Safety Reporter
Canadian
www.safety-reporter.com
May 2019
Train engineer gets one more
chance after collision
Collision in rail yard was third incident within a year,
but years of service and promotions were mitigating factors
BY JEFFREY R. SMITH
AN ARBITRATOR has reinstated a railway worker who was fired
after a collision in a train yard that was the worker's third significant
incident within one year.
The worker was hired by Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in 2004
to work in its engineering services department. Three years later,
he was promoted to the position of conductor and in 2012 became
a locomotive engineer.
The worker was involved in an incident in May 2016 that led to a
written warning in lieu of a 30-day suspension. A few months later,
Old machinery not a hazard
with proper maintenance: Board
Employer's regular inspections and maintenance of aging equipment
was sufficient to ensure safety of operators, says labour relations board
BY JEFFREY R. SMITH
A NOVA SCOTIA company re-
sponded to and effectively dealt
with an employee's ongoing
complaints about an aging and
deteriorating platform lift in its
plant, the Nova Scotia Labour
Relations Board has ruled.
Mason Moore was an assis-
tant press operator for Louisi-
ana-Pacific Canada, a company
that runs a mill producing wet-
process hardboard for exterior
siding for buildings. Louisiana-
Pacific's plant was located in
East River, N.S., and featured two
hydraulic lifts — the operator lift
and assistant operator lift — that
SEXUALLY HARASSED
WORKER GETS $60,000+
Federal agency's response to
harassment complaint immediate,
but then slowed to a crawl pg. 3
THE ROAD TO REGULATION
Associations across Canada are
seeking self-regulation for the
profession; but how will this impact
OHS professionals themselves? pg. 5
INSIDE
NEWS BRIEF
Lift > pg. 4
Credit:
Shutterstock/ndoeljindoel
Engineer > pg. 2
PM
#40065782
ERRORS WITH HOSPITAL
GLOVES SPREAD BACTERIA
(Reuters Health) — Healthcare
workers caring for infectious pa-
tients sometimes make mistakes
when removing personal protec-
tive garments, resulting in contam-
ination with antibiotic-resistant
bacteria, a small study shows.
Over a six-month period, re-
searchers collected 6,000 sam-
ples around ICUs. They also tested
the healthcare workers' hands,
gloves and gowns before and af-
ter patient interactions. They also
watched the "doffing," or removal
process, of gowns and gloves.
They found that more than a third
of the healthcare workers acquired
a multidrug-resistant organism dur-
ing a patient encounter, including on
hands, clothes, stethoscopes, and
in-hospital mobile phones. About 70
per cent of sites had organisms.
Overall, 39 per cent of workers
made multiple doffing errors and
were more likely to have contami-
nated clothes after a patient inter-
action. In particular, hand contami-
nation was 10 times higher when
gloves were removed before gowns.
Interventions that reinforce the
preferred doffing order could reduce
contamination, said lead study au-
thor Dr. Koh Okamoto of Rush Uni-
versity Medical Center in Chicago.
DEPRESSED, SUICIDAL
POLICE CONSTABLE A SAFETY
CONCERN FOR COLLEAGUES
OPP followed long process to
accommodate constable's
mental health issues pg. 6