QUICK FACTS

Dying for a job, is the result of three years of research. Journalists with CBC's Investigative Unit navigated freedom of information laws and negotiated for data from workplace safety insurance boards across Canada. The work allowed us to help track top national trends in the workplace of today.

This is the first time a Canadian media company has investigated workplace safety issues by analyzing Canada’s own data on a national level.

Go back 125 years in Canada's labour history and you'll find a very different country – especially when it comes to workplace safety. If you were the victim of an accident on the job, chances are you'd be left to fend for yourself.

The Canadian government was determined to join the industrial age. What had been primarily a rural economy was turning into a world of coal, steam and hard manual labour. Machines got bigger, louder and more dangerous.

People were getting hurt – and dying – in large numbers on the job. Some industries, the reasoning went, were simply more dangerous than others and you had to expect accidents.

It wasn't until 1914 that Canada had its first "modern" workers' compensation law

The building of the Canadian Pacific Railway did much to open up the country – but at a very high price. More than 15,000 Chinese workers were imported to work on the project. More than 1,000 of them died. They were paid 30 to 50 per cent less than white workers – and often given the more dangerous jobs like working with explosives.

In the mines, the danger of methane gas was well known. Still, there was little regard for safety. Being a safety inspector could even kill you.

"Before the miners would go down, they'd send a couple of…guys down…and they'd have a candle on the end of a long stick," retired coal miner and amateur historian Rennie MacKenzie told CBC News. "They'd go to the place where they thought methane would collect…and they'd put the candle on the end of the stick and light the candle and get back as far as the stick would allow."

If they were lucky, they'd get rid of the methane. But a major concentration would lead to an explosion.

By the mid-1880s, the federal government started to turn its attention to the alarming numbers of deaths and injuries on the job. In 1889, the Royal Commission on the Relations of Labour and Capital condemned the state of working conditions in several industries. The commission made several recommendations aimed at making workplaces safer - but the federal government didn't act on them, claiming that to do so would be infringing on provincial jurisdiction.

If a worker wanted to be compensated for an injury, there was only one option: suing the employer. But that process could take a long time, causing legal fees to escalate to a point that most workers could not afford them. And – in the vast majority of cases – the employer usually won.

Workers already had three strikes against them when they went to court. It had been established in the law of the day that:

• An employer was not responsible for a worker's accident if the staff member contributed to the mishap in any way.
• An employer was not responsible for the accident if a victim's co-worker contributed to it in any way.
• When a person accepted a job, he was expected to understand there were certain risks inherent in the work. The employee was expected to make financial arrangements for his own well-being in the event of an accident.

Injured workers often left destitute.

QUICK FACTS

Annual job-related deaths (worldwide): 1.9 million-2.3 million
Annual deaths caused by work accidents (worldwide): 355,000
Annual deaths attributed to job-released diseases (worldwide): 1.6 million
Annual number of cases of job-related disease (worldwide): 217 million
Percentage of annual GDP (worldwide) lost to accidents and work-related diseases: 4
Workplace deaths in Canada (2004): 928
Annual cost to Canadian economy of stress-related injuries: $16 billion - $33 billion

Sources: International Labour Organization, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health

Germany pioneers workplace safety reforms

Winds of change, though, were beginning to blow. In Germany, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck - in a bid to keep in check socialism's growing popularity – introduced labour reforms, including public pensions and a form of workers' compensation. The system would be funded by employers and employees - and employers would share the risk, so a company wouldn't go bankrupt if it was hit with a rash of claims.

It wasn't until 1914 that Canada had its first "modern" workers' compensation law. Ontario introduced legislation in the wake of a report by William Meredith, the province's chief justice at the time. He had been appointed in 1910 to review workers' compensation legislation in other countries and make recommendations for an Ontario law.

Meredith's report changed the face of labour legislation across the country. He came up with a new model that was wholly Canadian. Under his plan, workers would be eligible for guaranteed no-fault benefits from a system that was wholly funded by employers. In exchange, employers were freed from legal liability.

Other provinces introduced legislation of their own over the next few years, based on Meredith's proposals.

The system has evolved since then but modern workers' compensation programs have retained many of the principles Meredith set out.

• Collective liability. Employers as a whole are responsible for payment of benefits in specified industries.
• No-fault system. The worker is paid whether the accident is his fault, the employer's to blame, or a co-worker is responsible.
• Security of payment. The worker is paid based on loss of earnings, regardless of the financial conditions of the employer.
• An independent administrative body operates the system.
• Exclusive jurisdiction: workers' compensation authorities make the decisions about claims.

While the workers' compensation system provided for injured workers, it didn't put an end to injuries - or deaths - in the workplace.

A new menace

By the 1960s, a new menace began to appear. Silicosis – an incurable lung disease caused by inhaling silica dust in mines and quarries – can take 20 years to develop. So, too, can asbestosis and various cancers caused by exposure to workplace chemicals and radiation.

In the 1970s, these diseases started appearing in workers everywhere: in asbestos miners in Newfoundland and Quebec, smelter workers in B.C. and uranium miners in Elliot Lake, Ontario.

CHANGING SAFETY IN THE WORKPLACE

"This is when health is put into health and safety. It can't be denied any more."
  – Robert Storey, a professor of labour history at McMaster University.

Robert Storey, a professor of labour history at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, says these slow-developing illnesses fundamentally changed thinking about safety in the Canadian workplace.

"The labour movement and people had considered safety in the workplace as the issue so you guarded machinery and put things around elevator shafts…that are necessary, but health was never a concern," Storey told CBC News. "This is when health is put into health and safety. It can't be denied any more."

By the 1980s, more Canadians were working in offices than factories and new job-site health concerns arose. They included "sick-building syndrome", repetitive stress injuries and fears about computer monitors.

Globalization and downsizing gripped the Canadian economy in the 1990s, further transforming health and safety concerns as stable, permanent jobs were rapidly disappearing.

Air Canada's passenger check-in agents are members of the Canadian Auto Workers - service sector employees in a blue-collar union. Cathy Walker, the head of the union's health and safety committee, warns the jobs can be very dangerous.

WORKPLACE STRESS

"You have people with higher blood pressure and risks of heart disease as a result of chronic stress."
  – Cathy Walker, Canadian Auto Workers' health and safety committee.

"It was on the front page of the paper every day with all their downsizing. Is the place going to go belly up? Of course that creates enormous stress in the workplace and real physical effects," Walker said.

"You have people with higher blood pressure and risks of heart disease as a result of chronic stress. People with digestive problems, emotional problems and all this happening at the same time as the customers are getting very frustrated. And who do they take it out on? Our members."

In the workplace of the future, stress and its effect on health will be a huge challenge for the Canadian economy. But many provincial workers' compensation boards seem reluctant to accept that employees who suffer health problems arising from stressful workplaces should receive compensation.

Robert Storey believes people with stress-related health problems should be eligible for compensation, just as victims of machine accidents and exposure to dangerous chemicals were finally accepted after years of struggle led by organized labour. But he predicts it will be a long, tough battle.

"At the beginning of the 20th century, they'd say 95 per cent of all accidents are caused by workers and worker carelessness. It was their responsibility. We're right back there! How can that be?"

The U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health cites stress as among the top 10 leading causes of death in the workplace. It estimates that stress-related injuries cost the Canadian economy between $16 billion and $33 billion a year.

In 2004, the Canadian Centre for the Study of Living Standards investigated safety at workplaces in rich nations around the world. Canada's rate of workplace fatalities - 7 deaths per 100,000 workers - tied for top spot as the worst. Canada's record for reducing workplace fatalities over the previous 20 years stood alone as the worst.