The Joint Health and Safety Committee, an important pillar of the Internal Responsibility System in the workplace, has a number of rights and duties outlined in the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
Their role is to raise awareness about health and safety issues in the workplace, recognize and identify workplace risks and develop recommendations for the employer to address these risks. ONA has developed a number of tools to support ONA Health and Safety (H&S) leaders’ participation on their JHSCs.
Three Key ONA Guides
We have three comprehensive guides that our Health and Safety team at ONA has created for member use:
Gathering the Facts and Documents
This fact-finding resource supports both ONA staff and leaders to efficiently gather the relevant facts required when pursuing a H&S issue whether through an OHSA appeal and/or grievance and to clearly identify the issues and remedies sought.
Gathering the Facts document (PDF)
ONA’s Guide to Fatality, Critical Injury, Illness, Accident, and Exposure
This guide outlines the purpose of investigations under the OHSA, employer duties and the powers of the JHSC in these circumstances.
Guide to Fatality, Critical Injury, Illness, Accident, and Exposure
Investigation Form for Fatality, Critical Injury, Illness, Accident, and Exposure
Witness Form for Fatality, Critical Injury, Illness, Accident, and Exposure
Tips for ONA Executives on Joint Health and Safety Committees
This tip sheet provides ONA representatives on JHSCs with an overview of their role and how to mobilize on safety issues.
JHSC Representative Tracking Tool
This excel tool supports ONA JHSC representatives to track important duties their JHSC should be engaging in over the course of the year as well as the obligations employers must satisfy. It also contains a tab with relevant resources/legislation about these obligations. It is offered in both Excel and PDF.
The Occupational Health and Safety Act at a Glance
This tip sheet is an at-a-glance reference tool for important components of OHSA.
Tip Sheet: Needle Safety
This Tip Sheet provides information on the Needle Safety Regulation 474/07, Employers’ duties regarding needle safety and the exceptions when safety engineered needle devices are not required. Also included is a list of steps that ONA representatives can take to ensure for needle safety.
Sample Terms of Reference for a Joint Health and Safety Committee (JHSC)
This new document offers JHSC reps with a resource when creating and/or updating their own terms of reference for their JHSC.
Tips for Escalating Unresolved Health and Safety Issues to the Ministry of Labour, Training and Skills Development (MLTSD)
This tip sheet provides guidance on escalating health and safety issues through the Internal Responsibility System to calling the MLTSD.
Occupational Health and Safety Act: Notice of Injury or Illness – Prescribed Information
This at-a-glance document was created because the H&S team observed that many of our leaders were not getting the notices as per the OSHA. The team wanted to support the leaders to understand Employers’ obligations to report under the Occupational Health and Safety Act and Ontario Regulation 420/21 Notices and Reports under Sections 51 to 53.1 of the Act. The new regulation incorporates the critical injury definition and streamlines reporting requirements into a single regulation that applies to all workplaces covered by OHSA. This at-a-glance document provides a synopsis of the Employers’ notice obligations in a succinct reference chart.
Pandemic Plan Checklist
In the early days of the pandemic, it became quickly apparent that many Employers had not been updating their pandemic plans. The creation and implementation of a pandemic plan is an employer responsibility, and the Joint Health and Safety Committee (JHSC) review does not transfer that liability to the Committee. The JHSC’s role is to be consulted, identify safety hazards, and make recommendations to ameliorate those safety hazards.
ONA’s H&S Team developed this checklist to support our H&S leaders assess their employer’s pandemic plan when their JHSC is being consulted. This is not an exhaustive checklist and should only be used as a topical guide when assessing or reviewing the pandemic plan. Much of the checklist was informed by the challenges our members faced during the pandemic.
Respiratory Protection Plan Component Checklist
The H&S Team also observed that many employers did not have updated respiratory protection plans and so created a respiratory protection plan checklist to support ONA H&S leaders when consulted on the plan at their JHSCs. The checklist contains all the elements that should be in a respiratory protection plan in order to be compliant with the Canadian Standard Association’s (CSA) Standard: The Selection, Use and Care of Respirators and the new CSA standard, Performance of Filtering Respirators.
Ministry of Labour Orders
If you are interested in seeing examples of orders issued by the MLTSD, ONA has posted a number of MLTSD orders issued here: https://www.ona.org/member-services/health-safety/ministry-of-labour-orders/
Violence Aggression and Responsive Behaviour Tools
Violence Aggression and Responsive Behaviour (VARB) Tools, released by the Public Service Health and Safety Association (PSHSA), are designed to help protect those most at risk of violence in healthcare including nurses, community and social service workers, visiting homecare workers and all other health care professionals. As members of PSHSA’s Health Advisory Committee, ONA H&S Specialists participate on a sub-committee that develops the Violence Aggression and Responsive Behaviour (VARB) toolkits:
- Workplace Violence Risk Assessment
- Individual Client Risk Assessment
- Communicating the Risk of Violence; Flagging
- Security Toolkit
- Personal Safety Response System Toolkit
- Emergency Response to Workplace Violence (Code White)
- Workplace Refusal and Workplace Violence Toolkit
- Workplace Violence During Care Transitions
https://workplace-violence.ca
