Discipline For Safety: How It Can Get You Into How Water or Keep You Out

Discipline for safety infractions is an important aspect of OH&S due diligence.  You can be convicted under the OHSA for a violation where there has been a failure to discipline.  On the other hand, improper discipline, meted out when a worker or workers are exercising legitimate safety-related rights, can result in legal action, grievances and safety-related reprisal complaints.  This program will provide you with the information you require to grapple with discipline in these two situations.  You can ensure that discipline within your workplace sends a consistent message and assists in establishing due diligence while avoiding improper discipline.

You will learn: 

• How to tell the difference between a protected work refusal and insubordination
• When the exercise of a safety-related right has gone too far
• When failure to pay workers is a reprisal
• How to discipline so that it is not overruled
• Key practical aspects and strategies for making discipline for safety infractions stick
• Strategies for steering clear of reprisal complaints
• How to creatively discipline to promote safety goals

The program will cover:

Discipline As Fundamental To Due Diligence

Practical Aspects and Strategies for Making Safety Discipline Work

• Requirements for proper discipline
• Collecting and reviewing facts
• Cause for discipline
• Penalties for discipline
• Serious safety infractions that warrant departure from progressive discipline
• Creative discipline that promotes safety goals
• Breaking the cycle of inconsistent discipline to ensure that the corporation sends a safety message
• Examples of cases upholding discipline for safety
• Discipline of supervisors 

Discipline in the Context of Safety-Related Rights: When is Discipline a Reprisal? 

• The importance of safety-related rights
• Reprisal complaints to Ontario Labour Relations Board and before Arbitrators
• Onus in reprisal complaints
• Issue at the heart of reprisal complaints             

Exercise of Safety-Related Rights: Key Problematic Areas 

• Distinguishing between situations when rights have been taken too far, and when discipline is a reprisal
• Right to refuse work under the OHSA and reprisals
• Second Stage refusals to work
• Refusal to work after Second Stage resolution -- when discipline may be imposed
• The sensitive worker
• Work refusal unrelated to safety
• The creative worker - stretching the bounds of safety to include violence and harassment
• The "safety zealot"
• Non-payment of wages as reprisal
• Failure to investigate as reprisal 

Steering Clear of Reprisals 

• How to sensitize supervisors to recognize exercise of and risks of safety-related rights
• Key aspects of investigation and record-keeping in potentially problematic situations
• How to tell the difference between a protected work refusal and insubordination
• Examples and precedents for carefully disciplining workers who may claim reprisal