Breaking News!

Why care?

Holy crap it's a busy news week! Crazy BUSY! Lots of exciting news so let's get started!

The Royal Wedding

The world's richest welfare recipients are due to welcome a new member to their family today as Kate Middleton and Prince William tie the knot. Congratulations you two, now stay the hell out of Canada so I don't have to pay for you to come here and smile at people. The question here is not who cares about the royal wedding, the question is more so why should we care?  

May 1st Election

The NDP have taken second! The Liberals are furiously trying to play up the issue of NDP candidates vacationing during an election! Mean while the Conservatives are preparing their victory dance for when they discover that they won the majority, this because people don't give a crap about Contempt of Parliament more than their pocket books. Even though Contempt of Parliament is a pretty serious charge; essentially it's like being in contempt of democracy, but hey who needs democracy when you have a little extra cash to get shit faced on Saturday? 

Work Safe B.C Rule Changes

Making a difference for whom exactly?

If you are unfortunate enough to work at either a gas station or a convenience store in B.C, then you know that by law if you are working late you are doing so with a coworker, or with a nice sheet of shatter resistant barrier between you and the customer. This is just in case some nut case decides to pop in for a late night stabbing, or just in case you decide to have an unplanned heart attack right in the middle of your shift (unscheduled heart attacks eat up productivity).

Now clearly this rule (law?) is far too costly to implement in terms of construction and man hours, or at least that is what WorkSafeBC spokeswoman Donna Freeman said as she stuffed her pockets full of bribe money. Ok that last part was a joke, I am not at all implying that many powerful and rich entities have anything at all to do with fundamentally changing a law that costs the these entities lots of money. Not at all.

I have a question I would just love to ask miss Freeman, have you ever had a junkie throw dirty needles at you? Spit on you? Throw large heavy objects or their fecal matter at you? Try and stab you? Stupid question as the answer is probably no, or at the least not recently. Working in a nice comfy secure office for a great salary tends to keep you away from junkies, crack whores, and other assorted criminals. I'm willing to bet that none of the office staff at WorkSafeBC can claim any of these things that I listed above, but I can bring you a whole handful of people who work pretty seemingly innocent jobs who can. Most of them work in convenience stores, and being accosted by maniacs is not in there job description.

Wait though I am clearly being too hard on WorkSafeBC, after all they aren't repealing the law (rule?) that helps to protect workers from the crazies, no they are simply adding a third option that employers can choose instead of installing a barrier or having two employees on shift. The third option, hilariously called a violence prevention program, includes but is not limited to,

• Installing a time lock safe, which most convenience stores and gas stations already have.
• Video surveillance, which most convenience and gas stations already have.
• A panic button that a security company or the employer monitors.

I think that the WorkSafeBC crew need to check the dictionary for the word prevention. Prevention implies that something can be stopped before it happens, but every measure that I've listed is either reactionary or prevents theft but not necessarily violence. Take the time lock safe, how is a fancy safe supposed to keep an employee from a good stabbing? It won't, but it sure does protect the money. And if video surveillance is so good at preventing violence then where the hell does the sight Crookstube.com get all their damn footage? I also imagine that panic buttons are fantastic for calling for help after or during a violent crime but it's a piss poor way to prevent one.

Many good reasons.

Here is another problem with the proposed third option; why would employers choose to do something more expensive for their workers when they can do the minimum and get the thumbs up from the provincial government? They have no reason to do the right thing and many pink, blue, and green reasons to do less than they are required to do now.

The onus is on employers to create as safe a work experience for their employees as possible, no matter what the job is or how much or how little they pay them. Prevention is also the job of WorkSafeBC, and it appears that they are thinking of shirking their responsibilities.