Framing and blaming: construction of workplace injuries by legislators in Alberta, Canada Bob Barnetson Athabasca University, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Background: Legislators in the Canadian province of Alberta have successfully resisted pressure to increase state injury-prevention efforts. Objectives: This study seeks to identify the narratives used by legislators to manage political pressure for increased injury-prevention efforts. Methods: Narrative analysis of legislative transcripts from 2000 to 2012. Results: Three narratives are identified in the data: (1) injuries are caused by ignorance and inattention, (2) workplaces are safe and getting safer, and (3) risk is inevitable and mitigation is (too) expensive. Each narrative has 2–4 subcomponents. Conclusions: The consistency of the messages delivered by legislators over time suggests an intentional effort to frame workplace injury in ways that manage political pressure for greater state efforts to prevent workplace injuries while maintaining the government’s legitimacy. The narratives used by legislators draw on widely held beliefs about workplace injuries, including the careless worker myth and the notion that safety pays. Keywords: Alberta, Canada, Workplace injury, Narrative analysis, Politics, Legitimation

Introduction The Canadian province of Alberta contains approximately 12% of the world’s known oil reserves.1 One consequence of this wealth is that Alberta has begun manifesting many characteristics consistent with the petro-state thesis.2 These include close relations between the state and capital and weak democratic structures.3–6 In the workplace, Alberta has the weakest labour movement in Canada, and exploitative employment practices, including high relative and absolute rates of workplace injury.7–10 Between 2000 and 2012, the government of Alberta successfully resisted significant political pressure to reduce the level of workplace injury and extend basic occupational health and safety (OHS) rights to farm workers.9,11 The ability of Alberta to maintain injurious employment relations without significant political consequence is troubling. While governments have long cooperated with capital in order to maintain production, this cooperation has been balanced (to greater or lesser degree) by governments’ need to maintain legitimacy with the electorate.12,13 As a Correspondence to: Bob Barnetson, Athabasca University, 10303 138th Street, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5N2J2. Email: bob.barnetson@ shaw.ca

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result, states have enacted legislation and operated programming to reduce and compensate workplace injury.13–16 Several researchers have documented an overall decline in the rate of injury in Canada’s largest province (Ontario) between 1991 and 2007, although no comparable analysis has been conducted in Alberta.17,18 Preliminary research suggested that Alberta government Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs) have engaged in careful message management to deflect criticism around the high incidence of workplace injury, and thus reduce the political consequences of maintaining the status quo.19,20 Managing the message through careful framing is a strategy the ruling Conservative party has used effectively since the early 1990s to balance conflicting pressures around maintaining both production and legitimacy.21–23 In this case, additional regulation around workplace injury would entail greater costs to employers and farmers, both of whom are important sources of political support for the Conservative government. This study uses narrative analysis to identify three narratives used by MLAs to frame debate around workplace injuries in Alberta. These narratives show that MLAs blame workers for their injuries, assure

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the public that workplaces are safe and getting safer, and suggest that sometimes workers must accept a degree of injury in order for businesses to remain in business. Using these narratives, MLAs are able to minimize new regulations (and associated costs) for employers and allay worker concerns about workplace injury (thus avoiding a legitimation crisis). This study identifies broad contextual factors that enable this strategy as well as potential weaknesses to this approach.

Background Alberta is one of Canada’s 10 provinces and has been governed by the Progressive Conservative (Tory) party since 1971. In the early 1990s, the Conservatives aggressively adopted neoliberal policies that emphasized low taxes and minimal regulation.22,24,25 Alberta is heavily reliant upon resource extraction. Of Alberta’s $295.2 billion GDP, 24.8% comes from the energy sector. Finance and construction (both heavily dependent upon the oil and gas industry) comprise 13.5 and 10.8% of GDP respectively. Crude petroleum, mostly in the form of bitumen from Alberta’s tar sands, comprises 52.1% of Alberta’s exports and 74.7% of its energy revenues.24 This reliance upon petroleum means that Alberta’s oil industry is both economically and politically important. Alberta’s agriculture industry is relatively small ($10.46B), but it has disproportionate political influence because Conservative governments require rural electoral support to stay in power. Over time, a symbiotic relationship has developed, wherein the government funds programmes and infrastructure to maintain the viability of shrinking rural communities, which almost always elected Conservative candidates to the legislature, and Conservative governments ensures electoral boundaries are drawn so that there are a disproportionately high number of rural constituencies.26,27 Among the demands of rural Alberta is continued exemption from OHS regulations.11,28 Alberta has a workforce of approximately 2 million and sees at least 500 000 job-related injuries annually.19 Using national data from 2003 and 2005 and controlling for personal and industry factors, researchers found Alberta workers were 28% more likely to experience a workplace injury than workers in Canada’s largest and most industrialized province, Ontario. This research also suggests that jurisdictional factors (e.g., health and safety laws) play an important role in the risk of injury.10 In the late 1990s, Alberta sought to realign its OHS system with neoliberal principles, including devolving OHS responsibility to employers.19 At the same time, the government faced growing pressure from the labour movement

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about the increasing number of workplace fatalities and declining enforcement. The government responded by creating a Provincial Strategic Working Group on Workplace Safety and, later, WorkSafe Alberta, both initiatives guided by employer-dominated stakeholder groups.29 Further, specific OHS issues occurred during the period under study that created political problems for the government. In 2000, the death of a young worker working alone created demand for working alone legislation. In 2003, firefighters demanded automatic cancer compensation. In 2006, the death of a farm worker crystallized concerns around farm worker exclusions from OHS. And beginning in 2009, there was mounting evidence that Alberta OHS system was not effective and, indeed, may have been subject to regulatory capture by employers.9 Somehow, Alberta’s Conservative government resists these demands for more effective injuryprevention efforts while maintaining broad electoral support. Several strategies to deflect pressure for improved injury-prevention efforts are evident. Alberta reports injury statistics in a manner that makes workplace injuries appear uncommon and in decline.19 Provincial workplace safety awareness campaigns frame workplace injuries as the fault of workers.30 Alberta also operates programmes that seem to incentivize employers to increase safety but actually do not.19 Health and safety consultations typically occur behind closed doors, thereby obscuring policy criticism and co-opting labour advocates.30 In addition, much regulation has been devolved to employers via a ‘Partnership in Injury Reduction’ programme while the government’s inspection programme has languished.9,14 These strategies contribute to the perceived legitimacy (i.e., acceptance as right and proper by Albertans) of ineffective injury-prevention efforts by concealing the scope and cause of workplace injury. Yet legitimacy requires not just the absence of challenges, but also conditions favouring legitimacy, such as shared beliefs.3 Such beliefs may be visible in (and reinforced by) the political discourse around workplace injury. For example, Conservative MLAs justify Alberta’s exclusion of farm workers from basic health and safety rights via three (largely invalid) narratives: (i) education is better than regulation, (ii) farms cannot be regulated, and (iii) farmers don’t want and can’t afford regulation.11 These narratives form an ideology (i.e., a set of ideals, principles, or myths) that purport to describe and prescribe the proper approach to agricultural injury-prevention. It is less clear what beliefs and discourse justify Alberta’s high rate of workplace injuries and ineffective injury prevention. Existing explanations for workplace injury – for example, that workers are

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careless, injuries are inevitable, and safety pays – may both shape and facilitate particular explanations and justifications. The careless worker myth explains occupational injury as caused by workers being accident prone, careless, or even reckless.31,32 Worker carelessness is part of the broader theme of ‘freedom of choice’, wherein workers chose the jobs they hold, and thus their risk of injury.33 Freedom of choice is consistent with the emphasis on negative liberty (i.e., freedom from constraint) in neoliberal thought.34 There are many industries where worker behaviour has been identified by employers as the primary cause of injuries, including coal mining, construction and manufacturing, long-distance trucking, chemical production, and petroleum refining and manufacturing.35–40 Worker carelessness is also a central aspect of behaviour-based safety (BBS) systems. In BBS systems, employers target worker incompetence, inattentiveness, and carelessness to reduce injury rates.41–46 Declining OHS enforcement activity that began in the 1980s during the neoliberal retrenchment increasingly emphasized individual responsibility for safety.14,15,47–49 For example, Ontario’s safety ticketing system assigns workers responsibility for their safety behaviours (ignoring other factors).50 The careless worker myth is also part of a broader set of (unfounded) negative views about workers, exemplified by the workers’ compensation malingerer, the welfare mom, and the unemployment insurance ‘cheat’.51–54 Despite little empirical support, the careless worker myth appears widely accepted among employers and the public.55–58 The durability of the careless worker myth may reflect its close association with the notion that injuries are inevitable. Many employers have certainly framed the risk of experiencing a workplace injury as minimal, unavoidable, and acceptable.59If perfect safety is unattainable, it then follows that safety initiatives should be assessed on a cost-benefit basis.60 That is to say, injuries should only be prevented when prevention costs less than the injury itself.12,61 On the surface, this economic perspective appears sensible: every activity entails risk and risk reduction is expensive so efficiency is the desideratum. Yet, this seemingly dispassionate economic analysis obscures the political nature of employment: the risks workers face reflect decisions employers make – decisions about what, when, where and how goods and services are produced – with the goal of maximizing profitability. In this way, injury is a cost imposed on workers by employers allowing employers to do this is a political choice by the state.62 This focus on the economic leads to the widespread belief that ‘safety pays’ – that organizations can increase profitability by reducing workplace injuries.58,63

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Research suggests, however, that safety does not pay.64–69 Indeed, a moment’s reflection demonstrates this: businesses are profit maximizers so, if safety paid, we’d see relatively few workplace injuries. Alberta’s annual injury rate of roughly one in four workers each year tells us that it is a lack of safety that pays. Moreover, the notion that safety pays obscures the real message of ‘safety pays’: improve safety only if it pays. In short, the ‘safety pays’ narrative is simply sloganeering that obscures employers’ traditional cost-benefit approach to health and safety issue. Further, by suggesting safety is profitable, the ‘safety pays’ belief downplays the need for state regulation. Why would the state check to see if employers had acted in what is (purportedly) the employers’ own interests? The wide acceptance of these beliefs makes them useful tools that Alberta MLAs can utilize within the specific political context of Alberta.

Methodology This study examines how government MLAs explain the persistence of workplace injuries. To do so, this study uses narrative analysis to identify how MLAs order and relay information in the form of a story.70 A narrative is an ordered, temporally sequenced account of events with an intention to communicate (or construct) a particular meaning for the audience.71 Humans construct narratives to create meaning for themselves and others and thus understand the world around us. As narratives are constructed, narrative analysis allows us to examine both the story and how the story serves the interests of the teller while preserving the teller’s context.72 The intentionality of narrative construction means that the teller, audience, and context, all become important components of the analysis.73 Narrative analysis draws out the intricacies of the interaction between teller, audience, and context, permitting a fuller, richer understanding of the text than would be the case through other analytical approaches.74 This study approaches statements made in the legislative assembly as components of a narrative construction. Members of the Legislative Assembly are not simply recounting facts, but are trying to insert particular meanings about the characters, issues, and events described in the narrative. In this case, the issue is the injury of workers and the seeming inability of government injury-prevention efforts to significantly reduce the incidence of injury. Government MLAs take on the role of storytellers, attempting to create meaning about workplace injury. There are two relevant contexts to consider. First, the tellers are government MLAs who exists within a specific political environment, answerable to political supporters as well as voters, and with a particular set of responsibilities, values, and perspectives. Second,

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MLAs are also a part of the broader political climate that surrounds issue, which shapes their outlook. Similarly, the tellers, because of their specific contexts, have two audiences, the general public and political supporters (in particular employers and farmers) to whom they are accountable. Given the nature of the data, this study conducts a thematic form of narrative analysis to answer the research question, which emphasizes the content of the story and how it serves specific interests.74 The data for this study comprises all statements recorded in transcripts of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta (Hansard) by government MLAs about workplace injury between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2012. Such data is appropriate for narrative analysis because it is intended to communicate a message.75 This study excludes government policy documents. Examples of these documents were reviewed and not found to articulate a policy rationale suitable for analysis. This study also excludes statements by MLAs recorded in print media. A review of such statements revealed they added little new content. Data collection began with Boolean key word searches (safety, fatal*, injury*, accident, work*) of legislative transcripts indices from 2000 to 2012 (inclusive). The year 2000 was chosen as the starting point for the data collection because (1) a review of transcripts from 1995 to 1999 found few relevant passages, and (2) 2000 represented the first year of increased government attention to OHS matters, thus 2000 represents an important transitional point in the discourse around workplace injury. In the end, the dataset comprised 146 passages that were analyzed in the context of the statement in which they appeared to ensure the quote could be understood within its context. A thematic narrative analysis was then conducted in three stages. First, an initial reading of all the statements surfaced three narratives that, to some degree, have a temporal trajectory. Second, each narrative was further analyzed to tease out its details and subcomponents in greater depth. Finally the analytic focus moved to the context in which each narrative was constructed to draw out additional insights about the story.

Three Narratives Government MLAs use three narratives to explain and deflect criticism about the persistence of workplace injuries in Alberta. These narratives appear designed to preserve the status quo around injury prevention in the face of increasing pressure to reduce workplace injuries. Each narrative contains various subcomponents and the usage of these narratives and their components shift over time (i.e., has a temporal trajectory) in response to changes in the political context.

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First narrative: injuries are caused by ignorance and inattention; education is the cure The most frequent and enduring explanation for the occurrence of workplace injuries was that injuries are caused by worker ignorance and inattention. This story was told throughout the period under study and was used to justify injury-prevention efforts that emphasize education over enforcement. The ‘injuries are caused by ignorance and inattention’ narrative had four main components: 1. Injuries are preventable 2. Injuries are caused by worker ignorance and inattention 3. Rookie workers are dangerous 4. Safety pays Between 2001 and 2003, MLAs repeatedly stated that ‘all accidents are unacceptable and all accidents are preventable’.76 This emphasis was consistent with government efforts to reduce lost-time claims (LTC) rates by 40%.30 Some MLAs also sought to displace the term ‘accident’ with the term ‘incident’. (I)ncident will denote responsibility, and that’s what we’re trying to get to here. We’re trying to get people to accept the responsibility to be safe and not sorry on the work site, and that means not just the employers, but the employees as well. We have to do a better job of looking out for those that work around us and work with us.77

It is unclear why this change from ‘accident’ to ‘incident’ could not be sustained. This may reflect force of habit or the effect of the word accident being a statutory component of workers’ compensation. It may also be an ideological preference for a word that diffuses responsibility for an injury. Regardless of the precise reason, the notion that all injuries are preventable means an injury entailed a failure by someone to prevent it. While there is wide acceptance across the political spectrum of the desirability of reducing workplace injuries, government MLAs largely ignore how employer decisions determine which hazards are present in the workplace and thus the severity and frequency of injury. Instead of MLAs directing employers to eliminate and control hazards (as required by Alberta’s OHS Code), MLAs direct employers to make sure ‘workers perform their jobs competently and safely. This means ensuring that workers are properly trained, use the proper safety equipment, and, perhaps as important as anything, know and understand that they can refuse to perform unsafe work’.78 In this way, MLAs frame workers as incompetent or prone to wilful misbehaviour. The idea that workers were to blame for their injuries pervaded post-2002 discussion. In advocating for administrative fines in 2002, the then-Chair of the Council on Workplace Safety, Tony Abbott, noted that employers and the government must cooperate

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to force workers to behave safety: ‘The administrative fines or tickets are mostly applied to workers who refuse to follow safety procedures; for example, not wearing a hard hat. The system is well received by employers as a means to promote safety compliance among workers at a work site’.79 The then-Minister of Human Resources and Employment, Mike Cardinal, explained rising fatality numbers as a function of workers hurrying to and from work: ‘(W)e’re all in a hurry out there. You know, we drive fast to get to work, come home fast, maybe to go to a second job or something else’.80 Even workers’ children got in on the act, with the then-Minister of Employment, Immigration and Industry, Iris Evans, noting: ‘[…] Shell Canada […] took pictures at a sour gas plant of all the employees’ children, and they posted them around the sour gas plant along with slogans saying: Daddy, come home today; Mom, I’m looking forward to seeing you after school. These big, blow-up pictures of the children are there to remind parents to get home safely’.81 Despite the efforts of employers and government, MLAs asserted that workers continued to act irresponsibly: We have all seen the tragedy of injuries and death that can occur due to lack of attention, lack of awareness, or from not using personal protective equipment.82 For example, going into a coal plant where there are signs that say, ‘put on your safety glasses; this is a safety glass area; this is a hard hat area; this is a hearing protection area,’ I know that on doing hundreds of safety tours, you catch people without their eyeglasses on, you catch people without their hearing protection on, you catch people without their hard hats on.83 […] (O)ccupational health and safety officers could go to a work site, and when they see somebody either not wearing a safety harness, not wearing safety equipment, or wearing safety equipment that they’re using in name only and it’s not effective because they’ve purposely had a longer rope or whatever, they would be able to issue a ticket.84

New and young workers were also framed as dangerous to themselves and others because of their inexperience. According to Abbott, ‘Inexperienced workers are far more likely to be injured on the job. […] Last year for the first time in a decade our losttime claim rate went up. […] We know that a major part of this increase was caused by the inexperience of many workers’.85 Again, it is workers, rather than work, that must be made safe. In contrast to irresponsible workers, employers were portrayed as exceptionally responsible. According to MLA Doug Elniski, ‘Time and time again Alberta businesses have proven they’re up to the challenge of working alongside health and safety associations and with the government to make our

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workplaces safer’.86 It is notable that there are no instances of MLAs chastening employers. This positive view of employers was reflected in MLA assertions that safety pays for employers: ‘[…] safer workplaces make Alberta businesses stronger’ 87 and ‘the investment (employers) make in a safety programme will pay dividends many times over’.88 This safety dividend (in the form of workers’ compensation premium reductions) was over $151 million in 2005 89 and $285 million in 2006,90 thereby ‘proving the old saying: safety is good for business’.91 It is unclear if these premium reductions reflect fewer accidents or lower claims costs triggered by more aggressive employer claims management. Asserting that businesses profit from safe work reinforced the notion that it was workers (not employers) who were to blame for workplace injuries. This, in turn, suggested that education was the solution to concerns over injury. According to the then-Minister of Employment and Immigration, Thomas Lukaszuk: The benefit of education is long-term. If properly educated, young people will prevent themselves from being injured, prevent their colleagues from being injured, so I think that it’s a much more longterm positive effect that we will have.92

In the ‘injuries are caused by ignorance and inattention’ narrative, MLAs clearly identified worker carelessness and ignorance as the root cause of workplace injuries. There was no discussion of employer responsibility for introducing hazards into the workplace. If the root cause of injury was indeed worker ignorance and carelessness, then safety education (rather than additional enforcement) may be the way to reduce injury rates. Safety education is essentially a status quo solution that minimizes the cost associated with injury prevention for employers. Specifically, the state provides most of the education and employers face no pressure to change unsafe work processes. This preference for education may explain the government’s ongoing expenditures on health and safety advertising.29

Second narrative: workplaces are safe and getting safer The second narrative asserted that Alberta workplaces were safe and the government was taking steps to make them safer. This narrative emerged in response to criticism that government injuryprevention efforts were ineffective and changed as additional evidence reinforced this view after 2007. The ‘workplaces are safe’ narrative had three main components: 1. existing regulation is adequate; 2. workplaces are becoming safer;. 3. additional steps are being taken to reduce injuries.

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Between 2002 and 2004, the assertion that existing regulation was adequate was used to turn aside infrequent criticism of injury-prevention efforts by introducing examples of success, including asbestos abatement,93 working alone restrictions,94 and airborne pollutants.95 Beginning in 2004, MLAs faced significant political pressure, both inside and outside of the Legislature, around the high rate of workplace injury. In response, MLAs asserted that workplace safety (as measured by the LTC rate) was improving in response to government efforts. For example: Since we implemented Work Safe Alberta, the losttime claim rate has been reduced from 3.4% in 2000 to an estimated 2.4 in 2005. This is a 24% drop, a record low, and means that there were 10 000 fewer work injuries last year compared to what we would have had, if we had not improved the system. Claims fully funded by the workers’ compensation have dropped by $285 million per year, which means additional dollars for the employers.96

Claims of improving safety results were used to elicit support for the government’s ‘WorkSafe Alberta’ initiative from both labour (which sought fewer injuries) and employers (who sought lower workers’ compensation premium rates). As noted in the Discussion section, using LTCs rates as a proxy for workplace injuries understates the true level of injury by excluding 95% of workplace injuries from the definition of injury.19 Further, LTC rates may not be comparable over time due to financial incentives for employers to ‘game’ these LTC rate. The LTC data was also used to blunt criticism about increasing workplace fatalities by providing a contrary ‘good news’ story: I do agree that workplace injuries or fatalities are totally unacceptable, and our government is constantly working to see those numbers go down. What the hon. member failed to indicate is that our numbers, in fact, per 100 person-years are decreasing. We are heading in the right direction. We do have more people than ever working in this particular province and we’ve got more vehicles on the roads, so it seems that more things will happen. However, our overall numbers when it comes to the disabling injury rates or the lost-time claim rates are in fact going down.97

Political pressure around workplace injury further intensified after 2007. For example, in 2008, a judicial inquiry into the death of a farm worker resulted in significant pressure on MLAs to regulate farm safety – an outcome opposed by politically important agricultural producers.11 And, in 2010, the Auditor General released a critical assessment of government injury-prevention efforts, including its partnership programme with employers.98 This evidence undermined the credibility of MLA assertions that workplaces were getting safer. At this point, MLAs began

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asserting that the government was taking additional steps to reduce injuries. This quote is illustrative: We perform five times the number of inspections we did 10 years ago, and we write almost 10 times the number of orders for safety infractions. Mr. Speaker, 2008 was a record year for Occupational Health and Safety Act prosecutions, with 22 convictions and over $5 million in court-ordered penalties against employers; 88% of that money went to alternative sentencing to fund programmes for the health or safety of workers.99

Funding transfers from the workers’ compensation board (WCB) to the government for injury prevention efforts and a temporary spike in health and safety convictions and fines facilitated this component of the narrative.9 There are, however, a small number of departures from this narrative. In arguing against extending OHS rights to farm workers, MLA Robin Campbell noted that hazard assessments (a pillar of Alberta’s OHS efforts) don’t really work: I can tell you from my 30 years of working in […] coal mining […] that workplace hazard assessments just don’t work. […] I know that workers on four days of work take a piece of paper, photocopy it four times, sign their name, and hand the thing in. Therefore, it does nothing.100

Campbell may have been giving voice to employer opposition to hazard assessments when they were first introduced.101 The crux of Campbell’s argument is simply that paperwork won’t solve the problem – it is workers who must change. When faced with evidence of non-compliance, MLAs were prepared to admit issues existed and then promptly indicated that the government was prepared to respond. For example, a 2012 government bill designed to allow the ticketing of OHS violations was justified by noting that enough employers ignore safety rules to warrant legislative intervention: No one is likely to see those fines as a slap on the wrist, Mr. Speaker. They’re intended to be a wakeup call for those who put their interests ahead of safety and fairness. The administrative penalties make it clear that the cost of doing business is greatly reduced when they play by the rules.102

Interestingly, the planned ticketing initiative includes fines for both employers and workers, suggesting a continuing effort to assert workers were (at least partly) responsible for workplace injuries. As of the date of writing, this ticketing system is not yet operational. In the ‘workplaces are safe’ narrative, MLAs attempted to deflect political pressure on the government to take additional action to prevent injuries – action that would increase costs to employers. When this approach was not successful in managing

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political pressure, the government made a small number of concessions, including minor increases in enforcement. While these pro-safety concessions are good in and of themselves, they have little overall impact upon injury rates and leave in place the larger narrative that blame workers for their injuries. This switch was an effort to maintain the legitimacy of the government in the face of mounting evidence that workplaces weren’t safe and injury prevention was ineffective. In this way, the ‘workplaces are safe’ narrative had the same general objective as the ‘injuries are caused by ignorance and inattention’ narrative: to maintain the status quo. An important aspect of the ‘additional steps are being taken to reduce injuries’ component of this narrative is that it is the government (not critics) that knows best when (and what) action is needed. In this way, even acknowledgements of problems and significant changes in legislation are used to support the legitimacy of government efforts.

Third narrative: risk is inevitable and mitigation is (too) expensive The third narrative asserted that employment always entailed a risk of injury and that it was sometimes necessary to trade off safety against employer profitability. Like the ‘workplaces are safe’ narrative, the ‘risk is inevitable’ narrative was used to deflect demands for increased regulation and enforcement and, particularly, the extension of basic OHS rights to farm workers. The ‘risk is inevitable’ narrative had two components: 1. work entails risk of injury; 2. employers must trade worker safety against profitability. Members of the Legislative Assembly used the notion that work entails an inherent and unavoidable risk of injury in two distinct ways. In 2003 and 2010, MLAs justified the extension of automatic workers’ compensation for firefighter cancer because firefighters faced unavoidable risk of injury on the job. This quote is illustrative: Studies from Burnett, Guidotti, Mount Sinai, and the Ontario industrial disease panel, to name a few, all have told the same story: the profession of fire fighting makes firefighters more likely to get these cancers than you and I. Why? Because every time that a firefighter walks into a fire, whether that be in a home, an office, a vehicle, he steps into a toxic soup of soot and gases that are released by the burning materials.103

Members of the Legislative Assembly argued that there was nothing to be done to reduce the risk of injury to firefighters. While legislating presumptive cancer coverage for firefighters nominally promotes the interests of a (small) group of workers in receiving post-injury compensation, it also further entrenches

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the broader notion that risk is an inevitable part of work about which the government can do nothing. At the same time, MLAs discounted criticism of government injury-prevention efforts by arguing that injury was an unavoidable by-product of high levels of economic activity: Of course, as you are aware, you know, we have a very strong economy, a lot of activity out there, and a lot of challenges in relation to safety. In our government safety in the workplace continues to be important. I wish I could say that there are not going to be any fatalities and in the past have had no fatalities, but I can’t say that.104

In both of these cases, MLAs asserted that workplace injury was natural and, therefore, no action was required of employers to eliminate risk. The idea that risk is inevitable seems to sits uneasily with MLA assertions in the ‘injuries are caused by ignorance and inattention’ narrative that all injuries were preventable. Indeed, it sits somewhat uneasily with the other component of this narrative: employers must trade workers’ safety against profitability. This component began in 2000 with concerns about how working alone regulations would affect the profitability of businesses: […] the financial pressures of multistaffing would of course have to be borne by the employer. […] If the margins are so tight on, say, a convenience store in a particular area and they’re forced to go to multistaffing and feel they can’t afford it and then simply shut down their operation at 9 at night or whatever it is, then I’ve just put somebody on the unemployment roll. So I do worry about limiting employment as we try to provide a safer work environment.105

In effect, an injurious job is better than no job. Similarly, the continued existence of workplace hazards for firefighters was framed as inevitable because they were profitable (rather than a policy choice), with the solution being to compensate cancer rather than prevent it: Over the past several decades […] there has been an increase in chemicals being used in construction to speed up construction time, lower costs, or improve the quality of structures. However, while these chemicals have reaped great benefits for the construction industry, they have proven to be extremely dangerous and potentially deadly to our firefighters.106

This component picked up significant momentum in 2005 as pressure mounted on the government to extend OHS regulation to farm workers. Members of the Legislative Assembly justified maintaining this exclusion by raising the spectre of farm bankruptcy: (I)f it’s going to impact the farm family in particular, we would have to consult the farm families out there and the farm industry to ensure

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that whatever is put in place does not impact the farm family negatively because the farm families right now, as you know, are challenged. There are a lot of bankruptcies out there. A lot of farm families are close to bankruptcy right now.107 (W)e will make recommendations that achieve two things: keep our farmers safe but also keep them in business because the only way to make sure that a farmer doesn’t get hurt is just to put him out of business, and we are not willing to do that.108

Members of the Legislative Assembly with strong links to the agricultural community also asserted that it was up to the agricultural industry to determine what sort of safety regulations (or alternatives to regulation, such as safety education in this case) were appropriate: It’s about the producers’ desire. I know that if the producers, in their wisdom not ours, were to come forward in a majority view to the minister of agriculture, he would bring that forward to this table.109 I will do exactly what the agriculture community asks for. Now, I’m responsible for dozens of operations, whether it’s cattle, hogs, grain, maybe the (Alberta Association of Municipal Districts and Counties). None of these people have come to me asking for these regulations that you’re asking for.110 I had it reinforced for me again this morning in a meeting that I had in Trochu, Alberta, with a group of 25 agricultural producers when I asked them right flat out how we could help them and they said: no more regulations. I said: are we moving in the right direction with our farm safety instead of workmen’s compensation and occupational health and safety? They said: absolutely; this is what we want.111

These quotes also demonstrate that employers (in this case, farmers) are the only important stakeholder group in this discussion of workplace safety. Once an employer voices an opinion, no further discussion is necessary. The ‘risk is inevitable’ narrative was again an effort to deflect demands for increased regulation and enforcement. The notion that risk was inevitable led to the question of which injuries could be economically prevented. In effect, someone (in this case, employers) must perform a cost-benefit analysis to determine which injury-reduction strategies were worthwhile (for the employer). Employers must be the ones to decide on this because they were the ones whose businesses are at stake. The assertion that risk is inevitable sits uneasily with the assertion in the ‘injuries are caused by ignorance and inattention’ narrative that all injuries can be prevented. This apparent contradiction is never resolved in the data and is discussed below. The primary audience of the ‘risk is inevitable’ narrative is employers (who seek to maintain minimal regulation) and the agricultural community (which seeks to maintain its exclusion).

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Discussion During the period of study, government MLAs developed three interconnected narratives around workplace injury in Alberta to contain demands for increased or more expansive regulation around workplace injury. These narratives assigned blame for injury to workers and thereby generated support for education instead of additional regulation. These narratives also asserted that workplaces were safe enough and suggested that making workplaces significantly safer posed an economic threat. These narratives are a form of political discourse that conceal and/or discount significant inequities around injury that are endorsed by state.3 Specifically, the persistence of workplace injuries is framed as a natural state of affairs, reflecting the nature of work and of workers while the contribution of ineffective injury prevention or the injurious organization of work by employers (in order to maximize profitability via transferring costs onto workers in the form of injury) is absent. In this way, these narratives sustained the legitimacy of the state and capitalist social formation. These narratives were effective for a variety of reasons. Alberta has a history of blaming workers for injuries.29,51 Doing so is effective because, on the surface, workers often appear to responsible for their own injuries. It is easy, as David Hancock does above, to blame workers for not using proper fall protection when, for example, they are removing snow from a roof. The underlying reasons for not using fall protection (e.g., lack of gear, lack of training, gear unacceptably slowing work) are hard to see. The economic dynamics that give rise to such injury are even harder to see. Continuing with the snow removal example, the main purpose of snow removal is to prevent ice damming. It is, however, unnecessary to remove all of the snow from a roof to prevent ice damming: removing just four feet of snow from the edge of a roof using a long snow rake while standing on the ground is also effective. Using a snow rake eliminates the risk of a fall and can be easily accomplished by homeowners. Complete (and needless) snow removal from a roof cannot be easily accomplished by homeowners and thus creates a business opportunity. Employers exploiting this opportunity organize work in an injurious way and are, thus, a root cause of subsequent injury. The political cost of blaming workers is low because workers are largely unable to generate political consequences for politicians and the prevalence of negative stereotypes about workers gives such a framing credibility. Blaming workers also naturally suggests worker education and workerfocussed regulation are the main solutions. By contrast, recognizing employer contributions to

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workplace injuries sets the stage for interventions into employer decision-making in the workplace. This would be politically costly for MLAs who could expect a loss of campaign support and public criticism from employers. Blaming workers is thus a politically advantageous option for MLAs. Asserting that workplaces are safe and getting safer is an effective narrative because of the nature of the evidence that MLAs use. Government-generated statistics that purport to show declining injury rates support the effectiveness of current injury-prevention efforts. Such evidence is difficult for critics to engage effectively. For example, using LTC rates as a proxy for workplace injuries understates the true level of injury by excluding 95% of workplace injuries from the definition of ‘injury’19 (LTC are only those where a worker could not report for work the next day. Such rates can be gamed by employers by having seriously injured workers come in and do nothing or simply through non-reporting). Even the more expansive disabling injury rate (where a worker could not do some or all of her job the next day) reports only 1 in 10 injuries. Further, the incentive structure around LTCs appears to trigger employer claimsmanagement behaviour, wherein LTCs are converted modified work claims to maximize workers’ compensation rewards, thereby undermining the comparability of LTC statistics over time. Such definitional slight of hand is hard for critics to discover and to explain. The Legislature’s prohibition on preambles to questions further limits the ability of critics to counter such evidence during question period. In this way, emphasizing safety statistics undermines political pressure for more aggressive enforcement by making workplaces seem safer than they are. This spinning of injury rate data is consistent with Government of Alberta’s other efforts to manage the message around contentious issues, such as concerns about the presence and treatment of migrant workers20 and the exclusion of farm workers from OHS laws.11 It is also evident in past efforts to generate ‘good news’ statistics around labour standards compliance and collective bargaining.112 Members of the Legislative Assembly also use apparent declines in LTC and disabling injury rates to counter criticism about rising levels of workplace fatalities. While uncommon, fatalities are difficult to hide or statistically massage. Instead, MLAs acknowledge that fatalities are ‘tragedies’, that ‘even one is too many’ and that increasing numbers are troubling. And then they return discussion to the ‘good news’ story around LTC and disabling injury rates. In this way, the implicit criticism of government injury-prevention efforts contained in rising workplace deaths is blunted through rhetorical sleight of hand.

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The ‘workplaces are safe’ narrative shows that MLAs responded to emerging threats to government legitimacy by highlighting incremental ways in which they were increasing injury-prevention efforts (e.g., more inspectors and inspection, more prosecution and higher fines, additional legislation to facilitate ticketing) to counter evidence that workplaces actually were not safe and not getting safer. This aspect of the ‘workplaces are safe’ narrative sits uneasily, however, with the MLAs’ refusal to extend basic safety rights to farm workers. Fortunately (for the government), the ‘risk is inevitable’ narrative provides an antidote to demands for farm worker inclusion. The ‘risk is inevitable’ narrative indicates that all work entails an unavoidable risk of injury and that the cost-benefit analysis of risk augurs against additional injury-prevention effort. While the idea that ‘risk is inherent’ seems to be contrary to the earlier assertion that ‘all accidents are preventable’, the two statements are not necessarily irreconcilable. Risk may be inherent, but the transformation of risk into the occurrence of injury can be attenuated through various injury-prevention strategies. Emphasizing that risk is inherent does, however, raise the issue of whether specific injury-prevention strategies are costeffective. In this narrative, MLA signalled that it was up to employers (and specifically farmers) to perform a cost-benefit analysis because increased regulation posed a threat to business viability. An interesting question raised by this analysis is how these narratives were developed, communicated, and maintained/adapted. Examining the discussion of firefighter cancer coverage in 2003 and 2010 reveals both an unlikely degree of knowledge among MLAs about occupational linkages to certain forms of cancer as well as recurring arguments and even phrasing. This suggests that a common script is available to MLAs. The most logical source of a script is ministerial briefing books generated by each department of government. Briefing books typically contain issue summaries, including talking points. Most of the data in this analysis came from MLAs who were ministers at the time and thus would possess these briefing books. Members of the Legislative Assembly may, of course, choose to deviate from such scripts for various reasons (e.g., personal knowledge or style, emerging political threat), but the long-term stability of these narratives augurs in favour of a script. It is not possible to verify this possibility as ministerial briefing books are currently protected for 15 years under the advice to the Minister exemption of Alberta’s freedom of information legislation. Caucus debate might also be an important vehicle for reinforcing these narratives, but such debate is unlikely to contain the

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detailed material evident in many MLAs statements. Lobby groups (e.g., firefighter union) may also be an important source of information. Future research may wish to examine the role of ministerial briefing materials in communicating and maintaining narratives. Such research may also highlight the important, but shadowy, role of bureaucrats in shaping legislator’s responses to political quandaries. Considering the relationship between politicians and (some) interest groups may also provide insight into how different groups of workers (for example, firefighter versus farm workers) have differential access to legislators. These narratives target two main groups. The first audience is employers (including farmers) and they are being told that the government is reluctant to impose additional regulation upon them. This messaging maintains the political support of employers as well as that of rural voters.11 This messaging also, more subtly, encourages employer to reduce workplace injury rates by combining the carrot of workers’ compensation premium reductions with the stick of potential increases in enforcement if necessary. The prospect of additional enforcement is more evident towards the end of the period of study (particularly in the ‘workplaces are safe’ narrative) as the government began taking incremental steps to increase injuryprevention regulation. The second audience is the general public. Like all legislators, Alberta MLAs must balance maintaining production with maintaining legitimacy.12,13 Criticism about levels of workplace injury is a significant threat to the government’s legitimacy: virtually every voter works (or has family members who do) and workplace injuries are contrary to the immediate interests. The suggestion that the government is colluding with some employer groups (e.g., farmers) in a way that trades workers’ health for electoral gains is potentially politically explosive. Consequently, the government has created a number of narratives to deflect and sidetrack such criticism by blaming workers and exonerating employers, by denying that workplace injury is a real concern, and by positing that improved safety is simply too costly. Along the way, the government has also granted some non-threatening pro-safety initiatives (e.g., the government’s elusive ‘ticketing’ system) and low-cost pro-worker concessions (e.g., presumptive cancer coverage for firefighters).

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