Health and Safety in Canadian Workplaces

Workplace injuries happen every day and can profoundly affect workers, their families, and the communities in which they live. This textbook is for workers and students looking for an introduction to injury prevention on the job. It offers an extensive overview of central occupational health and safety (OHS) concepts and practices and provides practical suggestions for health and safety advocacy. Foster, Cake, and Barnetson bring the field into the twenty-first century by including discussions of how precarious employment, gender, and ill-health can be better handled in Canadian OHS.

Although they address the gendered and racialized dimensions of new work processes and structures in contemporary workplaces, Foster, Cake, and Barnetson contend that occupational health and safety can only be understood if we acknowledge that workers and employers have conflicting interests. Who identifies what workplace hazards should be controlled is therefore a product of the broader political economy of employment and one that should be well understood by those working in the field.

The newly revised second edition updates key information and discusses OHS topics related to emerging issues such as COVID-19 and climate change. It offers an expanded discussion of chemical and biological hazards and provides all-new learning activities and exercises.