Health Effects of Employment

After reading this chapter, you will be able to:

• ➤ Describe the ways in which the organization of work can affect workers’ health.
• ➤ Explain the link between precariousness and poor health outcomes.
• ➤ Explain how the size of an employer can lead to differential health outcomes.
• ➤ Discuss how gender and race are relevant to the issue of healthy work.

Karen Maleka is a personal support worker (sometimes called personal care attendant) in Guelph, Ontario. Personal support workers care for elderly, disabled, and sick persons in their homes by providing services such as bathing and dressing. Maleka can work up to 70 or 80 hours in a week. “I do full-time hours but I’m classified as part time. I take care of sick people and I don’t have a sick day.”1 As a result of her part-time status, Maleka has no pension and her benefits are not guaranteed. “Because my employer says I’m part time I have to re-qualify for benefits every year, by working at least 1500 hours. Last year my friend found out she had cancer. She missed a lot of work because she was so sick, and she lost her benefits.”2 Maleka is paid $15 an hour during her time with clients, but she is not paid for her travel time. Maleka cannot afford a car so often rides the bus 35 to 40 minutes, unpaid, between appointments.3 She has no guaranteed hours in the week and no job security.

Maleka is a precarious worker. Precarious employment is non-standard work that lacks stability, security, and control. It can be part-time or temporary, and precarious workers are often under-protected by regulation. Precarious workers lack control over how or when the work is performed. Benefits are rare and usually the wages are insufficient to support a family.4 Women and racialized workers are more likely to be found in precarious employment.5 Precarious work is also linked to increased risk of work-related injury and poorer health outcomes, including increased stress and poorer physical well-being. The precariousness of the employment relationship leads to worse OHS conditions. Further, gender, race, and age have OHS implications because certain groups of workers are more likely to hold precarious jobs.

Precarious work is one example of how the structure of work and the employment relationship itself can be linked to ill health. This chapter will discuss how work itself can be an OHS issue. In addition to explaining the reasons precarious work leads to worse health, it will also examine work structure issues such as shift work, working for a small employer, and the health effects of different forms of work.

OHS practitioners rarely identify work itself as an occupational hazard. Traditional approaches look at aspects of work—such as work location, tools, and processes—to identify hazards that could harm workers. Yet studying the entirety of work, and even broader effects of work that spill over into workers’ home lives, provides a fuller picture of the health effects of work. Indeed, there is a growing body of research that shows that the structure of work, the nature of the employment relationship, and the type of the employer all have measurable physical and psychological effects on workers. For that reason, it is an area demanding greater attention by OHS practitioners.

Karasek’s Job Demands-Control Model, which was introduced in Chapter 7, links high demand and low control over work to high levels of worker stress. Karasek’s model was the first to connect the nature of the employment relationship to health and safety outcomes. Yet the degree of control over one’s work is only one aspect of employment that can affect workers’ health. This section examines three other characteristics of work that have health consequences: shift work, extended work hours, and emotional labour.

Shift work requires workers to work outside of regular weekday hours. It may include regular evening or night work, rotating schedules, split shifts, irregular shifts, or on-call work. Shift work is a growing trend in Canada. In 2020, nearly 30% of employed Canadians did not work 9 to 5, Monday to Friday hours.6 The most common form of shift work is rotating schedules, where a worker cycles through a series of day, evening, and night shifts. Not surprisingly, shift work is particularly common in health care and emergency services. It is also present in the service industry (e.g., consider the growth in 24-hour stores and restaurants).

The primary concern about shift work is its potential to disrupt a worker’s circadian rhythms. Circadian rhythms (commonly known as the biological clock) are the daily (24-hour) cycles our body follows to ensure (in humans) high activity during the day and low activity at night. Sleeping and waking, eating, adrenalin, body temperature, blood pressure, pulse, and many other bodily functions are regulated by circadian rhythms. When work occurs outside of that daily rhythm, it places strain on the body as it is forced to alter the cycle. A second concern is that shift work is associated with behaviour contributing to poorer health, including smoking, poor diet, and increased alcohol consumption.7 Shift work also disrupts family and social activities. This disruption adds stress and reduces the support that workers can draw upon to manage stress.

Some forms of shift work disrupt the rhythms more than others. The worst forms of shifts are those that are constantly changing (irregular shifts, rotating schedules, on-call), as well as those that invert the natural rhythm (for example, permanent night shifts). Workers whose rhythms have been disrupted can experience insomnia and non-restorative sleep, as well as changes in hormone levels, which can affect cell growth. Workers rarely become habituated to shift work, even after long periods on disruptive shifts.8

Research into shift work has been extensive and shows a wide range of health effects. In the short term, shift work leads to shortened and less restorative sleep and chronic tiredness and lack of alertness, as well as stomach aches, indigestion, and heartburn. Shift work is associated with increased risk of workplace incidents and injury. The risk increases as the number of days on the disruptive shift grows. It also jumps if the disrupted shift lasts longer than eight hours.9

Longer-term exposure to shift work is associated with a series of illnesses and conditions. Shift workers report significantly higher rates of burnout, emotional exhaustion, stress, anxiety, depression, and other psychological distress. Shift work increases a worker’s risk of developing diabetes, and some studies have also found a greater risk of heart disease. Some studies have also suggested a link between shift work and pregnancy complications. Likely the most significant long-term risk of shift work is increased risk of cancer, in particular breast cancer. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has concluded that disruptive shift work is “probably carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2A)—the second most conclusive category in the IARC.10

Much less research has been conducted at mitigating the negative effects of shift work. Some recommendations have included:

• Restricting consecutive evening/night shifts to no more than three
• Avoiding permanent night shifts
• Using forward rotation for rotating shifts (moving from morning to evening to night) rather than the opposite
• Providing more than 11 hours’ rest time between shifts
• Limiting weekend work11

The effectiveness of these measures has been sparsely studied and therefore their mitigating power is uncertain. At this time, the only reliable method for addressing shift work’s health effects is preventive: eliminating or minimizing shift work in the workplace. This may be particularly challenging for essential services such as health care and emergency response, given the 24-hour nature of that work. Nevertheless, considering the health risks, there is room to question the value in 24-hour restaurants, late-night convenience stores, and other all-night service industries.

Extended work hours is defined as working for long hours over a period of time. Most commonly it entails working extra hours in a day or over the course of a week. There is some disagreement whether an extended workday is defined as over 8 hours or over 12 hours. In general, extended work weeks are defined as anything over 40 hours. The most obvious consequence of extended work hours is fatigue and the increased risk of error associated with it.

One of the reasons there is disagreement over how to define extended workdays is that the research is contradictory regarding the effect of working between 8 and 12 hours. Some (but not all) studies have shown that working beyond 8 hours in a day leads to increased risk of incidents and sleep disruption. When workers work more than 12 hours, the research becomes clearer that this schedule is linked to increased injury rates, more illnesses, and an overall lower level of perceived general health. Some studies have found a link between long hours and pre-term birth. Over the longer term, extended workdays are associated with weight gain, increased use of alcohol, and smoking.12

Working extended hours over the course of a week is also associated with negative health effects. Workers who work longer than 40 hours in a week are more likely to become injured. One study found that workers who worked 64 or more hours a week were almost twice as likely to be injured than those who worked less than 40.13 Prolonged exposure to long workweeks leads to worsening mental health and an increase in unhealthy behaviour, including poor diet and increased alcohol consumption. Women’s mental health appears to be more negatively affected by long hours than men’s mental health.14

When the two types of extended work are combined—working both long shifts and long workweeks—the effects are magnified. Other work factors, such as work pace, temperature, and mental exertion required also intensify the health and safety risks of longer working hours. Particularly concerning is the combination of long hours and shift work (common in health care and other emergency services).15 Extended working hours also create stress in family and social spheres as work encroaches upon those aspects of workers’ lives.

At the core of all these findings is the physical strain put on the human body by long hours of work. The worker is unable to achieve sufficient rest between periods of work to recover from the exertion of work. Complicating the picture, however, is that many workers prefer extended hours. Extended shifts often result in a compressed workweek, meaning more days with no work. Others appreciate feeling important, busy, or challenged by long hours. As with many aspects of occupational health, workers vary in their susceptibility to the negative effects of long hours.

This hazard is easily controlled by reducing the number of hours worked. The reason employers don’t control this hazard is that longer shifts simplify scheduling and reduce pressure to hire more staff. These economic benefits for employers (paid for by workers in the form of ill health) ensure that long working hours and weeks remain commonplace practices.

Emotional labour is a term describing any aspect of a job that requires workers to regulate their emotions to meet organizationally defined rules and to display the required emotions to customers. In other words, workers engage in emotional labour when they are asked to display an emotion—empathy, happiness, friendliness— that they may not actually feel. Emotional labour is a key part of work in many occupations involving clients, patients, or customers and is required of a wide variety of workers, including nurses and doctors, store clerks, restaurant/bar servers, airline attendants, and teachers. Box 8.1 provides a more detailed discussion of emotional labour and its significance.

Emotional labour is a well-established concept in the study of work but is rarely discussed in OHS. The studies that have been performed find extensive performance of emotional labour leads to higher levels of anxiety, stress, and emotional exhaustion in workers.19 These psychological states lead to a variety of physical and mental ailments over time, including depression.

Emotional labour can also be linked to workplace violence and harassment, in that moments of intense emotional labour are often associated with managing threatening behaviour from customers or clients. Essentially, the worker is forced (by lack of alternatives) to manage a dangerous situation by regulating their own emotions, including fear. One result is that the trauma of the event may then be compounded by the mental costs of regulating emotions under a stressful situation, leading to intensified psychological stress.20

Little work has been done to examine how to mitigate the negative health effects of emotional labour, in large part because it is not widely recognized as a significant health hazard. Reducing the need for emotional labour by allowing for a greater degree of honest expression of feelings is a key aspect of reducing the consequences of emotional labour. Allowing safe spaces for “venting,” establishing zero-tolerance policies for customer misbehaviour, and revoking policies requiring workers to engage in emotional labour (e.g., smile policies) are all ways to control the health hazard of emotional labour.

Shift work, long hours, and emotional labour are linked because they all introduce a health risk into the workplace by altering how, when, or what kind of work is performed. In this way, they are distinct from other hazards discussed in previous chapters because they are associated with the nature of work itself rather than a specific task or location. Also, because they are inextricably linked with the employment relationship, employers have been resistant to recognizing and controlling the hazards they pose.

Work in the 21st century is becoming increasingly insecure. While the standard employment relationship (SER), the term for permanent, full-time, secure employment with a single employer, is still the most common form of job, its proportions are dropping. Fewer than two thirds of jobs in Canada fit the definition of SER. Precarious jobs comprise the fastest-growing segment of employment. Precarious jobs lack the stability and security of SER and as a result increase workers’ vulnerability to exploitation. They include part-time and temporary work as well as work in the so-called “gig economy” controlled by app-based companies such as Uber or Skip the Dishes. But precarious work can also be present in full-time jobs as employers increasingly emphasize “flexibility” over job security. Statistics Canada estimates that “non-standard” work comprises 36% of employment, and some researchers have found that 50% of workers experience some degree of precarity.21

Precarious work is found in all sectors of the economy but is more likely to appear in retail, food and accommodation, and agriculture. Women, immigrants, and young workers are more likely to hold precarious jobs than other Canadians.22 For employers, precarious work lowers labour costs and increases flexibility, both of which lead to higher profits. While not as prevalent as in the private sector, precarious work is also present in the public and non-profit sector as these employers feel the pressure to reduce costs and emulate private sector practices.

The rise of precarious employment is concerning for a number of economic and political reasons. It contributes to growing inequality in Canada and exacerbates racial and gender divisions in society. Most worker advocates talk about the economic unfairness of precarious employment and the problems it creates in the labour market and in communities. Precarious employment is also a health and safety issue. The status of being a precarious worker leads to worsened health and safety outcomes.

Repeated studies with different types of precarious workers have shown that they are more likely to get injured at work and their injuries tend to be more severe.23 They are also 50% less likely to report an injury to a WCB.24 Precarious work is associated with deteriorating health and safety conditions in the workplace,25 and precarious workers are found to be less aware of their safety rights and have more difficulty exercising those rights.26 They are more likely to be exposed to psycho-social hazards, including violence and harassment. Precarious workers are also more likely to engage in “presenteeism,” showing up for work despite being sick, because they are less likely to have paid sick leave and cannot afford to “lose the hours.”

Precarious employment also has direct effects on workers’ health. Precarious workers report worse mental health, including increased stress-related illness, depression, and anxiety. Their work is also associated with long-term health effects such as elevated risk of diabetes, cardiovascular illness, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol.27 Finally, research finds that the negative health and economic consequences of precarious work extend to the workers’ children, creating a cross-generational effect.28

There are two explanations for precarious work being associated with decreased health and safety outcomes. Michael Quinlan and Philip Bohle developed the Pressures, Disorganization and Regulatory Failure (PDR) model to explain how precarious work leads to poor health and safety outcomes. Their model looks at three groups of factors that shape practices at precarious workplaces. First, precarious workers experience economic pressures because of income insecurity and competition for work which lead them to accept work intensification and dangerous work while making them reluctant to report injuries and ill health. Second, the contingent nature of the work relationship breaks down structures that facilitate workplace safety, such as safety procedures, training, and communication. Third, the effectiveness of government safety regulations is reduced because enforcement is more difficult, some forms of work are not protected by regulation, and some workers lack knowledge of their health and safety rights. The result of these factors is workplaces that are less safe.29

The PDR model attempts to explain the increased health and safety risks through precarity’s effects on the workplace structure and practice. While this model does help us understand the workplace dynamics of precarious work, it provides an incomplete understanding of the broader effect of precarity on health. The consequences of precarious work do not restrict themselves to the workplace but spill over into the workers’ private lives, as they take stress, anxiety, and insecurity home with them.

In an attempt to build a more holistic analysis of precariousness and work, Wayne Lewchuk and his colleagues have developed the Employment Strain Model (ESM). ESM looks at the employment relationship in its entirety to understand how workers’ health is affected by engaging in precarious work. The model suggests that the strain of being uncertain about employment combined with the stress of having to make extra effort to maintain and attain work are the cause of the worsened health outcomes. Box 8.2 provides a more complete explanation of the model.

No work has been done to determine how to reduce the ill effects of precarious work, in large part because precarity is not yet widely recognized as a health and safety hazard. Since the origins of its effect begin before work begins, it is a challenge to identify work-related solutions. The only effective method for reducing the health effects of precarity is to create jobs that are more secure and support workers more fully. This solution requires broad-scale social, political, and economic change.

Despite its seeming intractability, it is important to understand the health and safety implications of precarious work. The discussion demonstrates that workplace health extends beyond the workplace. The significance of precarious work is that it is not only the work itself that affects safety; the employment status also plays a large role in determining worker health.

In Canada, 98% of all employers are small enterprises (<100 employees). Small enterprises employ two thirds of private-sector workers.33 Small enterprises are also common in the non-profit sector. Most of the research focusing on small and medium enterprises (SMEs) (<500 workers) has been conducted in the past 15 years and has found that workers employed by SMEs are more likely to experience work-related injury and illness. Incidents are more common in SMEs, especially those resulting in fatal or serious injuries, and SME workers are more likely to be exposed to physical and chemical hazards.34 That said, some studies have found that their psycho-social working conditions are better due to the close social relationships associated with SMEs. Psycho-social conditions are, however, highly dependent upon the behaviour of the employer.35

Researchers attribute these poor outcomes to particular attributes of SMEs. The tendency of SMEs to have informal management structures, unstructured approaches to OHS, and a lack of OHS resources and knowledge are all factors that contribute to the heightened risk of injury. SME owners also tend to downplay safety risks, see safety as a relatively minor matter compared to the other challenges of running a business, and view government regulations as bureaucratic interference. They also overestimate their knowledge of OHS and, importantly, tend to push responsibility for safety down to their employees.36

These attributes of SMEs interact with other factors. For example, SMEs are more likely to provide precarious work and employ vulnerable workers such as women, immigrants, and youth. Combining inadequate OHS structures in SMEs with the vulnerable and precarious attributes of SME workers intensifies the health and safety risks to those workers.

When examining how to improve the safety climate in SMEs, attention has tended to focus on tailoring training and education approaches for an SME environment or simplifying safety management systems. Recommendations include building trust and communication, creating action-oriented education, checklists, and integrating safety goals with management goals.37 Few of these proposed methods have been rigorously evaluated to determine their level of effectiveness, and their application has been sporadic.

A broader view of the issue reveals that the current system of injury prevention, regulation, and enforcement was designed for (and by) large enterprises. Rules are detailed and written in technical and legalistic language. Hazard control efforts often require extensive knowledge, training, and investment. OHS inspectors lack the resources required to cover the large number of SME workplaces, while the close social relations in SMEs make it less likely that workers will complain for fear of being identified and ostracized. Watering down regulations for small workplaces, often the preferred solution of SME employers, would only make matters worse, as it would further relax safety requirements. Improving the safety conditions in SMEs requires reforms to the OHS system that address the dynamics specific to SMEs that place workers at risk.

In particular, the reforms need to recognize that the conflicting interests found in all workplaces are more acute in SMEs. The employer, who is likely on the worksite daily, sees the effects of safety measures on productivity and cash flow, making them more likely to resist safety improvements. Employers’ close contact with the workers makes it harder for workers to recognize and give voice to the idea that worker interests (safety) may be in conflict with employer interests (profit or cost containment). More effective training approaches do not erase that conflict.

Who you are affects your safety at work. Different groups of workers have varying safety experiences in the workplace. For example, in 2023, 54% of WCB-reported injuries in Canada happened to men, even though they made up 52% of the workforce (these percentages fluctuate from year to year).38 While it may seem on the surface that race, age, and gender have no impact on health and safety—hazardous workplaces affect every worker—in fact, all have a profound impact on how safe a worker is at work. Age, race, and gender can affect health and safety in two ways. First, they can shape how much risk a worker is exposed to. Second, age, race, and gender affect the kinds of hazard workers face. Box 8.3 offers an example of how COVID-19 had disproportionate gender impacts.

As suggested above, men are more likely to be injured and to be more seriously injured than women. Racialized workers are also more likely to be injured among both men and women. This means that racialized men have the highest injury rates overall.40 Further, immigrants, in particular racialized immigrants, also possess disproportionately high injury rates.41 Even citizenship status can affect safety, as the lack of status of undocumented workers (i.e., workers who do not have a valid visa to work in a jurisdiction) undermines their safety at work and their ability to stand up for their rights.42

A variety of explanations have been offered for these differential safety outcomes. One explanation centres on ascribed characteristics of the workers themselves. Women are claimed to be more risk-averse than men, and thus they seek out less dangerous occupations. Racialized workers are said to be less risk-averse due to lower education levels and lower income levels. They may also be assigned more dangerous tasks because of the belief that they have poorer language skills. A second explanation critiques the assertion that workers “choose” their paths free of social and economic constraints. While some individual choice is always present, workers’ choices are often limited by their circumstances. Economic and social vulnerability, fear of losing employment, and lack of options can lead workers to accept degrees of risk they would not otherwise choose.43

It is very important to remember that the age, racial, and gender relations present in society do not stop at the workplace door. Attitudes, stereotypes, and behaviours about race and gender that pervade societal structures shape what happens at work. They govern what job opportunities are available to different groups of workers and they shape how work is conducted in the workplace. For example, due to stereotypes about masculinity and femininity, men are more likely to work in more physically demanding jobs (e.g., construction), which are linked to higher rates of injury. Women, in contrast, are discouraged from those occupations—both through overt discrimination and through job designs that do not accommodate the greater social reproductive responsibilities of women. While individuals do choose their career paths, we cannot understand those choices in isolation from the social forces that shape them.

In North America, there are clear power imbalances between men and women and between so-called “white” (or sometimes Anglo) workers and racialized workers. These imbalances do not work in isolation but cut across age, race, and gender. They are also reproduced in the workplace and thus will shape the health and safety experience of each worker. Those effects are complex but need to be integrated into our understanding of health and work. At the core, workers from groups that have less power in society will also have less power in the workplace to protect their safety. They will have less control over their choice of job. And they will have fewer options in navigating hazards in the workplace.

A second effect of age, gender, and race is that groups of workers experience different kinds of hazards and risks. In part, this is due to occupational differences (e.g., construction entails different hazards than office work). But even workers doing the same job will experience the workplace from a different perspective, altering their health and safety. This can manifest itself in physical and psycho-social ways. As we saw in Chapter 5, women face additional chemical hazard risks (i.e., embryotoxicity and teratogenicity) due to their child-bearing abilities. Racialized workers are more vulnerable to workplace harassment (or violence) motivated by racism. Importantly, these different exposures can have significant health and safety impacts, as outlined in Box 8.4.

Young workers, defined as those under the age of 25, also face a heightened risk of workplace injuries, particularly when they are just starting new jobs. First, how old do you even have to be to work in Canada? Most jurisdictions have a minimum working age, but there is variation across jurisdictions and sectors. For instance, in Ontario, children can start working in offices, arenas, or restaurant serving areas at 14 years old. By age 15, they can work in restaurant kitchens, laundries, and most factories, and at 16 they become eligible for logging operations or surface mines. At 18, they can work in underground mines and window cleaning operations. In Alberta, with parental consent, a 13-year-old child can start working anywhere in a restaurant, retail, office work, and small goods delivery. Alberta legislation prohibits those aged 15–17 from working in retail or hospitality between 12:01 a.m. and 6:00 a.m., but outside those parameters 15–17 year olds can work at any time with parental consent and adult supervision. Despite these sector and jurisdictional differences, we also know that some children are informally employed or work “cash” jobs that have no or limited government oversight when it comes to OHS.

Many people assume that young workers are injured at work because they overestimate their own abilities and put themselves in danger with reckless behaviour. Such thinking is an extension of the careless worker myth. Instead, the primary reasons that work is more dangerous for children and teens are that their physiological and mental development is incomplete (rendering them more vulnerable to injury), and they have limited experience with work and common workplace hazards.45 According to WorkSafe BC, inadequate training, orientation, and supervision also contribute significantly to young workers’ injuries. Young workers are also exposed to more dangerous jobs and tend to be hesitant to ask questions or query their supervisors.46 Also, young workers can encounter issues such as ill-fitting personal protective equipment (PPE) or workstations not designed for their bodies. Existing studies on workplace hazards often overlook physiological differences unique to younger people. Finally, many young workers end up working for SMEs or in precarious work arrangements, which frequently lack robust OHS protocols.

For these reasons, governments have often taken a more active role in managing the employment of young people, such as limiting at what age they can work, the hours of the day that they can work, and the industries in which they are able to work. Another unique aspect for young workers, though, is the role in which parents are cast, as outlined in Box 8.5.

The health and safety experience of a worker does not change because they happen to be male or female, Hispanic or Scottish, or younger. Rather, their OHS experience differs because the social meaning attributed to a specific gender or ethnicity alters a worker’s relationship to work, employers, co-workers, and customers. That relationship then shapes the worker’s health and safety at work (and in society). That a worker’s health and safety experience is rooted in these social relationships means the experience can be changed. If we alter our notions of masculinity and femininity and break down racial divides, gendered and racialized health and safety outcomes will be diminished. Such large-scale social change goes beyond the role of an OHS practitioner. Yet the differential health and safety experiences of women and racialized workers can be reduced if OHS practitioners become aware of the gender and race in the workplace and take action to reduce the power imbalances that arise from those dynamics.

Karen Maleka is more vulnerable to occupational injury and illness, not because of the job she performs but because of the nature of her employment relationship and, possibly, her gender and race. This chapter examined various hazards that arise out of the dynamics of work itself, rather than the tasks and locations of that work. Shift work, extended work hours, and emotional labour—all aspects of the job fully within the control of the employer—have negative health effects, regardless of what other hazards may be present in the workplace. We also saw that the size of the employer can lead to worse safety outcomes, which may interact with the mounting evidence that being a precarious worker has significant health and safety consequences. Finally, we considered how gender and race also shape workers’ experience of safety at work.

That the nature of work and the employment relationship can affect workers’ health is a new concept for OHS. It requires us to rethink what constitutes a hazard and how hazards cause health consequences, including how they interact with non-work aspects of workers’ lives. It also causes us to contemplate new ways of controlling these new types of hazard. The existing recognition, assessment, and control system is inadequate for the task of determining how to reduce hazards of this kind. What is required is a more explicit recognition that employment is a power relationship, and that power permeates all aspects of workers’ lives. Addressing the kinds of hazards discussed in this chapter requires a broader, more holistic understanding of how workplace health is shaped.

Write a definition for each bold italic word in this chapter.

Select a workplace with which you are familiar and identify a job task performed by a worker that exposes them to a hazard caused by precarious work. For example, you might examine the work of those who drive for the delivery app Skip the Dishes.

Using the HRAC process set out in Chapter 3, perform a hazard assessment for this task. Your completed assessment should include:

• ➤ A description of the workplace and the work being assessed.
• ➤ A description of the hazard, which injury it might cause workers, and the mechanism of the injury.
• ➤ The risk of injury that the hazard poses to workers, including probability, exposure, and consequences.
• ➤ Three ways to control the hazard. For each potential control, identify which kind of control it is on the hierarchy of controls, how it would be implemented, and the expected cost and effectiveness of the control.
• ➤ A recommended control or controls based on your analysis, including a justification for why you recommended this control instead of the other options that you developed.

Briefly discuss with a partner or write 250-word responses to the following questions:

1. Practices such as shift work, extended hours, and mandatory emotional labour have become an essential part of how many occupations operate (e.g., health care, restaurant serving). Can these unhealthy practices be eliminated? If so, then how?
2. What are the root causes of the negative health effects from precarious work? What can OHS professionals do to mitigate their effects?
3. How are the close social relations found in SMEs a double-edged sword for safety?
4. Describe how stereotypes and prevailing attitudes about age, race, and gender affect safety in the workplace.
5. How do the structures of the labour market contribute to the differential health and safety experiences of younger, women, and racialized workers?

Write 250-word responses to the following questions:

1. What are two hazards related to the design of work that you have faced in a workplace? Describe each, including its potential health effects.
2. Which of these hazards posed the highest risk to you and why?
3. Did your employer control these hazards? If so, then how? How could your employer have made the work safer?
4. Do you think that these hazards and the controls that your employer used would have stood up to a worker who refused unsafe work?
5. Which strategies did (or could) you or other workers use to make the work safer?