Canadian Occupational Safety

31 2019 AUGUST/SEPTEMBER right to refuse unsafe work' and 'Of course, you have the right to tell your supervisor if a machine looks danger- ous,' but those assumptions you can't necessarily make." Zhila Pirmoradi, project manager, integrated strategy and utilities plan- ning for the City of Vancouver, came to Canada 10 years ago as an interna- tional student from Iran. The culture of safety that she encountered in Canada was strikingly different from that of her home country. "When I moved to Canada, I had an internship in the food industry and for first time I heard about non-sliding shoes that I had to get, all that kind of different safety gear. And when I came to the city, I learned 'Oh, OK, we need steel-toe shoes,'" she says. "There are so many different types of shoes!" She says that immigrants have to learn that health and safety "mat- ters way more, potentially here, than where they came from." There may also be a reluctance to speak up about safety issues among new immigrants. In their old country, it might have been improper to do so or workers might not have been empowered to speak up. These beliefs are carried with them to their new jobs in Canada. For example, the IWH research found that many of these indi- viduals found their jobs through their ethnic community. The participants felt very grateful to the person who gave them their job and felt that voic- ing concerns would be disrespectful. "This person is your manager and also, as one participant said, their elder… There was a really interesting dynamic," Yanar says. "There is a dif- ferent kind of loyalty to the employer." One participant was coughing and sneezing when working with a particu- lar chemical, but they felt they could not discuss it with their manager. "It's very hard for me, because she's from my country. I know her in my country, we have a tradition: You have to respect somebody if she's older than you. So, I have to respect her, but sometimes she abuses me." It might not just be the feeling of gratefulness that spurs the unrelent- ing loyalty; their livelihood could be on the line. In the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program, for example, the workers' visa is tied to that one employer and the employer can end their visa for any reason. "That's loyalty forced through pre- carity. They are worried about losing their job," says Arntz-Gray. To address this, the federal govern- ment is currently piloting a program in British Columbia that allows work- ers to switch employers if they wish. "By setting up this permitting system where you're tied to one employer, are we putting these work- ers in a place where they are going to feel that they can never raise an issue?" says Arntz-Gray. Onboarding is one way to bring immigrant workers up to speed. It is to be expected that these individu- als are not necessarily familiar with requirements, terminology, specific equipment in their workplace and safety instructions, Pirmoradi says. "A decent onboarding in health and safety can help them work more effectively, comply with desired require- ments and be exposed to less incidents that can be costly to them and to their workplace, for sure," she says. The safety team should have a cul- tural awareness of the barriers that a new immigrant employee is facing and try to understand how health and safety was regulated in their home country. Arntz-Gray spent some time working in Malawi and he quickly came to understand a huge barrier that many individuals faced around health and safety — the belief that when someone dies it's because God has called them home. "It was kind of hands up in the air, you can't really stop these things. It's the same for accidents in the work- place; this idea of it's a person's time, kind of an element of fate," explains Arntz-Gray. If a health and safety professional has an individual who comes from this type of cultural background, they would need to take this into consider- ation during training or when creating the health and safety program. In fact, safety programs may need to be tailored "to a very specific degree" to ensure they meet the needs of all workers, he says. "Most health and safety professionals would go, 'Woah, what? This is beyond my skillset. I'm an expert at guarding machines.' But if you're part of the team that develops awareness training or any- thing that requires … a human element to implementing your health and safety, you might need to take these things into account," says Arntz-Gray. It would go a long way for the safety professional to have a conver- sation with the new worker to better understand their safety knowledge and background. Not only would this help the safety professional understand the cultural and linguistic composition of their workforce, but it would give the immigrant professionals even more exposure to new terminologies and familiarizing themselves with safety procedures, Pirmoradi says. Pirmoradi sees having an under- standing of an organization's cultural diversity as similar to using a map. It shows where you are, where you need to go and how you can get there based on all existing constraints and possibilities. "I believe that awareness of differ- ent cultures is just like knowing where we are, so that in order for us to get there together, better strategies and processes can be designed in such a way that can leverage all the assets and advantages of a diverse team," she says. According to the New Zealand report, new immigrants also face various mental health issues stem- ming from racial discrimination and harassment, downward mobility and lack of cultural safety in the workplace. Cultural safety is defined as an envi- ronment that is safe for people: where there is no assault, challenge or denial of their identity, of who they are and what they need. "Sometimes, what happens is Canada creates great expectations for our newcomers and they arrive with There are things we take for granted here: 'Of course, everyone knows you have the right to refuse unsafe work.'

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