally not treated as work related, contributing to a lack of studies exploring potential links between work- and commute-related hazards and risk. Thus, the clearest indication of daily commute risk relative to other work-related activities comes from European research from countries such as France, Finland, and Spain where, in contrast to Canada, the US, and many other countries, “employees injured in commuting accidents (going to and from work) and those occurring during the course of work are indemnified as for other occupational injuries” (Charbotel, Martin, and Chiron 2010, 604).

While findings are mixed, existing studies have generally linked longer daily commutes to reduced well-being. This research is reviewed in a recent European study that outlines ways the relationship between commuting and well-being is complex and mediated by multiple factors. The study presents findings from a large-scale, multicountry study of the relationship between weekly commute hours and subjective and objective well-being. It found a relatively small but significant relationship between weekly commute hours and lower well-being across these countries (Zijlstra and Verhetsel 2021; see also Chatterjee et al. 2020; Clark et al. 2020).

Daily commutes to work can be associated with a higher risk of injury than non-work-related travel as well as with injuries that happen at work. Using police reports where these distinguish between work- and non-work-related road accidents, Charbotel, Martin, and Chiron’s (2010) study of road accidents in France distinguished between work-related accidents while at work and during the commute and non-work-related accidents. For two periods between 1997 and 2006, they found 10 percent of road accidents occurred while at work versus 18 percent during the commute. In research on commuting accidents among Spanish professional drivers, Llamazares et al. (2021) note that while workplace casualties are declining, work-related commuting accidents seem to be expanding. Their analysis of commuting accidents among professional drivers in Spain found differences between commuting accidents and those occurring overall, including on-duty accidents, with those with less than ten years of tenure experiencing more commuting accidents. They also found gender differences in commuting accident severity. The hourly pattern of crash clusters led them to hypothesize that work-related fatigue, shift work, and time pressure common in the professional driver sector have spillover effects into commuting, with large numbers of accidents on the way to work suggesting insufficient recovery time between shifts (Llamazares et al. 2021).

Higher accident rates on the way to work found in a study of German chemical industry workers may also reflect the impact of pressure to get to work on time and light- and weather-related impacts on driving conditions in the morning (Zepf et al. 2010; for steps employers can take to reduce commuting risk and costs, see Salminen 2012). Whereas some research has found commute accident rates to be higher among women than men (see, e.g., Salminen 2000), this study did not find a gender difference. Mode of commute and accident rates do seem to vary by age and sector.

For daily commuters, travel via public transport has much lower fatality rates per passenger mile than travelling via motorcycle, bicycle, car, or truck (Savage 2013; Truong and Currie 2019). Despite the relative safety of public transport, there are also hazards that can vary across populations and transport modes. As noted by Tilahun et al. (2016), for example, public transport users must deal with connectivity between transit stops and with hazards related to trip origin and termination points, such as access to sidewalks, risks to pedestrians from vehicular traffic, and street-level crime issues. Exposures to infectious diseases such as COVID-19 are also a greater concern on public transit than in private vehicles (see chapter 6). Other hazards associated with public transport use include the risk of harassment, violence, and sexual assault en route and at transit stops (studied mainly in countries of the Global South) and while on public transport, with overcrowding facilitating sexual touching and empty bus stops increasing the risk of rape (Chowdhury 2023).

Poorer and racialized women are particularly likely to use public transportation and to experience long commutes; women, transgender, and gender nonconforming public transit users are particularly at risk of harassment and violence (McLafferty and Preston 2023; Premji 2018; Lubitow, Abelson, and Carpenter 2020; Graglia 2016). These groups are also at risk of “transport poverty,” which is the compounded lack of ability to travel to important destinations and activities: “Transport poverty occurs when transport disadvantage (not having access to a car, poor public transit options, etc.) compounds with other forms of potential social disadvantage (unemployment or low income, disability or poor health, etc.) . . . and, in the worst cases, can result in the perpetuation of social exclusion” (Farber and Allen 2019, 3) [original references omitted]. Farber and Allen (2019) examined inequalities in transit access to employment for eight Canadian metropolitan regions and found that, despite changes, several households still face transport poverty. Although results are mixed, some previous research in this field has found that people with lower incomes in central city areas tend to have longer commute times than others, linked to higher dependence on public transport with slower travel speeds (Cui 2020).

Temp agency immigrant and, particularly, undocumented workers who commute via agency-provided transportation to work for transient and sometimes unnamed employers in unknown locations experience multiple layers of vulnerability (Sargeant and Tucker 2009). Access to such transport may give these workers access to employment otherwise inaccessible to them but comes with the risk of travelling in overcrowded vehicles lacking sufficient or working seat belts and being driven by inexperienced or untrained drivers, including other workers who may be suffering from fatigue. Working for an unknown employer in an unknown location with limited options for return transportation can also interfere with workers’ ability to exercise their rights, including to health and safety, and means they can end up stranded at the workplace if they object or are subject to harassment and other threats (Hanley et al. 2018). Daily and less frequent transportation to and within work is a documented health and safety hazard for agricultural TFWs and immigrant farm workers in Canada (see, e.g., Preibisch and Otero 2014).

Work scheduling (which can include long working hours, shift work, limited breaks, and quick returns [i.e., reduced periods between the end of one shift and the start of the next] generally associated with rotating shifts) can contribute to the risk of injury at work as well as while commuting. In a Canadian study, Wong, McLeod, and Demers (2011) found that while the rate of work injury in Canada declined between 1996 and 2006, it did not decline for night shift workers. Impacts varied by gender, with an elevated odds ratio for women and men that was higher for night shifts and for women working rotating shifts. They also note that shift work is associated with other health risks.

Fatigue is a key factor linking shift work and injury risk not only at work but also during the commute (Robb et al. 2008). A North Carolina study examining driver risk factors for sleep- and non-sleep-related crashes found drivers in sleep-related crashes were more likely to be working two or more jobs, working a night shift or other work schedule (rotating shifts or working long hours for extended periods of time), or working more than sixty hours a week. According to the study, “Compared to drivers in non-sleep-related crashes, they had been driving for longer times, been awake more hours, slept fewer hours the night before, and were more likely to have used soporific medications” (Stutts et al. 2003, 321).

Much of the existing research on work scheduling, fatigue, and risk of injury that encompasses commuting has been done in the health care sector—particularly among hospital workers. For instance, Dorrian et al. (2008) studied sleep and errors among a small group of Australian hospital nurses at work and on the commute. The main predictor of extreme drowsiness during the commute was struggling to stay awake, followed by exhaustion and consecutive shifts (Dorrian et al. 2008). Findings from a 2023 scoping review of the relationship between shift work organization and nurse injuries that examined thirty-four articles from fourteen countries suggested both “a strong association between long work hours and overtime and an increased risk for needlestick and sharps injuries, drowsy driving and motor vehicle crashes, and other work-related accidents” (Imes et al. 2023, 1). Rotating shifts increase the risk for the former and other work-related accidents, while night and rotating shifts increase drowsy driving and motor vehicle crash risk (Imes et al. 2023).

In a recent Finnish study, Ropponen et al. (2022) compared shifts among Finnish physicians during the week of an accident (including commute accidents) and the week prior to the accidents. They found that increased shift intensity (number of consecutive working days and number of on-call shifts) increased occupational injury likelihood but unfortunately did not compare accidents at work and commute accidents. Vedaa et al. (2019) examined the association between night work and quick returns (fewer than eleven hours between shifts and generally associated with rotating shifts) and work-related accidents among Norwegian nurses, including during the commute. They found that night shifts were positively associated with work-related accidents and dozing off while driving to or from work, and quick returns were associated with increased risk of causing harm to themselves, patients/others, and harm to equipment.9

Time pressure at work may also contribute to injury risk while commuting. In their study of time pressure at work, cognitive failure, and commuting near-accidents, Elfering, Grebner, and de Tribolet-Hardy (2013) found a positive relationship between time pressure at work and commuting near-accidents in a study among eighty-three employees who commuted to work in vehicles. They assume the effect of time pressure at work on commuting near-accidents is mediated by ways time pressure at work can reduce attention to safety priorities and the risk of cognitive failure both at work and on the commute. They suggest that increased time control at work will reduce commute accident risk by, for example, allowing workers to determine the time of their commute.

Work scheduling also has the potential to contribute to hazard exposures and related injury risk among workers taking public transit, particularly in interaction with precarious employment, gender, race, and other factors. These intersections are well illustrated by findings from Premji’s (2017) research on mobility and health among precariously employed recent immigrants in Toronto. For these workers, shift work scheduled to start and end outside of peak hours—along with poor public transit service to areas where they could afford to live, employment precarity, and gender—contributed to heightened risk of violence, high transportation costs, childcare issues, and high stress. Although more research is needed, challenges are potentially particularly great for those working in areas like retail and food service, with often short or split shifts dictated by algorithms designed to match schedules to workload (Thorburn 2018; Neis et al. 2018).

Prolonged Mobilities

Long-distance commuting and rotational work are common in the resource extraction sectors like mining, oil and gas, and fishing and seafaring, as well as in major industrial construction initiatives related to these and other sectors like hydro dam, pipeline, and road construction. These operations often take place in rural and remote areas, requiring workers to engage in extended and often complex daily commutes for several days, followed by some time off (Barber 2018). In many cases, workers engage in less frequent commutes, sometimes involving multiple modes of transportation such as driving to a meeting point or airport, flying to the relevant work region, or being driven or bused from the airport or meeting point to the work site (Gesualdi-Fecteau, Nakache, and Matte Guilmain 2019). Such mobility schemes entail prolonged absences, as workers do not return home after their shift. In this case, work scheduling tends to be based on roster systems involving one to several weeks on, followed by time off in nearby communities, home communities, or elsewhere. Rosters give employers access to larger, more dispersed labour forces and can facilitate the operation of long shifts and 24-7 schedules, but they can also encourage workers to live greater distances from work sites than would normally be feasible. Subsidized transportation can also encourage living at a distance, as with living-out allowances in some labour contracts—although some also use the allowance to rent housing close to the site or purchase and locate an RV or trailer nearby (Di Milia and Bowden 2007; Barber 2018)—and supported air travel in others. While at work, rotational workers are housed on work platforms offshore or in work camps or hotels/motels in nearby communities at onshore work sites.

There is an expanding body of research, much of it from Australia, with some from the UK (offshore oil), Canada, Russia, and some from the US, on the relationship between long-distance commuting, rotational work, and risks to physical and psychological health in the resource and construction sectors. A recently published systematic review of publications on the health and well-being of rotation workers in resource extraction and construction found that studies suggested a lower prevalence of psychological distress among offshore oil and gas workers than among onshore rotational workers across sectors, while both onshore and offshore workers had poorer sleep and more fatigue during on-shift days versus off-shift days. Although workers generally perceived their health status as good, job demands perceived as high were associated with mental distress, exhaustion, sleep problems, and perceived poor health status (Asare, Kwasnicka, et al. 2021).

In Canada, in a study of mobile workers in northern Alberta’s oil sands industry, Dorow et al. (2021, 72) asked the workers how they got “from their front door to the work camp.” Their participants “described everything from hopping in their truck and going door-to-door, to complex routes involving driving, flying, shuttling, and taking a cab.” The workers’ relationship to travel shows the strain it can produce:

About one-third of respondents characterized travelling back and forth as somewhat/very difficult. . . . Twice that proportion (70%) indicated experiencing stress from travel, but with only 17% rating this as intense. Participants referred to the stress of unpredictable travel conditions (cost, weather), long and tiring journeys, and sometimes, compressed transition time. . . . Some of the more seasoned FIFO travelers downgraded the stress, citing that they were “used to it” and went on autopilot when traveling. (Dorow et al. 2021, 70) [Original references omitted.]

These authors also distinguish between the workers who fly and those who don’t. Those who were flying reported being healthier and more satisfied: “Whether people fly or not makes a difference in how they rate their health, stress, and wellbeing, with people who fly being healthier and more satisfied—but . . . flying is also a proxy for other facets of fly-in fly-out and drive-in drive-out work” (72). Those who drove back home mentioned long commutes (four to seven hours each way) in order to see their family for just one day. The authors indicate Alberta-based workers were often driving back and forth during a window of just two to three days (80). In another Canadian study on fly-in/fly-out (FIFO) workers, Ryser, Markey, and Halseth (2016) report that some workers who fly from other provinces to Mackenzie, BC, may not have a direct flight to their work site and are dependent on flight scheduling. These workers can spend as much time in airports as they would have spent driving if they could have taken their car to the work site. For those who can drive, they reported financial impacts and concerns about the distance and the long hours they had to drive in order to make the commute (Ryser, Markey, and Halseth 2016).

A study on the unintended impacts of work scheduling changes and the shift to a contractor system at an Australian mine found these changes led to the creation of a drive-in/drive-out (DIDO) workforce, with some driving very long distances to work with early morning departures and departing for home shortly after night shift at the end of fairly lengthy rosters. These driving patterns were associated with higher levels of self-reported sleepiness and with falling asleep while driving, with rates higher after night shift on the return home (Di Milia and Bowden 2007). In a study of sleep behaviours, sleep disorder risk, and quantified alertness risk associated with roster design in a remote Australian mine, shift work was found to be a significant factor leading to sleep loss and reduced alertness, exacerbated by a high prevalence of sleep disorders (Maisey et al. 2022). Workers started their rotation with very long start days from wake time through travel to the end of their first shift and thus reduced alertness that continued to decline over their consecutive shifts. Fly-out days for their return home after seven days of night shift were also very long, with workers commuting home from the airport during a period of low alertness, putting those driving home at high accident risk. Research on health and safety in remote northern Canadian mines flagged a range of health and safety issues, including fatigue related to long shifts at work, rotating day/night shifts, increased fly-in/fly-out (FIFO) work, high employee turnover, difficulty accessing skilled employees, extreme weather, limitations on training, and mine inspection and regulatory gaps related to the particular challenges of these mines (Halabi and Kumral 2022).

Male-dominated workplaces with a culture of risk-taking supported by employers appear to contribute to the risk of injury within resource extraction FIFO and DIDO industries. A study of seat belt use among oil workers in northern Alberta based on focus groups found workers believed risk-taking was “an essential characteristic of who they are and where they work” (Rothe 2008, 226). Participants indicated that employers demand consecutive hours of work and offer incentives for working overtime and that risk-taking is also part of driving. They considered their most dangerous risk to entail driving after working twelve-hour shifts for fourteen consecutive days—a concern supported by data indicating over 50 percent of the fatalities in compensation data for oil workers in Canada were the result of motor vehicle crashes. The study found situational rather than routine seat belt use was part of the same culture and contributed to the risk (Rothe 2008). Evidence was found of a “risk-accommodating environment” among small- and medium-sized pipeline companies based on a series of related Canadian studies that reviewed company accident investigation and remediation programs and linked company reticence to finding and fixing errors to a macroculture of worker blame, compliance versus remediation, and production over safety. Pipeline workers are highly mobile both to and within work (Stackhouse and Stewart 2017).

A particular risk and source of stress for these and other long-distance mobile workers is to be left stranded far away from home, as when some workers were initially stranded when the subcontractor, their employer, went bankrupt in northern Alberta.10 Stranding also poses a risk to the health and well-being of seafarers who have been stranded, as was the case for Turkish crew members of the Phoenix Sun, who suffered multiple hardships when their ship was condemned while in Québec and the owner ceased to provide revenue to the workers hired to make it seaworthy again.11 Similar situations have occurred in NL (Bailey 2014; CBC News 2014) and Nova Scotia (Canadian Press 2000; CBC News 2013b).12 A trucker from Québec was stranded in the US because the truck he was driving was confiscated and his licence suspended by US authorities after an incident on his journey. His oversized load, provided by the employer who had prescribed the specific route to be taken and who had chosen the escort truck driven by a contractor hired to precede him throughout the journey, was in fact too large for a narrow part of the road and became stuck. Despite his employer’s objections, he successfully sued his employer for damages, including costs of defending himself from charges in the US, the fine he had to pay, and lost salary and expenses incurred while stranded in the US for five working days.13

Even in the absence of stranding, long-distance mobility can be psychologically challenging. There is a growing body of research focusing on the psychological effects of FIFO/DIDO that links work, living at work, travel, and home life factors. Dorow et al. (2021) studied the mental health of FIFO workers in the Alberta oil sands. They found that living in a camp is stressful, with 77 percent reporting some (46 percent) or a lot (31 percent) of stress stemming from living in a camp. According to their research,

Wellbeing in camp is most affected by isolation, a feeling of “entrapment” (58% disagreed that they are free to do what they want in camp, and 39% had never left camp while on rotation), poor morale (52% disagreed that morale in camp is good), limited or unhealthy food options, and difficulty maintaining healthy eating, exercise, and sleep habits. Half of the participants reported difficulty falling asleep (57%) and never or only occasionally waking up feeling rested in camp (49%); this is compared to 29% and 11%, respectively, when at home. (5)

Parkes, Fruhen, and Parker (2023) sought to resolve contradictory research findings on the relationship between rosters and psychological distress. They did this by developing a characterization of FIFO work schedules as objective stressors and testing a series of hypotheses using findings from a large survey of FIFO workers from the mining, oil and gas, and construction sectors in Australia. Findings generally supported their hypotheses, showing higher rates of distress among these FIFO workers than the Australian average as well as a positive relationship between demanding roster (higher ratios of time at work relative to off time) and shift characteristics (rotating day/night shifts) and psychological distress. They found that this relationship was mediated by subjective perceptions of roster satisfaction, lifestyle adaptation, and parental status.

Most existing research on FIFO/DIDO and other types of mobile work and health and safety doesn’t distinguish carefully between the diverse health and safety experiences and outcomes for those employed across different sectors by large, core enterprises and by contractors; in different types of jobs; or between the experiences of men, women, and racialized and TFWs. Some recent research is addressing some of these gaps. Dorow, Hilario, and O’Leary (2023, 1), for example, use their mixed methods study of stress among the large population of oil sands contract trades workers in Alberta to explore “the gendered practices, policies, and discourses that shape and differentiate how stressors are produced, experienced, and interconnected as workers move across worksite, camp, and home” in this male-dominated and boom-and-bust industry, what they call the FIFO-DIDO system. These many thousands of workers commute from within Alberta and from across Canada. They note that most studies of job stress focus on working conditions, leaving aside the inseparable connections between working conditions and im/mobilities across sites and scales. They also note that gender tends to be undertheorized in the FIFO mental health literature, most of which pays little attention to women’s experiences and those of the gender diverse. As such, Dorow, Hilario, and O’Leary argue for greater engagement with insights from critical gender mobility studies, which “are concerned with the context-specific social production and governing of unequal experiences, patterns, and intersections of mobility and immobility,” and they explore how temporal rhythms of different “constellations of mobility and immobility” are “shaped by the gendered identities, opportunities and inequalities within specific contexts” (2–3).

Those surveyed in the Dorow, Hilario, and O’Leary (2023) study indicated significant health challenges, including high mental health and daily stress levels that got worse over their daily work schedule and rotations, as well as other challenges. These challenges were linked to a prolonged period of downturn in the industry and the precarities of contract work, as well as to a macho, masculinist work culture linked to gendered harassment. Experiences of challenges were gendered and, for some, mediated by racism. These authors identified stressors related to life in the camps highlighted in other research, often comparing the camp to a prison, and found an association between social isolation stress and compressed rotations, having a young family and working long shutdown projects. They note that “the culture of male dominance and sexual harassment extends across work and camp, exacerbating experiences of stress,” and back into home lives, with gender dimensions to these transitions as well (5). Dorow, Hilario, and O’Leary (2023) use their findings and those from other studies to propose a FIFO/DIDO stress-web conceptual model. The model seeks to capture how workplaces, camp, travel, and home have their own stressors but also how stressors interact with each other and with the wider features of the resource industry including its boom-and-bust character and contracting hierarchy, “articulating and compounding as workers move across the web” (7). The study also has findings on worker perceptions of employers’ investment in mental health and on access to, and willingness to access, health care while on rotation and at home. It includes insights and recommendations for changes that could help address mental health challenges and needs of these workers, including how the realities of FIFO/DIDO “demand an expanded notion of ‘the workplace’ in human resource policies, employment law, and occupational health and safety [OHS]” (8), something feminist political economy has long supported.

In 2023, Fruhen, Gilbert, and Parker published a systematic review of research on the implications of FIFO/DIDO work for mental health. They note that within types of work/business-related travel, FIFO work can be considered extreme in terms of distance covered, commuting modality, and commute duration. It also involves the need to be located away from home for relatively extensive periods of time, requiring FIFO workers to “live two lives” with limited opportunity to extract themselves from work contexts in part because they often live in employer-controlled housing (Fruhen, Gilbert, and Parker 2023, 181). Because of these characteristics, they argue, research on FIFO can be useful in developing insights into the health and other effects of work-related travel and for theory development given the neglect of work-related mobility in many theories about how work affects workers, including work-family conflict theories (see Hughes and Silver 2020), job demands and resources theory, and the conservation of resources theory that includes attention to the importance of recovery and detachment from work as a means to manage stressors. Their systematic review found mainly negative mental health implications for FIFO. They propose an integrative model identifying the key features of FIFO work likely to impact mental health, including “the blending of personal life and work while workers are on site, and the simultaneous fracturing of work and home life” (190).

Fruhen, Gilbert, and Parker (2023, 182) describe the “segmentation and integration,” which happens at the daily, microlevel, and note that the nature and extent of these are associated with worker discretion. In contrast, fracturing and blending are more profound in that they can last for weeks and are dictated by employer arrangements, leaving FIFO workers with limited discretion around their extent. Furthermore, “FIFO work arrangements prescribe physical blending and fracturing alongside psychological blending and fracturing” in the context of work design that “requires workers to integrate and bridge paradoxical extremes” and to manage while transitioning psychologically from one extreme situation to another (190–91). They draw on Dorow and Jean’s (2022) research on camp life that uses the concept of liminality to examine the blending of work and personal life and its impacts, extending attention to the lack of autonomy in the work site as a threat to mental health in the camps where workers can lack choice around food, accommodation (including shared accommodation), schedules, and activities. They also highlight ways the lack of autonomy and social isolation on site and in the camps associated with FIFO can contribute to the blending of life and work and can affect the potential for recovery and detachment from work and the risk of bullying. They argue that while the fracturing of work and home life can help workers switch off from work, on balance, it is more likely to be detrimental, affecting the potential for work-family conflict. The “spatial fracturing” of the commute is associated with long distances, and the “temporal fracturing” of roster types (i.e., those with long periods away relative to time home) might be greatest in the absence of employer flexibility, the ability to take time off or ask for different rosters, and where workers have limited ability to connect with home while away. Related mental health impacts would include psychological challenges around transitioning between work and home, loneliness, and work-family conflict. Fruhen, Gilbert, and Parker (2023) note challenges are likely to be particularly significant where workers and their families are locked into FIFO due, for example, to debt and with limited opportunities for alternative work. From a regulatory perspective, challenges are also likely to be particularly significant when FIFO/DIDO involves both distance and crossing jurisdictional boundaries.

The overview of some of the existing research on hazards associated with extended/complex ERGM and health and safety in this section supports the conclusion that mobility is a determinant of health, including occupational health, that is often neglected in existing OSH research. It highlights the relatively high risk associated with such mobility across the spectrum from mobility as work through multisite work, to daily commutes, to prolonged mobility and rotational work. Findings also highlight evidence of injury risk during commutes and some of the ways that work scheduling and organization can interact with mobility to influence risk and vulnerabilities across differently mobile workers as mediated by gender, family status, and other factors. Finally, the overview also points to some research syntheses and studies that theorize variable relationships between mobility, risk, and particular kinds of hazards across groups and mobility regimes while considering the wider industry and regulatory context. Key limitations in this literature include its attention to a relatively narrow range of specific groups, sectors, and types of mobility and work situations. Much existing research still tends to treat work-related mobility as essentially getting from A to B without attending to issues of complexity and control related to ERGM or to the intersections between work, mobility, and life at home.

The neglect of mobility as a determinant of occupational health is encouraged by its invisibility in much of the existing data on employment and on work-related injuries and illnesses. While the literature shows how work organization and scheduling can influence risk at work and after work while commuting, there is little exploration of how challenges in negotiating complex mobilities and life conditions might influence risk at work. Overall, more attention could be paid to the consequences of intersections between work, ERGM, and home and to ways ERGM intersects with other factors to mediate regulatory effectiveness and injury prevention and compensation across diverse groups and situations.

Informed by insights from the conceptual framework on determinants of regulatory effectiveness within the mobile labour force outlined in the next section, the remainder of this book focuses mainly on policy issues related to extended/complex ERGM and health and safety. It explores the layers of vulnerability associated with the diverse work-related mobilities of differently situated groups of workers with a particular focus on understanding the determinants of regulatory effectiveness in the Canadian context. Our focus here has been on OSH hazards experienced by internally mobile workers within Canada and elsewhere. The particular hazards and multiple layers of vulnerability experienced by international migrant workers (IMWs) are discussed in chapter 5.