Across Canada Safety Professionals and organizations that promote safety awarness often question how they can get the people of our nation interested and invested in safety. Why is it that cigarette smoke can be banned from workplaces and public areas because it affects so many, yet we hardly get a peep out of society when a report is released that we kill 5 people per day and hurt many others in our Canadian workplaces?
We as Safety Professionals utilize all types of techiques to grab the attention of the people in our workplaces. So when an article written in the Hamilton Spectator , the other day, included an article about the City of Hamilton's decision to change their minds about running the WSIB's newest ads in its bus shelters, I was intrigued. It was a prominently-placed article and the Spectator has started an online discussion about the article and the WSIB's ads. Please have a look at the online version of the story here: Graphic ads coming to city bus stops Hamilton had initially turned down controversial WSIB campaign as too gory and click here to view the article as it appeared in the paper (look at those pictures: nothing beats free advertising!)
To join the online discussions, please visit the Spec's Nicole Macintyre's blog site: Offensive or effective?
I encourage each of you to send in your opinion as well as post it to this blog... what do you think - offensive or effective?
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This is an elaborate social marketing campaign orchestrated to manipulate the public into talking about accidents, safety and prevention rather than talking about the failure of workers compensation boards to compensate the victims. WCBs in each Canadian province (and in the US) have come under a lot of scrutiny for their avoidance of paying fair compensation to disabled workers. The fact that people are talking about the ads rather than the dysfunctionality of the WCB system shows that this orchestrated social manipulation campaign is working.
WCBs in Canada and the US represent employers (the only ones paying into the fund). Therefore WCBs will do whatever they can to lower fees for corporations. One way is by denying compensation payments to disabled workers. But this would be socially unacceptable unless the public can also be manipulated into believing that the worker is somehow negligent or at fault for causing the accident. In this social marketing campaign, WCBs are subtly adopting the language of the anti-drunk-driver campaign - " zero tolerance" "negligence", etc. to manipulate public attitudes towards injured workers. They also use the term "accidents" rather than "injuries" to take the focus away from the person and onto the event. These ads, and other orchestrated 'social engineering' techniques lay the foundation for WCBs to justify a reduction in injury compensation payments to disabled workers by manipulating public attitudes toward disabled workers.
Those injured workers in the videos would realistically spend the rest of their lives in poverty fighting the WCB for compensation.
The way to reduce injuries is to make companies accountable for workplace safety violations through realistic fees, not protect unsafe companies from these higher fees by denying disabled workers' claims.
If you think the WSIB's ads are scary, check out the Canadian Injured Workers Society at http://www.ciws.ca for a real eye-opener!
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