Canadian Safety Reporter

Failure to heed warnings and discipline gets worker fired Worker fired for not filling out required paperwork; had lengthy disciplinary record BY JEFFREY R. SMITH A NOVA SCOTIA company has won an appeal overturning an order to reinstate a long-time worker it dismissed for repeated violations of company policies and procedures. Bruce Young began working for Michelin North America (Can- ada) in November 1988 as a mechanic/curing technician at the company's tire manufacturing plant in Waterville, N.S. As a curing technician, Young was responsible for press maintenance and sup- porting press operators. His job involved responding to issues as well as taking proactive measures. The dangers of sitting Mounting research says your employees need to move more — or else BY MELISSA CAMPEAU ARE YOU sitting down for this? In most workplaces, most of the time, the answer would be yes, and it turns out that's high-risk behaviour. In the past few years, research papers have been piling up, all with the same message: Sitting for long stretches of time is having a profoundly negative effect on employee health. First, there's back, neck and shoulder discomfort, felt by just about anyone who's hunched over a keyboard for too many hours at a time. Florida-based orthopedic surgeon Dr. Alfred O. Bonati, founder of the Bonati Spine Institute, says, "Sitting for prolonged periods of time can be a major cause of back pain, cause increased stress of the back, neck, arms and legs and can add Safety Reporter Canadian www.safety-reporter.com October 2017 TRUCKING COMPANY SENDS DRIVER PACKING AFTER MULTIPLE SAFETY VIOLATIONS Repeated breaches of safety protocol put company in unsatisfactory rating with regulators, clients pg. 3 TEACHER REFUSES WORK TWICE BECAUSE OF VIOLENT STUDENT pg. 5 Student's safety during his tirade trumps teacher's right to refuse work but second refusal the next school day allowed WORKER WINS APPEAL FOR COMPENSATION FOR DEGENERATIVE BACK CONDITION Workplace back injury and subsequent heavy labour known factors for protruding discs: Tribunal pg. 6 INSIDE NEWS BRIEF Movement > pg. 4 Credit: Shutterstock/Andrey_Popov Worker > pg. 2 PM #40065782 ALCOHOL MAY IMPAIR TIRED DRIVERS MORE (Reuters Health) — People with blood alcohol levels below the le- gal cutoff may still be unsafe driv- ers if they're also sleep deprived, a small experiment suggests. Researchers tested drowsiness and attention in 16 healthy men between 18 and 27 exposed to sleep deprivation or alcohol con- sumption, or both at once. They found that the combination of moderate alcohol consumption — within legal limits for driving — and restricting sleep to five hours a night produced greater drowsiness and more deficits in attention than either sleep restriction or alcohol intake alone. The combined effects lasted two to three hours. "No amount of alcohol intake has been deemed safe when un- der the influence of sleepiness through either poor or inadequate sleep, or being awake when the body (should be) asleep at night," said study co-author Clare An- derson of the Institute of Cogni- tive and Clinical Neuroscience at Monash University in Australia. The study limited its focus on healthy young men, which means the results might be different for older people or those with health is- sues that can impact driving ability.

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