Milton blog

Robert Sager of Milton was rushed through training for a $9 an hour temporary job and, on his second shift, crushed by a runaway forklift.

Workplace safety rules allow companies to keep spotless ratings even if poorly trained temps are injured or killed

Ontario companies that use an army of temporary workers are hiding a dirty secret behind their glowing safety records.

That’s because the province’s worker insurance program protects the company job sites where accidents occur, yet gives big financial penalties to the temporary agency that sent the worker to the job.

A loophole in the rules of the province’s Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) system is to blame.

As a result, companies that use a lot of temporary workers have no incentive to clean up their act because their “experience rating” – a financial calculation based on a company’s health and safety record – is not affected when a temp is hurt. Depending on company size, the firm can escape hundreds-of-thousands- or millions-of-dollars in annual payments.

The situation is “fundamentally wrong,” said WSIB chair Steve Mahoney, after the Toronto Star presented the results of its investigation. “To allow a company that is using temp agencies to simply skip the responsibility for safety is not in the interest of the workers and that is our main focus.”

Mahoney will ask the provincial labour ministry to fix the problem, which would require a change to legislation. The impact, if a change is made, will be significant. One in five workers in Ontario is a temp, employed by one of the 1,300 or more agencies in the province that use them.

Cases uncovered by the Star as part of an ongoing investigation into worker safety reveal factories, retail shipping firms, and other companies that did not train a temporary worker properly or take safety precautions, leading to severe injuries, crushed bodies, broken bones and, sometimes, death.

“I’ve seen companies get great safety ratings when we know that temps are injured there all the time,” said Suzanne McInerney, a vice-president at Staffing Edge, one of the largest temporary work firms in Ontario. Her firm, and others, want the province to pass legislation that would make injuries the shared responsibility with the places people work – not just the company that places them in the job.

Robert Sager agrees.

A runaway forklift crushed the 53-year-old Milton man in July 2005. He had been sent by temporary agency Kelly Services to an Exel Canada distribution plant for the $9 an hour job. Exel rushed him through training and he was put to work immediately at a Brantford warehouse.

“I felt pressured because at that point in time I really needed a job,” Sager said.

A few minutes into his second shift, the forklift he was driving accelerated backwards, threw him out and pinned him against a steel rack.

“I remember thinking `Oh God, I’m dead.’ I tried to call out for help and I could hardly get it out of my voice. I remember hearing someone say `Sager, are you all right?’ and then I blacked out.”

They discovered the extent of the damage at the hospital: a crushed pelvis, a torn urethra, ripped vertebrae, ruptured bowel, crushed kidneys, a head injury and testicles swollen tight with blood. He had three heart attacks immediately after the accident.

Two-and-a-half years later, the damage remains. He can barely walk, has memory loss, and needs help with everything from bathing to using the toilet. A nurse comes daily to change a dressing in his chest.

Under current rules, Kelly Services would face a hike in its annual workplace insurance payments, not Exel. However, neither firm would provide details of their case to the Star.

The Ministry of Labour investigated and laid charges; Exel pleaded guilty to failing to ensure that Sager was sufficiently experienced and was fined $80,000 under the Occupational Health and Safety Act. Kelly Services is contesting safety act charges that it did not properly prepare Sager for the job.

The fine for Exel was a one-time payout that does not affect the company’s WSIB safety rating. A serious injury like Sager’s, with ensuing medical costs over many years, would significantly raise a company’s annual payments.

To better understand the WSIB, here is how the system works.

Ontario’s workers’ compensation system began in 1915, when workers gave up the right to sue companies in return for long-term compensation in a no-fault insurance program paid for by employers.

In Ontario, most companies pay into a worker insurance system to cover medical, salary and retraining costs for injured workers.

Each company pays the WSIB an annual insurance premium depending on the type of work. A mining company pays more than a white-collar office because miners are more often injured, and the injuries are more serious.

How safe a company is relative to other similar companies helps them save money. A good “experience rating” means they pay less; a bad rating they pay more. A company that pays an annual WSIB premium of $5 million could either save $1 million or pay an additional $1 million, depending on its record.

Worker advocates say that the policy behind the loophole needs to be changed.

“It is outrageous that this situation even exists,” said Wayne Samuelson, president of the Ontario Federation of Labour.

“If a company wants to avoid getting on the radar of the labour ministry, they can just offload their accidents onto the temp agency … that way their record gets attached to the agency.”

WSIB data released to the Star does not differentiate temp companies from firms that hire salaried employees, so it is impossible to tell how many temp workers report injuries each year. However, by looking at 200 known temporary firms in the data, we spotted a 32 per cent increase in injuries, from 5,345 in 2001 to 7,075 in 2005, the most recent information available. Industry experts say that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

What pains those who run staffing agencies is that the WSIB has no way of identifying companies where temp workers are frequently injured.

“It doesn’t even go on their record,” said Linda Ford, president of Temporary Measures. “Even if we put their name down when we file our paperwork, the WSIB does not have a way of recording it, so there is nothing to red flag the companies for their safety record.”

McInerney, of Staffing Edge, said some companies give temp workers the most strenuous jobs, without proper training.

“Companies push off those jobs to the staffing companies because they know there will be accidents and therefore their safety rate is kept clean and ours is not,” she said.

As a result, temp agencies typically pay double the premiums compared to companies that do the same work, McInerney said.

In 2006, the WSIB launched what it called its “boldest social marketing” campaign ever in a bid to one day reduce workplace fatalities and injuries to zero.

Staffing Edge president Lou Duggan saw an opening and wrote to WSIB chair Mahoney last year, asking for him to fix the temporary worker issue.

“We feel that lost time injuries should not only reflect the staffing firm’s frequency of injuries but should as well target the client site locations where the injuries occurred,” Duggan wrote.

“Instilling a greater accountability for (lost time injuries) on the client site is the key. This change would engage the management at workplaces and support your goal for a safer work environment.”

Duggan received a reply from the WSIB saying the issue would be studied, but nothing changed.

Yesterday, board chair Mahoney said in an interview that he would meet with the provincial labour ministry in two weeks and propose a change to legislation that would close the loophole.

– by Moira Welsh of the Toronto Star

The Other Sayid: His past life as a soldier and torturer still haunts him. In another devastating flash-forward, Sayid, who has become an assassin working for Ben, kills a woman he loves; on the Island, Kate goes back to Sawyer.

Lost is not kind to lovers, especially on Valentine’s Day. For the second straight year, our beloved crypto-drama has aired an episode on February 14. And for the second straight year, Cupid was kicked in the nuts. Last year, in the trippy time-travel tale ”Flashes Before Your Eyes,” Desmond toggled back to his breakup with Penelope, just to break up with her all over again. Last night, in ”The Economist,” Flash-Forward Sayid fell for a woman he shouldn’t have, and ultimately broke her heart — with two bullets to the chest. (To be fair, the femme fatale shot him first.) These things happen when you play secret-agent assassin for Germany’s most morally ambiguous veterinarian — Benjamin Linus. Yes, you read that right. In his off-Island future as a member of the Oceanic 6, the former Iraqi torturer smokes European fat cats for über-Other Ben, who in his off-Island future has a croaky, low phone voice (All the better to delay the last-scene reveal of my true identity, my dear!), runs a pet hospital in Berlin, and manages a global conspiracy on the side. The Man With 1000 Passports has a whole list of bad people he wants dead, ”people [who] don’t deserve our sympathies,” as he told Sayid. Note to Ben’s customers: Pay that doggy-grooming bill on time!

The episode’s title, ”The Economist,” was a reference to the job allegedly held by Sayid’s current target, a powerful mystery man whose name went conspicuously unmentioned. It also suggested a key for reading the story. This was an episode about ”bosses” and ‘’senior management” and the minions who toil for them; about trade negotiations and merger proposals; about recession fears and hostile-takeover threats. It was a snapshot look at the information economy that shapes everything on Lost, one where secrets and inside information are valuable currencies, with hostages and guns running close behind. It was also an episode about the internal corruption that occurs when romantic idealists are forced to become cutthroat businessmen. (Literally.)

Who’s The Boss? Or where’s the boss?
That’s what Locke was asking as he led his tribe of freighter fraidy cats to where Jacob’s cabin should have been, only to discover that his house of sprits had disappeared from its circle of ash/salt/kitty litter. Abandoned by his Island god, Locke looked, yes, lost, and banged-up Ben was quick to jump all over that: ”He’s looking for someone to tell him what to do next,” the devilish Other told Locke’s disgruntled flock. With Hurley showing signs of instigating a shareholder rebellion over the Charlotte-hostage issue, CEO Locke squelched the dissidence and shored up his office by playing the fear card, brow-beating Hurley with some tough talk about the cost of compromise. Did Flash-Forward Hurley’s regret over choosing Locke over Jack begin here?

The Negotiating Committee
Meanwhile, in Happy Helicopter Valley, the Jack Pack negotiated the terms of rescue with freighter fellas Daniel Faraday (twitchy physicist), Frank Lapidus (bushy-faced pilot), and Miles Straum (angry young ghost whisperer), who, of course, may not be there to rescue them at all. The shifty trio made it clear they weren’t flying anywhere without C.S. Lewis (Charlotte edition), so Sayid stepped up and said he’d hike to the Dharma barracks and negotiate her release. Jack wanted to come, but given how the good doctor tried to shoot Locke in the face the last time they squared off, Sayid thought he should stay behind, lest the deal-making devolve into one of those protracted bargaining battles marked by phlegmatic rhetoric, heavy-handed tactics, and unreasonable demands over digital downloads.

Control Freak Jack got a proxy at the table, however, by sending Kate with Sayid and Miles. He felt her presence would give Sayid more leverage, as Locke wouldn’t dare attempt any underhanded knife-in-back stuff, not with moony Sawyer there to play bodyguard. Yeah, you could say it was a contrived way to set up the possibility of more sex scenes between the old Hydra humpers. Still, it felt like classic Jack emotional dunderheadedness. You could tell Kate wasn’t thrilled with Jack treating her like a pawn on a chessboard, and my hunch is that what we really saw in the moment was the beginning of her dawning realization that as much as she may dig Jack’s cheese, he’s got a lot more getting over himself to do before they can have a flash-forward future together, much less swap valentines and spit.

Acquisitions…
Arriving at the Dharma barracks — or, more recently, New Otherton — Sayid, Miles, and Kate found Hurley tied up in the closet, allegedly left behind by Locke. It was a trap, one that exploited Sayid’s soft spot for his friends and loved ones, a fatal flaw that makes both him and Hurley the most easily manipulated of the castaways. I thought Sayid should have seen through this ruse, and his failure to do so continued a dubious tradition of super-soldier Sayid not living up to his Republican Guard pedigree. (No wonder we beat those guys in three days.) Maybe I’m selling him short. Sayid was probably content to let Locke play and win his little mousetrap games, just as long as he sealed the deal he had come to make. I think he knew he would: His package was much too appealing. He offered Locke a hostage swap — Miles for Charlotte — plus himself. Sayid had come around to Locke’s belief that the freighter people are nothing but bad news. His master plan, he told Locke, was to infiltrate the freighter and gather intel — corporate espionage. Locke was sold.

…and Mergers
Meanwhile, as upper management haggled in the billiard room, Kate and Sawyer caucused in Ben’s bedroom. The shaggy rogue explained that he has no intention of leaving the Island because there was nothing but a prison sentence waiting for him back in the real world, and since Kate was looking at the same fate, hey, why not stay with him? Kate was dubious: ”How long, Sawyer? How long do you think we can play house?” Saywer was bold: ”Why don’t we find out?” I was impressed with the former con man’s risky emotional frankness. I was also intrigued by the fact that this scene took place in Ben’s bedroom, with all those tribal masks all over the place. Hmmmm…honesty and masks — hey, that sounds like a possible allusion to another work by Charlotte’s namesake, C.S. Lewis: Till We Have Faces is a retelling of the mythical Cupid and Psyche love story, told from the point of view of Psyche’s jealous sister. In the book, Lewis argues that you can’t commune with the divine or experience supernatural possibilities until you drop your corrupt false self — your mask — and get your moral character in order. (Yo, Locke: Now you know why you keep losing your mystical connection to the Island. You’re just not good enough.) Anyhoo, Sawyer’s you-complete-me pitch may have swayed Kate, because she didn’t return to Happy Helicopter Valley with Sayid and Charlotte. The ”I blew it” look that passed across Jack’s face when Sayid told him the news was pretty priceless; it reminded me of House of Meetings, Martin Amis’ novel about brothers in love with the same woman, who go from being stuck in a Soviet gulag to struggling to return to ordinary life — very Oceanic 6. But I’m probably digressing.

Petty Cash Drawer
I’m betting that the scene you’ll be talking about the most on the message boards — besides the Ben flash-forward reveal — is the nifty moment when Sayid discovered Ben’s secret stash of passports, foreign currency, and suits. Clearly, Ben does a lot of traveling for work. (Remember, the Others do have that off-Island company, Mittelos Biosciences; presumably, Ben is the boss.) Long ago, I wondered if the Others had an airstrip on the Island, so I wouldn’t be surprised to discover Ben has a corporate jet, too — plus a hangar full of old Oceanic airplane parts. You know, leftovers from the false evidence that the Others planted in the Sunda Trench. (Just a theory.) Now, if you’re going to go all crazy on me and claim that the multiple passports and husky-voiced Flash-Forward Ben are evidence that there multiple Bens in the world thanks to alternate universe/wormhole theory, I’m in! (FYI: The name on the Ben passport Sayid examined looked to be Dean Moriarty — a character from Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. Moriarty is also the name of Sherlock Holmes’ nemesis. Just so you know.)

Deficit Spending
Another scene I bet you’ll be going nutty over was the one where Daniel Faraday did his rocket experiment, which concluded with his admittedly ”beyond weird” discovery of an apparent 31-minute time differential between freighter reality and Island reality, where time seems to pass more slowly. What does this mean? I don’t know — but I immediately went to barnesandnoble.com and purchased Stephen Hawking’s Brief History of Time so you guys can borrow it, read it, and then summarize it for me while I eat grapes and watch Big Brother. Seriously, I’m crunching theories, but it takes time for me to do quantum physics. It takes me mere seconds, however, to do some cheap biblical analysis! Did you see the numbers on Daniel’s clocks? One said 3:16, while the other said 2:45. As it happens, Daniel 2:45 is the culmination of the story in which exiled Daniel earned an exalted place in King Nebuchadnezzar’s court by interpreting a dream concerning the future of Babylon and how ”the fourth kingdom will be a divided kingdom.” Hey — that sounds like the fourth season of Lost! Meanwhile, Daniel 3:16 is part of the famous story of how Daniel’s friends Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrown in the fiery furnace but were saved by God. How might that apply to Lost? Well, thematically, the story deals with three men who refused to abandon their spiritual beliefs and bow down before a false idol — a story that stands in stark contrast to Sayid’s flash-forward arc.

The Sell-Out
In the opening scenes of ”The Economist,” we were given two quick, quiet moments that re-established two very important things about Sayid. First, we saw him praying. Sayid, if you recall, is a spiritual man, a Muslim. Second, we saw him tenderly shut dead Naomi’s eyes and examine her bracelet, inscribed with ”N., I’ll be with you always, R.C.” Sayid, recall, is a romantic (see: Nadia; Shannon), and I bet that his desire that Naomi be sent home for a proper burial appealed to his religious convictions and sentimentality. Yet in his flash-forward future, Sayid ain’t exactly living according to those ideals. In fact, like James Bond, his license-to-kill existence makes a mockery of the sanctity of life and love. Sayid remains sufficiently decent in the future that when it was finally time to move against the Economist, he came clean with Elsa, as he had genuinely fallen for her. But then she pulled a Casino Royale on him: It turned out she was an undercover lover, too, seducing him in hopes of smoking out Ben’s identity. Elsa was Sayid’s mirror twin, and to make sure we got it, Sayid smashed a mirror reflection of his Lady From Shanghai doppelgänger before popping some caps into her.

After Sayid stumbled into Ben’s safe house/vet office for some first aid, his boss mocked him for his weakness. Then Ben dropped this intriguing tidbit: ”Need I remind you what happened the last time you thought with your heart instead of your gun.” Sayid’s response was even more mysterious: ”You used that girl to recruit me into killing for you.” But Ben the master manipulator hit him where it hurts the most: the bottom line. ”Do you want to protect your friends or not?” Sayid looked like a man over a barrel. What did he say about Ben earlier in the episode? ”The day I start trusting him is the day I sell my soul.”

Welcome to Hell, Sayid. Now get that game face on — there’s work to be done.

That’s what I got. Do you have a theory about the identity of the Economist? Who is the ”R.C.” on Naomi’s bracelet? (Regina the freighter chick?) Who are these names on Ben’s assassination list?

What do you think, Milton?

– By Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly

Many municipalities require residents to buy tags if they want to throw out extra garbage bags

Toronto’s user-pay system for garbage is a departure from the way waste is collected in surrounding municipalities.

Unlike Toronto, many 905 municipalities continue to use a system limiting the number of bags you may leave at the curb, with tags required if you want to throw out more.

Some municipalities take a gentle approach.

In Markham, for example, which boasts a 70 per cent diversion rate, residents have a three-bag limit per household, with biweekly collection. Those who want to throw out more -garbage need to get a tag from city hall – but it’s free.

The point of making residents go to the effort of getting the tag is to “make people think” about what they are putting out, said town spokesperson Catherine Harrison.

“Failure to comply is not an issue in Markham,” Harrison said. “We have not charged anyone.”

Other municipalities such as Mississauga, Brampton, Caledon (maximum two bags per week), Vaughan (three bags every two weeks), Ajax, Pickering and Oshawa (four bags every two weeks) force residents to pay for that extra bag, charging $1 to $1.50 per tag.

In Halton Region, residents are moving from a generous six-bag weekly collection system to bi-weekly collection, starting in April with the rollout of a green bin program.

Put out more than six, and city officials gently explain the importance of not doing it.

Ignore the warning and you’ll have to cart your extra garbage to a transfer station yourself. Ignore it further and you could get charged with a bylaw offence with a set fine of $90.

Peel Region’s waste management director, Andrew Pollock, said that in Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon, almost 91 per cent of homes respect the bag limits.

There has been talk, but no decision yet, on reducing bag limits or going biweekly to encourage more diversion.

Durham Region spokesperson Katherine Ross-Perron said Toronto’s approach is to treat garbage like any other utility by forcing users to pay proportionately and taking collection off the tax rolls. She said that in the surrounding regions, it’s likely that garbage collection will continue to be covered by property taxes.

– by Phinjo Gombu