New Bill 168 on Workplace Violence and Harassment Introduced

April 27, 2009 on 3:59 pm | In MOL | Comments Off

Did you know that a new Bill 168 was just introduced in the Ontario Provincial Legislature? Minister of Labour, Peter Fonseca introduced this new piece of legislation as an amendment to the Occupational Health and Safety Act on April 20, 2009. He said “If passed, this legislation would help create a climate in workplaces across the province that says that workplace violence is completely unacceptable”.

MOL statistics show that inspectors made 198 field visits and issued 185 orders related to workplace violence during the period of April 1, 2008 to September 30, 2008.

If this legislation is passed, and we have no reason to think it wouldn’t pass, it would require employers to:

• Develop policies and programs to help prevent violence and harassment in the workplace;
• Take reasonable precautions to protect workers from domestic violence in the workplace; and
• Allow workers to remove themselves from harmful situations if they have reason to believe they are at risk of imminent danger due to workplace violence.

In basic terms this means developing programs to implement your ‘workplace violence policy’ and your ‘workplace harassment policy’ and to review these annually.

Workplace Violence

The program on violence in the workplace will require the employer to conduct an assessment to identify the risks and include measures to control these risks. Also included would be a means of getting help when violence occurs, a process to encourage workers to report incidents and to define the actions to be taken by the employer to handle these reports. The findings of this risk assessment must shared with the JHSC or Health and Safety representative and if none then with the workers.

If the employer is aware of or ought to be aware of circumstances that could cause a worker to be subject to domestic violence at the workplace then the employer must also exercise every precaution reasonable to protect the worker.

The new Bill amends section 43, the Right to Refuse Unsafe Work, by adding workplace violence as one of the circumstances that can trigger this right.

Workplace Harassment

The new amendment requires a very similar program to be implemented for harassment in the workplace detailing how workers can report incidents and what actions the employer will take to deal with these cases. The proposed amendment to section 43 does not apply to workplace harassment.

The Bill also requires that workers are trained in the requirements of both of these new policies and programs.

This Bill will come into effect six months after the day it receives Royal Assent and at this stage it has just completed First Reading of the Parliamentary process on April 20, 2009.

However that is no reason to ‘forget about it’ as Tony Soprano would likely say. We are convinced that the passing of this Bill is imminent!

We will continue to watch the progress of this new Bill and once it has been passed we will be there to assist clients with the development of the appropriate policies and programs.

Keep an eye on our website for new information on this issue and new programs to address it.