Notes
Conclusion
Research on the world of work has often neglected potential relationships between work, mobility, and safety and health. Conversely and until recently, mobility studies have not focused substantially on work-related mobilities (Roseman, Barber, and Neis 2015; Cresswell, Dorow, and Roseman 2016). With a focus on the Canadian context, members of the On the Move Partnership (OTM) sought to address this gap by identifying the regional and sectoral distribution of diverse forms of extended/complex mobility for, within and as work across the spectrum from daily to international employment-related geographical mobility (ERGM) in the Canadian labour force. Team members drew on statistical research to conclude that extended/complex geographical mobility was a poorly understood but core feature in the work, family, and community lives of a significant share (14–16 percent) of Canada’s labour force. Findings from extensive field and policy research provided insights into its complex dynamics and pointed to its impacts on workers, their families, and their communities and issues with regulatory effectiveness that needed to be addressed. Building on a 2019 special issue of New Solutions on occupational safety and health (OSH) and the mobile labour force in Canada and on broader research (Lippel and Neis 2019), this book has explored the relationship between these different forms of mobility, hazard exposures, and injury risk.
The main body of the book used a combination of case law, policy review, and field research findings to examine potential issues with regulatory effectiveness that constrain diverse groups of mobile workers’ access to OSH protections and compensation. This concluding chapter returns briefly to the larger purpose and objectives of the book, including how it contributes to research. It then provides a brief overview of key insights from each of the chapters. We then return to the conceptual framework of determinants of regulatory effectiveness for the OSH hazards and risk associated with different forms of extended/complex ERGM laid out in chapter 1 that has informed the discussion in the main body of the book to flag some key issues and themes. In the section entitled “Moving Forward,” we identify some broad strategies that could help strengthen OSH regulatory effectiveness for the mobile labour force in the future and identify some key areas for future research.
As noted by Lippel and Walters (2019, 318),
Workers have always engaged in mobility to, from, and often within work. More recently, the promotion of flexibility to meet the demands of the employer, as well as the externalization of production and services, urbanization, and poor urban planning have contributed to both an increase in nonstandard employment and the complexity and diversity of employment-related geographical mobility. . . . Although much research has examined the occupational health and safety (OHS) and social security implications of nonstandard or precarious employment (i.e., temporary, part-time, and triangular employment relationships), and to a lesser extent OHS experiences and challenges of temporary foreign workers, the relationship between E-RGM and nonstandard employment is understudied, as are the implications of E-RGM associated with standard employment for regulatory effectiveness of OHS and social protections such as workers’ compensation. [Original references omitted.]
Thus, while extended/complex work-related mobility is not new, larger sociopolitical issues need to be considered in assessing its relationship with OSH.
All too often, the underlying assumptions in OSH and workers’ compensation research and policy are that workers travel on a daily basis from a single residence to a single fixed place of work within the same jurisdiction. In this context, the dynamics and consequences of ERGM would be largely dictated by decisions and preferences of workers and their families. This assumption reflects the biases toward standard employment relationships that have been strongly critiqued in the literature on precarious employment, including its relationship to health and access to workers’ compensation (Vosko 2006; Benach et al. 2014; Underhill, Lippel, and Quinlan 2011; Koranyi et al. 2018; Lippel, MacEachen, and Senthanar 2020). It also reflects the common regulatory distinction in Canada between “travel time” and “work time,” with OSH and labour standards regulations often encompassing only the latter (Gesualdi-Fecteau, Nakache, and Matte Guilmain 2019).
There is a robust literature linking downsizing, outsourcing, subcontracting, and home-based work to enhanced OSH and other health risks. Quinlan, Bohle, and others, for example, have applied their pressure, disorganization, and regulatory failure model in studies of various forms of precarious employment to identify some of the mechanisms associated with increased physical and psychological injury risk. Consistent with the employment strain approach to OSH developed for the precariously employed (Lewchuk et al. 2003), they go beyond exposures in the immediate work environment to include other factors such as pressure from reduced job security, increased workload intensity, low or irregular pay and payment based on results, poor training and supervision, constraints on workers’ ability to organize, and gaps in coverage and enforcement (see, e.g., Quinlan and Bohle 2009; Mayhew and Quinlan 2006; Quinlan 2023). While important, these approaches do not incorporate explicit attention to ERGM as an OSH determinant that can intersect with these other mechanisms to enhance risk.
Premji (2018, 106) goes beyond workplace and industry dynamics to argue that for immigrant women, precarious employment encompasses “powerlessness, economic insecurity, work for multiple employers, nonstandard and unpredictable schedules, hazardous working conditions, and lack of benefits and protections.” She maps the pathways and mechanisms by which it threatens their health and well-being, including through “stress, material and social deprivation, and exposure to hazards, as well as commuting difficulties and childcare challenges” (106).
In contrast to mainstream economics and work-related policy frameworks that treat ERGM as the product “of rational individuals seeking to maximize their income and employment” (Roseman, Barber, and Neis 2015, 188) and often as independent of work, we and other OTM researchers start with the premise “that inequalities influence not only which social groups engage in different types of ERGM, but also its conditions (for example, who pays), rhythms (that is work schedules) and specific consequences. These inequalities are produced by convergences between gender, class, citizenship, region, ethnicity/racialization, disability/ability, age, and sexuality” that “are played out through employment contracts and negotiations, workplace dynamics, the experience of mobilities, intrahousehold relationships, and membership in broader communities” (Roseman, Barber, and Neis 2015, 178). As shown clearly in the feminist literature on social reproduction and on gender and the journey to work, strong intersections exist among the policies, social relations, and rhythms that shape diverse households; those associated with journeys to, within, and as work; and the types and conditions of work done by diverse groups (for an overview of some of these literatures, see Roseman, Barber, and Neis 2015; Neis et al. 2018; Barber and Neis 2021). Many struggle to achieve even fragile synchronicities between interlinked and increasingly precarious employment, often precarious complex mobilities (Roseman 2020), diverse family situations and needs, and increasingly costly and constrained housing options (Neis et al. 2018). These struggles have OSH consequences, the effects of which are often borne by workers and their families, despite mobility dynamics and decisions being mediated, to varying degrees, by employer and state policies and practices.1
Chapter 1 of this book showed that diverse forms of extended/complex employment-related geographical mobility (the ERGM spectrum) are a pervasive aspect of Canadian society found across multiple and often expanding sectors and influencing the work, family, and community lives of up to 14–16 percent of the labour force. The ERGM spectrum includes “diverse situations that nonetheless share potentially burdensome travel costs, time pressures, tradeoffs around health and quality of life and other challenges” (Cresswell, Dorow, and Roseman 2016, 1788). Based on findings from a review of the OSH literature, chapter 1 explored the hazards and risks associated with these diverse types of work-related geographical mobility. It concludes by outlining key mobility-related determinants of regulatory effectiveness (our focus in the remainder of the book) that mediate (often negatively) access to protection and to compensation among diverse groups of workers engaged in complex/extended ERGM in Canada.
In chapter 2, we provided an overview of the OSH and workers’ compensation regulatory frameworks relevant to the Canadian context, including international, federal, and those in four provinces. That chapter also introduces international agreements on social security relevant to international migrant workers (IMWs) in the Canadian context and the Interjurisdictional Agreement on Workers’ Compensation (IJA) that guides compensation for interjurisdictionally mobile workers. It notes the very limited extent to which Canada has ratified relevant international conventions dealing with workers’ OSH and working conditions. It also identifies some challenges with the IJA and its effectiveness for ensuring access to compensation, particularly for interjurisdictional workers who develop occupational diseases with potential exposures in multiple jurisdictions. In terms of OSH more generally, we have seen how the different regulatory frameworks that coexist, and sometimes overlap, may create gaps in protections for interjurisdictionally mobile workers.
In chapter 3, we examined key hazards and sources of vulnerability associated with ERGM within Canada using the lens of challenges for OSH regulatory effectiveness. We focused on hazards associated with road conditions, the state of the vehicle, and long hours and fatigue. Sources of vulnerability for some mobile workers include remoteness and dispersion, living at work, and socio-occupational issues such as separation from families, communications challenges, and conditions that make it difficult to generate worker OSH awareness and solidarity, to which we return later.
As shown in chapter 4, the complex regulatory system and the compensation process it entails may prove difficult to navigate for mobile workers. In determining benefits, maximum insurable earnings vary across provinces. When the worker lives in a province with low maximum insurable earnings and works in a province where maximum insurable earnings are high, the option to accept compensation in the home province may force the worker to be compensated at a far lower rate than that provided in the province where injury occurred. In determining benefits in the context of the deeming process, many provinces consider the labour market in which the injury occurred in order to determine the residual earning capacity of the worker living outside the jurisdiction. This leads to workers being deemed capable of earning a salary that would be impossible to earn, given their limitations, in their home province or, in the case of IMWs, their home country. Policy and legislation relating to coverage of injuries incurred in work camps and housing provided by employers are uneven, and in some cases, OHS-related regulatory protections are nonexistent.
In chapter 5, we shifted our focus to IMWs. As outlined in chapter 1, IMWs hired by Canadian employers through various temporary migration programs comprise a significant proportion of the Canadian labour force. The chapter draws on the growing body of literature on IMWs and OSH and compensation, much of it focusing on agricultural and caregiving workers but some, including from OTM researchers, looking at other sectors. It lays out both the formal rights of IMWs and the multiple factors that constrain their capacity to exercise those rights as they relate to OSH and compensation protections. It includes a brief discussion of best practices and policy recommendations for responding to the challenges confronting IMWs, including efforts to use the courts to address regulatory gaps and enhance protections. The chapter highlights two key issues identified by legal scholars that regulators need to address to improve IMW working conditions and protections: limiting precarious immigration status (a federal responsibility) and provincial law reform to shift away from purely complaints-based systems. Sending countries could also do more to protect IMWs.
In chapter 6, we provided a case study of the COVID-19 pandemic and Canada’s mobile labour force. That chapter illustrates both the roles played by mobile workers in providing services essential to lockdowns and what issues with management of the pandemic can teach us about OSH challenges linked to infectious diseases within the mobile labour force in contributing to the risk of exposure, illness, and fatalities. The chapter draws on OTM and other research carried out during and since the pandemic to explore how the risk of illness and death and access to compensation were mediated not just by modes and dynamics of ERGM but also by other determinants of regulatory effectiveness to which we return in the next section.
Determinants of Regulatory Effectiveness
Chapter 1 presented a conceptual framework outlining the determinants of OSH regulatory effectiveness within Canada’s mobile labour force. These determinants include intersections between regulatory inconsistencies and gaps, autonomy, space (dispersion/distance/crossing jurisdictional boundaries), time (duration of travel/absence), visibility, and voice, as well as class, gender, race, precarious employment, and precarious immigration status. The achievement of fundamentally important OSH regulatory protections, including workers’ rights to know, to participate, and to refuse, can be challenging even in the context of sustained employment in fixed workplaces; these challenges multiply as we move outside fixed workplaces, across the ERGM spectrum from mobility as work through international migrant work and through different types of employment and household situations. For many, these determinants coalesce to produce multiple layers of vulnerability (Sargeant and Tucker 2009). In this section, we briefly summarize ways these regulatory effectiveness determinants can mediate injury risk and access to compensation within the mobile labour force, including through variable constraints on autonomy, visibility, voice, and other determinants.
From the point of view of autonomy, as argued in chapter 6, for those able to access this, the freedom to work from home, while not without OSH risks, limits exposure to mobility-related hazards, injury risk, and the social and economic burdens associated with much ERGM. For extended complex mobility as, to, and within work, constrained levels of control and thus autonomy related to distance, timing, frequency, and complexity of travel and other factors, such as weather risks and vehicle maintenance and repair, negatively impact OSH. In the case of fly-in/fly-out (FIFO) / drive-in/drive-out (DIDO) workers and IMWs, constraints on autonomy can also extend into their lives at work in camps and other employer-controlled accommodations, with implications for not only physical but also mental health (Fruhen, Gilbert, and Parker 2023). It is important to note, however, that particularly when workers exercise control over travel modes and travel time, ERGM can also be a source of autonomy and contribute to well-being when it allows them to leave unsafe jobs and travel to safer and better-paid ones.
In the case of space as a determinant of OSH and regulatory effectiveness, dispersion can have a significant impact on communication, workers’ voice (the capacity of workers to exercise their rights), and visibility. The effects of dispersion on communication (as well as the risk of violence) can be worse for those working alone (as in home care and live-in caregiving), in small groups, and in remote areas, particularly when workers do not come from or return to the same places on a regular basis. Its constraints on communication are exacerbated in situations where workers are segmented by job, immigration status, language, and culture.
Dispersion and transience across space also influence regulatory effectiveness by mediating the visibility/invisibility of mobile workers. Visibility has relevance on a number of levels. In the policy arena, the primary question relates to workers’ visibility to the state regulator, employers, and unions. For instance, IMWs are visible to federal immigration regulators but may also be visible and indeed subject to social exclusion in the communities in the area where they work (see, e.g., Preibisch 2004). They are also potentially subject to hypersurveillance by employers both at work and away from work when they live on site. Provincial regulatory bodies, however, including the OSH and labour standards inspectorates, have limited information with regard to these workers. As part of the larger OTM study, Lippel and Walters (2019) interviewed members of OSH inspectorates and regulators who were aware of the challenges related to OSH in a mobility context. The situation of IMWs had reached the radar of some of them, but provincial-level regulators had only recently started to require registries for IMWs in some provinces to facilitate the gathering of information that helps ensure compliance with provincial labour law.
Members of other categories of the mobile workforce who do not require state permission to travel within or between provincial regions or from one province to the next in order to work may well be invisible to policymakers. While less invisible than undocumented workers and IMWs, FIFO/DIDO workers living in camps, as in northern British Columbia and the Alberta oil sands, are often referred to as “shadow populations” (Foster and Taylor 2013; Foster and Luciano 2020; Haan, Walsh, and Neis 2014; Aylward 2006) and are likely to be invisible to other actors, like unions, who have more difficulty accessing these workers, for instance, than they would workers working in the same workplace and living in adjacent communities. In terms of mobility within regions, as in large cities like Toronto with high housing costs, precariously employed gig workers are spatially dispersed from each other and only remotely engage with the companies controlling the apps that guide their work. This, coupled with their treatment as solo, self-employed workers, poses challenges for regulation and for unionization.
In those provinces and sectors where employers manage OSH through risk assessment mechanisms and OSH management systems, some of the challenges identified in the literature with regard to contingent (temporary/part-time/casual) workers may also apply to those whose mobility requires they move to isolated, remote, distant, and transient work sites, whether or not they are precariously employed (Quinlan et al. 2000). The employer responsible for OSH may, for example, be absent from the actual work site and not see the worker driving or being transported in an unsafe vehicle. Employer subcontractors with little knowledge of the hazards in the work site to which they are providing labour and with little knowledge of the housing conditions provided to the workers may well be providing an unaccompanied workforce.
There is also the issue of constrained access to emergency services in remote areas and the problem of invisibility of occupational injuries to regulators, which mobility and remoteness can exacerbate. We have previously discussed the report of the BC Forest Safety Ombudsman (2017) recommending improvement in the emergency services provided in remote locations. Rather than focusing exclusively on workers’ needs for such a service, the report looks to other jurisdictions and defines the needs of the remote communities, mainstreaming the workers’ needs with those of the local inhabitants.
In 2017, Alberta addressed the issue of invisibility of occupational injury by requiring that the OSH regulator be informed of work injuries that require admission to a hospital.2 However, when other legislation was adopted in 2020, the legislator replaced this obligation with the obligation to report only if “there is reason to believe the worker has been or will be admitted to a hospital beyond treatment in an emergency room or urgent care facility.”3 This certainly waters down the strength of the previous obligation. In Québec, there is no obligation on the employer to report work injuries under the workers’ compensation legislation, a situation that stands out in relation to the legislation in all other Canadian jurisdictions. The only reporting requirement in Québec falls under the Act Respecting Occupational Health and Safety, and the Alberta inclusion of hospitalization as a reason for reporting under that act would strengthen the current legislation, which only applies to catastrophic injury (death, amputation, etc.) or important material damages.4
The invisibility of Indigenous workers and communities must be taken into consideration in future research. Some authors have noted tension between Indigenous and non-Indigenous residents in communities when the distribution of costs and benefits of natural gas exploitation development is uneven (Buse et al. 2019). Researchers Neil and Neis (2020b, 116) emphasize that Indigenous workers are neglected in the literature on ERGM; thus, they may face specific challenges that are unknown (see also O’Faircheallaigh 1995). For example, Indigenous workers encountered challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic when many of their communities went into lockdown in order to prevent outbreaks in the community: “This effectively prevented mobile Indigenous construction and other workers from going to work if they wanted to return to their communities” (Haan et al. 2020, 295).
Mobility may also impede workers’ voice, which is crucial to them exercising their rights: “Employee voice is an expression used in literature exploring workers’ reasons and practise for speaking up at work” (King et al. 2019, 7). A few studies have reported on workers’ voice in the context of health and safety rights. As noted elsewhere in the book, workers may fear speaking out because of risk of reprisal or the belief that it will not make a difference. Hierarchy and power dynamics have been identified as having a negative effect on safety voice (Morrow, Gustavson, and Jones 2016; cited in King et al. 2019). According to Wayne Lewchuk (2013, 809), respondents in precarious employment relationships were six to seven times more likely to report being concerned about the effect of voice on future employment than workers in more secure employment relationships. As noted in chapter 5, constraints on voice are particularly great among IMWs who are precariously employed and who experience precarious immigration status linked to their mobility across international borders, placing them at risk of blacklisting and deportation. These workers also often confront linguistic and other barriers.
Barriers to unionization and to communication and engagement within unions (Tucker and Jowett 2014) can also intersect with ERGM to constrain workers’ voice. Trade unions play a crucial role in enforcing health and safety regulations, within Canada and internationally, and in helping workers access workers’ compensation. They often determine the effectiveness of health and safety representatives’ actions (Walters 1996), and their presence is associated with a better outcome in regard to the role of joint health and safety arrangements (Johnstone, Quinlan, and Walters 2005). In diverse contexts, the exigencies of additional hours of travel required of workers, coupled with, for FIFO/DIDO workers, long shifts and extended rotations followed by widespread dispersal, are not conducive to worker participation in activities taking place after work. These barriers may constrain worker consultation around work-related hazards and the mobilization of joint health and safety committees, even in those situations where mobility is not associated with geographical remoteness, as in the case of extended/complex daily commutes in large urban centres. Layers of vulnerability around both engagement and consultation are likely particularly great among groups such as precariously employed immigrant workers who confront language and other barriers, work multiple jobs or transition regularly between jobs, commute for long periods of time, and work night and split shifts (see, e.g., Premji 2017).
FIFO/DIDO workers, IMWs, and workers for whom mobility is an inherent part of their work will not only have difficulties participating in union activities; they may also find it extremely difficult to organize using traditional organizing strategies. This is not only because, as noted earlier, they may be invisible to union organizers who can’t get access to the remote work sites or can’t see them when they are constantly on the road but also because they are less likely to feel part of a collective and may fear repercussions. An exception to this might apply in the case of mobile workers living in proximity to each other in a work camp, but access to these workers by union organizers remains a problem. An OTM policy report on the issues of mobility and collective bargaining documents these challenges (Tucker and Jowett 2014), and they are further illustrated in a case study by Eric Tucker (2020). Tucker and Jowett (2014, 2) identified different challenges that ERGM poses for the ability of workers to establish and sustain effective collective bargaining relationships because of “the mismatch between their reality and the design and operation of Canada’s collective bargaining laws.” The authors consider their report to be a “first-look at the intersection of ERGM and collective bargaining law,” given the scarcity of case law and commentary on the subject (3). They discuss the structural features of the Canadian collective bargaining regime and how the models don’t enable unionization and effective protection for mobile workers. It is important to keep these different challenges in mind when thinking about OSH and regulatory effectiveness.
Susan Cake (2016) studied worker mobility in Alberta as a union issue. She found that through collective agreements, mobile workers tended to be treated as a “distinct category of worker”: Local workers were given a preference for employment, but also most collective bargaining agreements included a process for layoffs, where generally, the first people laid off are “probationary union members and those from outside of Alberta, otherwise known as travel card members or permit holders” (337). She discussed how camp accommodations have become union issues and noted an agreement that outlines “behaviours (e.g., violence, bullying), substances (e.g., illegal drugs) and items (e.g., firearms, ammunition) prohibited on camp property, in addition to the rules governing the social reproduction of the labour force while workers are living in the camps (e.g., food allocations)” (337). The camps have separate rules but also “separate grievance procedures provided in the camp rules that mimic union collective agreements” (337).
Many seafarers in Canada are represented by trade unions; however, pursuant to the work of Walters and Bailey (2013), Shan and Lippel (2019) found that individual safety representatives on vessels are more likely to be marginalized and isolated. They thus recommend that seafarers should have access to a workplace health and safety committee on board (391).
In Lippel and Walter’s (2019) investigation for OTM, they could not find systematic strategies mobilized by unions to address OSH challenges and to ensure protections for any specific category of the mobile workforce. Walters et al. (2018) had previously found, however, that some mining unions have mobilized technologies “as tools to get workers involved in health and safety issues when they are the most available—while being transported by the employer to and from the closest municipality,” adding that “health and safety information is more welcome when received in a text message while on a bus going to a mine site than it would be if sent during the very long work shifts, or during time while workers are at home with their families” (Lippel and Walters 2019, 338).
The ambiguity of what is work related and what is not, which is associated with extended/complex and often multimodal ERGM, also weighs in the balance when, for example, a worker wants to speak up about hazardous commuting conditions or living conditions. Threats to income for workers who refuse to undertake a hazardous journey or are concerned about the safety of their accommodations and may, as a result, lose a full rotation and possibly be disciplined are strong incentives for workers to take chances and remain silent when confronted with hazards. Refusing dangerous work—a worker’s right and related to workers’ voice—can also be a challenge for mobile workers employed in mobile workplaces, such as truck drivers, or in multiple workplaces, such as home care workers. These workers often work alone, with little or no guidance from their unions or supervisors. They may also work in remote and in some cases mobile or transient workplaces (as with tree planting, logging, and fishing) that are less accessible to labour inspectors who have the final say on the right to refuse (Lippel and Walters 2019).
Inspectors struggle to reach remote, dispersed, and mobile workplaces, hindering their ability to respond to worker complaints or hazardous work refusals in person. Additionally, safety representatives face difficulty accessing workers constantly on the move. Access to remote workplaces, particularly smaller ones lacking safety representatives, is further hindered by communication challenges like poor cell phone coverage and limited satellite communications. Notably, the effective Swedish system for regional health and safety representatives who represent the interests of workers in small firms, initially designed for regional health and safety representatives to safeguard construction and forestry workers, highlights the need for protection in remote areas where workers engage in high-risk activities without adequate OSH support (Frick and Walters 1998).
Although health and safety representatives are mandatory in most provinces, roving health and safety representatives who could play a role in multiple workplaces within the same firm or union do not exist in Canada. This is a model worth exploring to meet the OSH needs in small workplaces and also in remote workplaces, particularly where workers, such as tree planters and some other forestry workers, are transient and scattered over a wide territory.
It is well recognized that gendered divisions of labour, including within the same job descriptions, contribute to different occupational exposures and thus different injury patterns for women and men (Messing 1998; Lippel and Premji 2019). ERGM is also gendered, with men more likely to engage in long-distance FIFO/DIDO types of work, although work camp employees and live-in caregivers who support these mobile workers are more likely to be women and, in some cases, IMWs. In urban areas, women’s daily journeys to work tend to be shorter and more complex than men’s due in part to their responsibilities for childcare and household work. In FIFO/DIDO types of work, a macho masculinist work culture has been linked to gendered harassment and related threats to physical and mental health (Dorow, Hilario, and O’Leary 2023). Gender is thus a determinant of both patterns of ERGM and work-related exposures and injury/illness risk. Finally, class and occupational segregation by racial and immigration status intersect with gender and with modes, timing, cost, and other aspects of mobility to influence risk. This is illustrated by Premji’s (2018) work on precariously employed, recent immigrant women and men who travel by public transit often during off-peak hours (with more prolonged trips and enhanced risk of violence).
Across the spectrum, ERGM intersects with other determinants to influence not only injury risk but also access to health care, compensation, and return to work. As outlined in chapters 1 and 6, those engaged in mobility as work, including truckers, seafarers, fishermen, and others, may have constrained access to treatment when they are injured or become ill on the road, at sea, and following plane crashes, and such delays can be potentially life threatening (Neis et al. 2025). In some contexts, as noted in chapter 1, coworkers on the same truck or vessel, and those on others in the vicinity, will have to take on the role of first responders during the period of time between the incident/illness and access to health care, and this can threaten their own psychological health. As discussed in chapter 4 and shown in recent research on interprovincial migrant workers in Alberta and British Columbia (Cherry et al. 2019, 491; Macpherson, Neis, and McLeod 2022) and research among IMWs, long-distance labour migration and rotational work are often accompanied by pressures to work through injury and while ill rather than filing compensation claims. Finally, in terms of psychosocial risks, Lippel and others have highlighted ways in which issues around access to workers’ compensation for the precariously employed can contribute to psychological injury among workers. These issues can be amplified, along with potential psychosocial risks, for some interprovincial mobile workers, seafarers, IMWs, and others who face particular challenges when injured on work sites a long way from their families (Lippel 1999b, 2007).
Moving Forward
In this section, we bring together some of the key issues with regulatory effectiveness identified elsewhere, highlight the related policy issues, and identify some potential ways forward. We work from the premise that workers often want to maintain as much control as possible over their ERGM, in part because of the challenges that come with synchronizing their work, mobility, and home lives. However, work location and organization, shift and rotation scheduling, mobility options, accommodation options, and, to varying degrees, the effort required to synchronize work, complex mobility, and family dynamics can significantly jeopardize their physical and psychological safety. This is perhaps particularly the case when responsibility for mobility is offloaded onto workers and their families and when mobility-related costs, including injuries, are not an intrinsic part of risk management by employers, workers, and the relevant regulatory agencies.
Mobility as Work
As noted in chapter 1, while mobility as work in, for example, land, sea, and air transportation, shipping, and fishing was not the main focus of this book, research has shown that these are high-risk sectors associated with multiple and diverse hazards. These are also sectors within which mobility, with the exception of commuting, is considered to be part of employment and thus subject to OSH regulations. In these sectors, mobility-related injuries and fatalities are generally compensable (although not always, as with gig workers who are treated as contractual and self-employed). Despite fewer challenges to regulatory effectiveness around work relatedness, some challenges persist. These challenges relate to overlaps between occupational and public safety and related jurisdictional divisions and potential overlaps and ambiguities between transportation safety and OSH. Like workers in other segments of the mobile labour force, these workers also share—to varying degrees depending on gender, class, citizenship, and employment precarity—dispersal and transience in terms of space, long hours, and, for some, multiday rotations with associated risks of fatigue, as well as constraints on both voice and visibility from the point of view of inspectors. In some cases, they are mobile across jurisdictional boundaries, such as those engaged in FIFO/DIDO and IMWs with related potential ambiguities and complications around both regulations and access to compensation. As outlined in chapter 1, some attempts have been made in some sectors, such as trucking, to mitigate the risk of fatigue-related injuries, but when combined with other constraints and realities in the lives of some truckers, these initiatives can create new challenges and pressures to break rules. There is growing attention to fatigue as a hazard in some of these sectors, but as indicated in a recent study on fatigue in Canadian seafaring completed for Transport Canada, more work needs to be done (Shan, Ochs, and Yadav 2023).
Addressing the “Dangerous Commute”
Actual commuting to work, be it a complex/extended daily commute, FIFO/DIDO work, or IMW mobility, is frequently multimodal, variable, and often an invisible occupational hazard—for instance, because of weather, traffic, or, as with IMWs, the inadequacy of vehicles/vessels or drivers provided by the employer. Existing regulatory frameworks largely treat the dangerous commute as the product of worker decisions on where to live, but as argued in chapter 1, this oversimplifies complex situations, and research findings show linkages between employer decisions and management strategies, work design and other factors, and the nature and consequences of OSH hazards and compensation outcomes associated with ERGM, even for daily commuters.
To get a sense of how many people die while commuting to and from work, Bittle, Chen, and Hébert (2018) examined both Statistics Canada data on commuting patterns and Transport Canada data on motor vehicle fatalities. They found that from 2010 to 2014, an average of 199 fatalities occurred during the morning commute and an average of 350 fatalities occurred at the end of the workday for an overall average of 549 annual fatal collisions during regular commuting hours (171). They highlight that it’s impossible to know if these persons were in fact commuting or if they were driving for work (and in the course of employment, for example, and in the official data of WCBs) but also note that these data exclude shift workers who do not have standard working hours. They conclude by estimating that during their study period, approximately 466 annual collision fatalities had “the potential to be work related” (172) and thus that many workers
lose their lives simply trying to get to and from work, and although these deaths occur outside of legally defined working hours (an ideologically based decision, not a fact), they nevertheless only occur because workers are on the roads at a time when many people are sick, tired, and/or distracted and roads are crowded and, in many instances, dangerous. (170)
As we have previously seen, the question of whether various situations confronted during a commute are or are not considered to “arise out of and/or in the course of employment”—the requirement for compensability—is extremely complex and can’t be answered without research or consultation. Each case has to be evaluated in light of a broad range of issues, and the approach may differ from province to province. General duty provisions, which are defined in broad terms as employer obligations to protect workers’ health and safety, may apply in some cases. In the absence of provisions specifically addressing the commute in law, policy, or case law, however, questions remain about the effectiveness of the current regulatory framework for protecting worker health within diverse segments of the mobile labour force.
In thinking about policy and regulation, since commuting accidents are generally not considered to be work related, there is an inherent difficulty associated with tracking work-related automobile injuries in many jurisdictions. In the US, it has been proposed that driver safety policies should be established and enforced to help workers recognize the potential hazard (Hamel 2020). Keeping in mind variable constraints on the capacity of workers to “choose” their mode and conditions around ERGM, distinctions may also need to be made between the long commute that is required by the organization of the job and the long commute that is the personal choice of the worker. While the regulatory requirements would theoretically differ depending on whether the employer controlled the need for the long commute, the OSH consequences may be similar. A very long drive is a very long drive, regardless of the reasons behind it. It is worth asking, however, if it is always appropriate for regulators and employers to consider the parameters of the process by which workers get to work, as is done in many European countries? Are there tensions between OSH challenges and privacy issues in those cases where the worker’s personal choice is to commute rather than to move their family, for example?
Guidance material suggests ways in which workers or organizations can contribute to the prevention of transit accidents (e.g., the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety [2024] provides guidance to workers on avoiding accidents with wildlife; see also Workplace Safety North 2023). The European Transport Safety Council has documented the business case for the prevention of roadway accidents and has produced guidelines showing ways in which employers can contribute to their prevention, whether they involve their employees as commuters or as drivers at work (Bidasca and Townsend 2014). In addition, guidance material destined to businesses requiring international travel of their employees describes “a travel risk management system” and provides an overview of health hazards associated with international travel missions and prevention strategies for employers (Prevent 2015). These could serve to structure discussions on ways to move forward.
At a minimum, there is a need to clarify employers’ responsibilities with regard to commuting conditions, a step that will have repercussions both in terms of better management of OSH and in terms of coverage for workers’ compensation purposes.5 It is also important to address the shifting status of the “commute” to and from work in order to ensure that rights and obligations of workers and employers are appropriately regulated so as to ensure the regulatory objectives of OSH legislation and related statutes. For instance, policies governing transit to and from remote communities, affecting isolated commuters, those in chartered/corporate collective transportation, or some combination of these, should be in place. These policies could include oversight requirements as to the safety of the means of transportation as well as requirements to ensure workers’ ability to communicate in a timely manner with the employer regarding the conditions of transit if they expose the worker to hazards that could justify employer intervention or the exercise of the right to refuse.
Refusing to commute under certain circumstances, such as bad weather, can have disproportionate economic consequences for some workers and may even lead to job loss. Even in those sectors that are carefully regulated with regard to duty time, such as the aviation sector, the time required to travel to the plane (David-Cooper 2019) or, in the case of seafaring, to the ship (Shan and Neis 2020) is not considered within the regulatory frameworks. As Desai Shan’s work has shown, contractual best practices can be found in some collective agreements or individual contracts; however, the more precarious workers within these sectors are less likely to benefit from these provisions (Shan and Lippel 2019; Shan and Neis 2020). Similarly, Archibald and Tucker’s (2017) study of collective agreements in the home care sector found that clauses allowing workers to refuse to undertake commutes made dangerous because of bad weather were rare; when the issue was addressed, it was more common to find clauses granting the employer the power to determine whether the weather justified cancellation of a visit.
Based on findings outlined in this book, regulators and workplace parties should reflect on the following questions:
- 1. Should the general duty clause in OSH legislation be interpreted to include transport to and from the workplace in some situations?
- 2. In what circumstances should inspectors be alerted to dangerous travelling conditions?
- 3. Should those responsible for transporting workers, be they seasonal agricultural workers or others, be regulated through licensing and vehicle inspection?
As previously mentioned, in some circumstances, workplace parties agree implicitly that a transport worker is justified to refuse to take to the road in bad conditions (Gendron 2018), but this seems to be the exception that proves the rule. Gesualdi-Fecteau et al. (2022, 157), studying the legal framework of working hours, emphasize how, generally, a worker cannot invoke their own health condition, like fatigue, to refuse work if the work conditions are not abnormal.
Collective agreements could provide incentives to workers to not undertake commutes in dangerous conditions by ensuring that employers pay the cost of time and travel home, as is done for some management and other employees. By stipulating that travel time is work time, they can also reduce the ambiguity surrounding the status of the commute between clients or work sites for those working in multiple sites. Collective agreements that provide for accommodation to sleep in the community where the airport or other employer-supported transport system picks up the workers would reduce the temptation to travel overnight and then begin a very long shift in safety-sensitive positions.
In Canada, the Transportation Safety Board provides a wealth of information gleaned from investigations of serious incidents involving various means of transportation, in many cases involving those segments of the mobile workforce for whom mobility is work. A systematic examination of these reports of incidents involving either passengers being transported to a work site or mobile workers involved in incidents related to aviation, seafaring, or rail transport could provide useful information on prevention for policymakers and workplace parties. Currently, those reports are not easily used as research material because of limitations in the search functions, and those responsible for the publication of those reports may want to consider improving accessibility for researchers and policymakers.
Addressing Fatigue-Related Risks
Regulators and workplace parties need to address fatigue-related risks associated with extended/complex ERGM across the spectrum. As outlined in chapter 1, there are some fatigue-related regulations in place for some kinds of mobility as work, particularly in trucking and in the airline sector. However, when travel involves crossing several time zones or travelling many hours, should the regulation of working hours, be it in legislation or collective agreements, provide for a paid rest period before the start of a shift? In addition, in what, if any, circumstances should employers be obliged to provide work-related transportation, such as when getting to work requires travel beyond a specific distance?
Long, daily commutes contribute to workers’ desire for long shifts: If it takes a very long time to get to work, it is preferable to stay at work for a longer period so as to attend work less frequently during the course of the week. Researchers have also documented the desire to work longer hours among FIFO/DIDO workers, those working in remote workplaces (Gesualdi-Fecteau and Nakache 2017), and, to a certain extent, some IMWs, as well as truckers, seafarers, train and aircraft personnel, taxi drivers, and others. Finally, studies have shown that accreditation systems for pilots (David-Cooper 2019, 128–29) and seafarers (Shan and Neis 2020, 174), for example, are based on the number of hours of flying or sailing time. This means that the younger the worker, the greater the need to work long hours; therefore, there is a risk that young workers with the least experience are most likely to want the extra hours in these safety-sensitive jobs.
A mandatory fatigue management system could be implemented to address issues of fatigue in the same way that mandatory risk assessment for violence prevention is applied to workplaces. However, ensuring that organizations address the determinants of fatigue requires regulatory changes federally, as noted by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada (TSB), and, in some cases, provincially. In some provinces, such as Québec, ensuring that work organization does not undermine workers’ health and safety is an intrinsic part of the employer’s general duty clause.
While employers cannot control how well a worker sleeps, they can adjust the workplace to mitigate fatigue, particularly through shift scheduling. As Foster and Barnetson (2016, 125) emphasize, “Employers can ensure shifts are not too long or too close together as well as avoiding dramatic shifts,” and they “can also ensure that workplace temperatures are not too high, work is interesting and engaging without being too strenuous, and adequate opportunities for resting, eating, and sleeping (if necessary) are provided.”
In the US, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health recently hosted a national forum on working hours, sleep, and fatigue designed to review current evidence about related risk and to identify effective measures for countering this risk. This resulted in a special issue of the American Journal of Industrial Medicine that included six sector-specific literature reviews, including those for key sectors discussed in this book, and a discussion of the value of identifying common risk factors across the sectors and sharing evidence related to risk mitigation. This is a valuable resource for future work (see Wong and Swanson 2022).
WorkSafeBC, British Columbia’s compensation and inspection agency, provides documentation about how fatigue can be prevented in the workplace—in particular, what can be done about the schedule of workers and identifying irregular or extended hours, night shifts, shift rotation patterns, back-to-back shifts, and overtime (WorkSafeBC 2023). Regulators and workplace parties should reflect on these issues and on the questions related to them. For example, should there be better coordination between regulatory measures in labour standards legislation that address long shifts or maximum hours on the one hand and the evaluation of working hours for the purpose of preventing hazardous levels of fatigue on the other? In addition, how can workplaces and regulators ensure that travel time and travel conditions preceding the beginning of a shift are considered when evaluating fitness for work? Would a mandatory fatigue management program applicable to all workplaces with safety-sensitive jobs, large and small, provide the necessary incentives for prevention of fatigue, including while travelling within and after work? And how can regulators provide oversight to ensure appropriate implementation of such a program?
When designing regulatory and policy provisions and when negotiating collective agreements, workplace parties and regulators should identify and consider removing systemic incentives for the least experienced workers to accept the longest working hours in some sectors. More generally, there is also a need to ensure protection from lost income, reprisals, and constraints on the right to refuse dangerous work linked to ERGM. Thus, workers should have the right to refuse to drive in the context of dangerous weather and other conditions without fear of reprisal, including job loss. This is important to protect not only the workers’ health but also the health of those who share the vehicle, highway, seaway, or airway. Regulators and workplace parties could also consider provisions in legislation or contractual arrangements and collective agreements governing consequences of arriving late or leaving early when difficult conditions associated with ERGM affect the worker’s ability to arrive on time or require that they depart before the end of the regular shift in order to get home safely.
Addressing the Challenges FIFO/DIDO Workers Face
For FIFO/DIDO workers, issues with fatigue and the pressure to engage in dangerous commutes may be exacerbated by rotations that involve both extended travel and long periods at work, followed by relatively short periods off, with the latter further reduced by travel times. Given mounting evidence from Australia and Canada that such rotations can also affect the mental health and family relationships of these workers, as summarized in chapter 1 (see, e.g., Dorow, Hilario, and O’Leary 2023; Fruhen, Gilbert, and Parker 2023; Martin 2020; Neis and Neil 2020), there is a need for both regulatory and policy action. Australian government studies have made a series of recommendations, some of which are relevant in Canada (Parker et al. 2018; Asare, Thomas, et al. 2021). The Australian reports recommend the development of codes of practice for improving OSH outcomes for FIFO workers, and these may provide appropriate tools for Canadian regulators and workplaces. Dorow et al.’s (2021) recent study of FIFO/DIDO and mental health among male and female oil sands workers also contains recommendations.
From a regulatory perspective, it is important to ensure that the protection of workers’ psychological health falls clearly within the purview of OSH legislation. This is now true in most Canadian jurisdictions because of explicit language in the respective OSH acts.6
No regulation currently exists to ensure that workers have access to adequate telecommunication systems when they are working and living in remote locations, be they farm workers, seafarers, or FIFO/DIDO workers. While contractual provisions may address these issues, regulatory provisions could require provision of adequate telecommunication equipment to all workers living and working in remote sites. Requiring access to a telephone in the mid-twentieth century would have seemed at the time to have been a reasonable requirement. It seems reasonable to require that, in 2025, employers provide free access to cell coverage and the internet for workers far from their families for prolonged periods of time.
Other OSH challenges pertaining to remote workplaces that need to be addressed include situations that involve working alone, including while mobile, or with others some distance from headquarters, in situations where inspector access is reduced and where the chances of the employer being forewarned of the arrival of inspectors are much higher. One of the issues here is the need to ensure adequate communication between workers, management, and families. In cases of physical distance between the mobile worker and a spatially distant employer,7 discussion is needed around what communication strategies should be required to allow workers to exercise their rights to be informed of the hazards of their work and to refuse dangerous work. Access to regular, dependable means of communication is also critical to workers’ mental and psychosocial health by allowing them to maintain regular contact with family and friends. Communications options should be free and need to protect workers’ right to privacy.
Addressing the Complexities of Interjurisdictional Mobility
It would be helpful to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the Interjurisdictional Agreement on Workers’ Compensation (IJA) to improve protections and ensure workers do not fall through the cracks because they are interjurisdictionally mobile. Aside from the issue of occupational disease, specific provisions in each province/territory determine which jurisdiction has authority on a given case, but these provisions are asymmetrical rather than mirroring the provisions in neighbouring provinces. This leads to the possibility that no province could have jurisdiction over an injury to some individuals caused by work. Nothing indicates that this is the intention of the regulators, so there is room for improvement with regard to this highly technical question that leads to individual cases of injustice and unnecessary litigation.
Similarly, policy and practice in the application of coverage for injuries occurring during various categories of travel are uneven between jurisdictions. While each province is sovereign, we suggest that the disparities between policies and practices in different provinces be brought to the attention of those responsible for policy so that they have the opportunity to revisit their policies in light of practices in other provinces.
Mobility may decrease the visibility of both duty holders (employers) and workers not only for unions (see Tucker and Jowett 2014) but also for regulators and regulatory agencies, be they mandated to collect taxes, fund workers’ compensation, or ensure compliance with OSH requirements. Traditional surveillance methods for occupational health problems among migrant workers have been shown to be ineffective in the US. This has led to the development of alternative strategies focused on working with local health centres not only to facilitate access to health care but also to track health hazards to which the workers—in this case, agricultural workers—are exposed (Earle-Richardson et al. 2003). This should be done more consistently in Canada.
In the case of inspectors, in a context of cutbacks, new mechanisms for ensuring compliance for OSH have emerged in some priority sectors, such as mines, that are more traditionally targeted by regulators and OSH actors. Other activities, such as work on land-based rigs in oil and gas, work on ice roads, and home care work, have received little attention. Hill et al.’s (2019) report on the status of domestic workers in Alberta indicates, for instance, that “Alberta’s OHS system has relatively few inspectors (approximately 140 for 1.8 [million] workers). Additional inspections for domestic work would require either the redeployment of existing inspectors or additional financial resources to hire new inspectors” (415). In addition, policymakers are reported to be uncomfortable subjecting caregivers’ employers to additional regulation, as evidenced by the 2017 decision to exclude caregivers from the ambit of the Occupational Health and Safety Code. This suggests a lack of political will that makes additional enforcement unlikely.
Improving Regulatory Effectiveness for Living at Work
As we have seen, those in the ERGM spectrum who do not return home for days, weeks, or, as in the case of IMWs, months or even years have needs relating to the quality of the housing provided and the amenities available to them. The literature provides illustrations of tools developed in response to the needs of workers in camps in Canada, models that may be useful in other places (see Angel 2014; see also Fionda 2017). Protections for improving the quality of housing and food provided by employers, communications tools, and provisions ensuring security for women should be put in place to ensure that living conditions are included in the mandate of those responsible for workers’ health (both OSH regulators and consulates responsible for IMWs). Currently, the shifting boundaries of the status of the housing occupied by mobile workers, even housing owned by the employer, mean that regulators do not get involved in housing issues in some provinces, which leads to worker exposure to hazards that remain unaddressed.
Better Protection for International Migrant Workers
Several recommended best practices pertain to the language barriers that IMWs are likely to face as well as to their lack of training in OSH. Some have recommended that mandatory contractual provisions proposed by Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC) could include provisions to address this gap (Allen 2017, 124–25), while others have recommended that hazards be posted in the workplace, using plain language that workers can understand (British Columbia Coroners Service 2012). Best practices in this regard include those in BC, where WorkSafeBC provides easily accessible OSH information in a large number of languages. While there are still problems with the actual dissemination of that information, the situation there is preferable to that in other provinces, such as Québec, where very little information is available in languages other than French. Some believe that requiring a medical exam each year or season could help prevent OSH issues (Amar et al. 2009, 56–57).
Other best practice recommendations target the return-to-work (RTW) process specifically. Premji et al. (2021) point to the importance of systematically conducting formal language assessments prior to establishing RTW plans when there are suspected or known language barriers. Language should be considered in RTW plans, including in the determination of accommodations, modified work, suitable work, employability, rehabilitation, training, and job search. Language skills in themselves should, according to the authors, be considered to be as important as job skills for RTW. Moreover, mechanisms for complaints with regard to modified work or accommodations should be established to minimize the need for workers to negotiate directly with their employer; the need for proactive follow-ups by compensation staff should also be foreseen (Premji et al. 2021).
Many have pointed to the need for proper training of officials of the OSH inspectorate and WCBs and of health professionals so that these actors can better understand the realities confronting IMWs as well as the challenges they face (Premji et al. 2021; Cole et al. 2019). Research that has focused on migrant caregivers has insisted on the use of a multifaceted approach to improving their OSH. Alongside policy changes, some novel responses could involve establishing a program for subsidized housing so that caregivers can truly access the live-out option in the regulations and providing financial support to local, ethnospecific settlement and faith organizations that provide IMWs with social support as well as information about their rights and how to access health and social care (Vahabi and Wong 2017, 498).
Overall, it is likely that multiple initiatives are needed to better protect the occupational health of IMWs and to ensure their access to compensation. The Alberta Workers’ Health Centre (2017) published a list of recommendations that includes the creation of an Office of the Worker Advocate to support and advocate for workers navigating OSH, employment standards, and workers’ compensation protections. They also recommended that dedicated resources be provided to develop worker-focused legal information and that community organizations be funded to develop and support collective and community-based workers’ networks.
Studies by legal scholars on access to decent working conditions conclude that two key issues must be addressed by regulators: limiting precarious immigration status, which requires reform of the federal immigration legislation, and provincial labour law reform so that systems are no longer purely complaints based (see, e.g., Allen 2017, 124–25; Faraday 2012, 120). Thus, to remedy the shortcomings of closed permits, many authors recommend that the Canadian government turn to open work permits or sectoral permits (Weiler 2018; Tungohan et al. 2015; Nakache 2013, 30; Wright, Groutsis, and van den Broek 2017; Fudge and MacPhail 2009). In fact, according to some, a sectoral work permit would make it possible to fill a labour shortage in a specific industry or sector while reducing power imbalances and facilitating a change in employer (Nakache 2013; Wright, Groutsis, and van den Broek 2017). The Canadian government has attempted to address the shortcomings of closed permits by introducing an “open work permit for vulnerable workers.”8 However, research has shown that fear of employer retaliation makes IMWs reluctant to apply for this type of permit and that it does not eliminate the structural vulnerability of migrant workers (Depatie-Pelletier, Deegan, and Berze 2022, 36).
For years, Québec’s Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de la jeunesse has been monitoring the extent to which international migrant workers’ equality rights under the Québec charter have been violated, particularly with regard to the prohibition of discrimination on the basis of “ethnic or national origin, race, social condition, language, and, in the case of live-in caregivers, sex” (Carpentier and Fiset 2011, 25). In 2011, they published a report concluding that migrant workers were victims of systemic discrimination, and they made a series of suggestions to improve the autonomy of IMWs, including a recommendation that provincially based sectoral work permits be granted. The report also calls for permanent immigration programs intended for IMWs and the prohibition of the requirement of living in employer-provided housing.9
Bolstering the OSH Inspectorate
In theory, process-based approaches in combination with so-called smart regulatory strategies have a greater chance of addressing the consequences of structural and organizational changes at work and in labour markets, including those involving either new or existing challenges resulting from ERGM, than do more traditional prescriptive approaches. They specify goals to be achieved in terms of outcomes and place an onus on duty holders to put systems in place to achieve desired outcomes. They are thus by definition more flexible and likely to be more responsive to unconventional risk scenarios such as those experienced in relation to ERGM (whether they are new or long standing). Their weaknesses are, however, essentially twofold. Firstly, the regulatory measures that adopt such approaches do not specify detailed standards and are therefore not helpful to duty holders who either don’t know or are unwilling to adopt best practices. Secondly, the shift to the adoption of process-based regulatory reforms has occurred within a wider political and economic climate where the state has withdrawn from its role in regulation and where there is emphasis on support for economic competitiveness in global markets. Taken together, these have the potential to lower standards of protection offered to workers where costs are a consideration while simultaneously reducing both the will and capacity of state inspectorates for their enforcement (Walters et al. 2011). Thus, many of the strategies necessary to achieve better reach for effective surveillance can at the same time be seen as “softer” forms of such surveillance. Where regulatory agency resources are limited, such options may become the only means of discharging surveillance responsibilities rather than effective additional tools for ensuring better coverage.
In their study on workers’ voice in Ontario, King et al. (2019) report how workers do not speak to inspectors about OSH hazards mostly because they are unaware of their rights or are fearful of speaking up because they are afraid of losing their jobs. They report how inspectors know that some workers do not want to approach them and that workers working illegally may avoid them (59–60).
Challenges posed by such hard-to-reach scenarios as those associated with ERGM increase demands on the reach and relevance of conventional inspection strategies. Responses of labour inspectorates to these challenges might include the following: (1) moving toward a greater role for strategic coordination, stimulation, and promotional activities designed to enhance reach and “buy-in” from duty holders in achieving improved management of hazards associated with ERGM and (2) more focus on advice and guidance and the use of cascading messages to better connect with the “hard-to-reach” duty holders such as those in small firms, microfirms, and foreign firms and work subcontractors, many of which are involved with one form or another of mobility and are hard to reach because of this. Inspection responses and enforcement activities could also, where appropriate, extend inspection/surveillance of supply chains upstream, including by monitoring temporary agency firms, multiemployer work sites, and bogus self-employment situations closer (especially in sectors such as construction and ride-hail and delivery services in the gig economy) and implementing targeted inspections in which ERGM hazards are given special attention.
Changes could also be made in the ways in which labour inspection authorities provide support for their inspectors to help them deal with the consequences of ERGM across the spectrum, from mobility as work to international migrant work. For example, authorities could address its consequences in basic and ongoing training provision for labour inspectors and could develop international and interjurisdictional collaborations related to inspecting such new and emergent risks as those related to cross-border problems of migrating firms and workers. They could develop partnerships with agencies representing mobile workers, including IMWs and gig workers, and support research and better data collection on hazards, injuries, and illnesses associated with ERGM through cooperation with other agencies.
Within Canada, it appears that when the same inspectorate is responsible for both OSH and workers’ compensation, as is the case in British Columbia and Québec, they are in a better position to gather and share information, and the same is true when OSH and labour standards are governed under one roof, as is the case in Ontario. Since January 2016, Québec’s Commission des normes, de l’équité, de la santé et de la sécurité du travail (CNESST) has jurisdiction over all three. Since 2018, Québec’s Act Respecting Labour Standards requires licensing of temporary worker agencies and recruitment agencies for temporary foreign workers (TFWs).10 The legislation also states that employers who hire a TFW must provide information about the date of arrival and departure of the worker if the departure date does not coincide with the end of the contract, as well as the reasons for the departure.11 Employers are also prohibited from entrusting custody of personal documents and from charging TFWs for costs related to their recruitment, other than fees authorized under a Canadian government program.12
In 2021, Ontario adopted the Working for Workers Act,13 which, as of January 2024, requires “recruiters and temporary help agencies to have a licence to operate in the province to help protect vulnerable employees from being exploited” (Labour, Training and Skills Development 2021). The decision to enact stronger regulations follows inspections in Ontario that showed over $4 million was owed to employees in sectors where placement agencies are prevalent (CBC News 2023).14 When applying, temporary agencies will have to provide a security in the amount of $25,000.15
In 2017, ESDC declared it had increased its inspection practices, with the aim of inspecting 25 percent of all employers hiring IMWs. A spokeswoman for the program is quoted as saying, “The cornerstone of the compliance regime of the TFW Program is employer inspections which serve to protect TFWs from abuse and exploitation, and to protect the integrity of the Canadian labour market by encouraging employers to comply with Program conditions” (Thom 2017). In Québec, the minister of labour also announced in 2023 that he would like to better protect the growing number of IMWs, who have been made permanent, and his mandate will also be expanded to reach workers in a wider range of economic sectors and regions in the province. The minister announced that ten new prevention officers would be added to the team (made up of a dozen prevention officers). In addition, 291 health and safety inspectors and 141 labour standards inspectors are to be added to the field (Radio-Canada 2023b). When labour standards, OSH, and workers’ compensation are part of the same agency, it may be easier to coordinate inspections and interventions to address the complex challenges associated with mobile labour forces.
Final Thoughts
With its overarching focus on OSH regulatory effectiveness, this book has shown that a broad range of mobile workers and the complex ways work, mobility, and life intersect are often invisible to researchers and to the research informing policy, as well as to regulators and, to some extent, to unions. It has also shown that steps need to be taken to put an end to the invisibility of ERGM as a determinant of OSH and to promote inclusion of mobile workers across the spectrum by identifying and responding to their specific needs in the design of regulations, policies, and programs. This would include incorporating work-related mobility in the definition of employers’ general duties, in collective agreements, and in the implementation of health and safety management practices. Researchers, regulators, employers, and unions need to pay attention to mobility in all its complexity, including in the design of OSH and workers’ compensation policy and health and safety systems. The inclusion of ERGM—in all its dimensions and informed by its intersection with multiple determinants—as an integral part of process regulation and risk assessment processes would induce workplaces and regulators to determine the sectors and jobs in which mobility is prevalent. In those jobs and sectors, systematic assessment of the hazards associated with mobility and the search for solutions to reduce those hazards should be mandatory. In addition, compensation policies need to be designed so that they more effectively anticipate and mitigate the challenges mobility can create for access to compensation, treatment, and support and for RTW, particularly in a federal state like Canada, with its growing reliance on IMWs.
One overarching issue that needs to be considered is the protection of workers from the imposition of involuntary mobility: To what extent can management prerogative with regard to work organization justify the imposition of mobility? We have not developed this issue in this book, taking as given that the workforce studied was the mobile workforce. However, workers’ objections to imposed mobility are becoming more and more visible. For example, on March 2, 2018, part-time health care workers in Québec denounced the employer’s requirement that they agree to be on call within a two-hundred-kilometre radius of their home, explaining that this new measure would increase the likelihood of exhaustion and burnout (Duchaine 2018).
There is also a need for much more gender-informed research on ERGM as an OSH determinant across the spectrum, as much of the research cited here is gender blind. Similarly, research is needed on Indigenous ERGM and occupational health and on more diverse types of IMWs across more sectors and contexts. In addition, the book has not engaged with the growing literature on undocumented workers and OSH in Canada and elsewhere (see, e.g., Foster and Luciano 2020) or with the literature highlighting previously unrecognized internal (within Canada) mobility among IMWs and ways this might influence OSH and access to compensation (see, e.g., Perry 2021; Knott and Marschke 2021). Finally, the organization of the book, which leads inevitably to the separate discussion of issues related to work-related mobility and OSH for differently mobile groups precludes an examination of ways overarching corporate mobility regimes (Cresswell, Dorow, and Roseman 2016; see also Foster and Barnetson 2015, 2017) produce clusters of these groups in particular workplaces or contexts with potential implications for differences in hazard exposures and regulatory effectiveness. This kind of mobility regime approach, used by Sara Dorow in her Alberta oil sands research, has the potential to encourage analyses of drivers and consequences of the evolution of labour forces, working and mobility conditions, and regulatory effectiveness over time. There is much to be done, and we can only hope we have done enough to inspire future work.