Occupational Health and Safety Challenges From Employment-Related Geographical Mobility Among Canadian Seafarers on the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway

Abstract

Seafaring involves multiple patterns of mobility. Ships are mobile workplaces that connect and disconnect from land. Many move within and between national boundaries. Maritime labor forces are recruited from multiple locations engaging in varying commutes to and from homeports—international commutes for international labor forces and internal commutes for national labor forces. Mobilities expose seafarers to a range of occupational health and safety hazards, which can be exacerbated by mobility-related constraints on regulatory protections. Based on legal analysis and twenty-five semi-structured interviews with Canadian seafarers, managers, and key informants, this exploratory study examines how employment-related geographical mobility may create occupational health and safety challenges for Canadian seafarers working on the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence Seaway. Findings show that few legal instruments are available to protect seafarers from commuting-related occupational hazards and that occupational health and safety challenges are numerous. Seafarers’ occupational health and safety rights on board are restricted and they are systemically discouraged from raising safety concerns.

Mapping the Maritime Occupational Health and Safety Challenges Faced by Canadian Seafarers

“…Canadian occupational health and safety law has adopted the internal responsibility system, which means although the employer has primary responsibility, all workplace stakeholders, including supervisors and workers, have statutory duties to ensure compliance. In the maritime industry, due to the total institutional nature of the ship as a working environment, many seafarers' occupational health and safety rights are restricted in order to adapt to the nature of the competitive transport market (Shan and Lippel 2019). The current protection of Canadian seafarers is relatively lower compared to land-based workers, and in some cases, there are gaps between Canadian maritime occupational health and safety standards and international ones.…”

“…According to Section 135 (1) of the Canada Labour Code, "for the purposes of addressing health and safety matters that apply to individual work places, and subject to this section, every employer shall, for each work place controlled by the employer at which twenty or more employees are normally employed, establish a workplace health and safety committee and … select and appoint its members." However, an employer is not required to establish such a committee for a workplace that is on board a ship in (Shan and Lippel 2019). This exemption for a workplace health and safety committee makes Canadian maritime workers' right to participate in health and safety management lower compared to land-based workers.…”

“…The third gap is related to the right to refuse dangerous work (Shan and Lippel 2019). As a general rule provided by Section 128(1) of the Canada Labour Code, an employee may refuse to work if he/she has reasonable cause to believe that a condition exists in the workplace that constitutes a danger to the employee or other employee, unless the refusal may put another person's life or safety in danger.…”

“…If the person in charge commands the employee to continue their work, then the employee shall not discontinue the work. The extra conditions for seafarers to exercise their rights may restrict their capability of self-protection and expose them to greater risks (Shan and Lippel 2019).…”

“…Maritime OHS challenges faced by Canadian seafarers are underexamined in the current peerreviewed academic literature, particularly in coastal and inland shipping. To fill this D. Shan (*) Marine & Environmental Law Institute, Schulich Law School, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada Division of Community Health and Humanities, Faculty of Medicine, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St John's, NL, Canada e-mail: desai.shan@dal.ca research gap, this chapter draws on and extends recently published findings from a study of Canadian seafarers working on the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Seaway (Shan and Lippel 2019;Shan and Neis 2019), and from a legal analysis of current international and Canadian occupational health and safety law to explore the health and safety challenges in the context of Canadian short-sea shipping and Arctic shipping. The related studies were conducted between 2017 and 2018.…”