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| by Victor Catano |
Both of my grandfathers immigrated to Pennsylvania in the 1890s when they were young boys of nine and 10 years old. They were sent by their families in Italy and Eastern Europe to find a better life in the U.S. They lived with relatives who worked in the anthracite coal mines. The youngsters worked in the coal breakers to earn money to help their families. "Breaker boys" sat astride chutes that carried coal down from a machine that dry cleaned, crushed and sorted the coal. The boys had the task of picking out rock, slate and other refuse from the passing stream of coal. It was very common for the breaker boys to be swept down the chutes and lose their lives. If the boys survived until they were about 14 or so, they were taken on underground to start their careers as miners, where they worked until they retired or died. Very few retired.
I never knew my grandfathers as both died before I was born from what we now call black lung disease, caused by years of breathing air saturated with coal dust. Dying on the job or from a work-related illness or accident was accepted as an economic necessity for the workers to keep their jobs and for the workplace to keep functioning.
The miners and their families wanted their sacrifices to lead to a better future for their children. They saw that future in education. The goal was a well-paying, “safe” job for their descendants. Many children and grandchildren of immigrant families went on to find jobs as teachers and professors and other professionals.
We work in clean, comfortable, safe surroundings. We've come a long way from being breaker boys, but perhaps we should not be so sanguine about the impact or our work environment.
Many of us work in buildings constructed in the 1950s and 1960s. Almost certainly many of these buildings contain asbestos as part of floor tiles, acoustic tiles, thermal systems, insulation and coatings for various surfaces and many other products. If the asbestos remains covered it may not pose a health hazard. The problem is that once asbestos particles or fibres break off and are inhaled they may lead to several diseases including asbestosis, lung cancer and mesothelioma. Sooner or later, the asbestos always becomes friable (crumbling or breaking off).
Recently, two cases of mesothelioma were reported at the University of Manitoba. Mesothelioma is primarily a cancer of the lining of the lung and the only known cause is exposure to asbestos. It can be contracted from very low exposures. The exposure need not be direct. People exposed to asbestos may carry home fibres in their clothes that become loose and are inhaled by family members. Asbestos is a silent killer in that the latency period for the onset of the disease is about 30 years, although it may be as short as 10. There is no known cure.
The best solution is an expensive one — remove the asbestos-laden materials. With many universities practicing “deferred maintenance,” this is not their preferred option. At the same time, deferred maintenance increases the likelihood of university employees breathing a daily dose of asbestos. Removal of the asbestos must take place in a controlled manner. Recently, the Toronto Star reported on the removal of asbestos from the overhanging roof of a downtown apartment building. Although the workers were wearing protective gear they left behind crumbled asbestos products in flower gardens and in the grass.
We like to think of academic jobs as ones where academic staff have a great deal of control. But factors such as concerns over job security (tenure or redundancy), promotion, adequate pay and conflicts with administration, co-workers and students all reduce that control and create stressful situations. Ever increasing class sizes, the shrinking number of academic staff and other resources and the never-ending demands to do more with less breed stress on university campuses.
Recent studies involving academic staff in U.K and Australian universities, which have suffered the same types of financial and staffing constraints as Canadian schools, illustrate these concerns. In the U.K. the most significant source of stress was concern about job security. In Australia, more than half of the academic staff were at risk of psychological illness compared to about one-fifth of the general population. We don't have comparable data for Canada, but the Canadian Association of University Teachers is planning a national survey of academic staff to assess the incidence of stress on Canadian campuses.
Unlike the case with asbestos, there are interventions faculty associations can take to reduce stress for their members. These involve negotiating fairness of procedures related to tenure, promotion, redundancy and performance appraisals, reviewing the fairness and adequacy of pay and benefit systems, and reviewing the balance between teaching and research demands as well as the balance between work and family.
Taking action on occupational health and safety is not only a moral obligation for faculty associations, but also a legal one. In the aftermath of the Westray Mine disaster in Nova Scotia, the federal government passed Bill C-45, under which associations and trade unions, as well as employers, now have an extraordinary obligation of duty of care and can be held liable if they fail to fulfill their duty. Let's not accept dying on the job as an economic necessity. Let's do everything we can to create and sustain a healthy and safe workplace to allow us to see our grandchildren.
(Victor Catano is the chair of psychology at St. Mary’s University and past-president of the Canadian Association of University Teachers) |
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