January 8, 2010

Swing-stage tragedy hits home for Labourers' International Union of North America

'If there is a fault with this thing, I want to find out,' director says

VINCE VERSACE

staff writer

With hundreds of its workers on swing stages daily, one of North America’s largest unions has numerous concerns about the Christmas Eve incident that claimed four worker lives in Toronto.

“Whether it is a union or non-union site, we are concerned because it is about protecting our own members,” says Cosmo Mannella, director, health and safety, Labourers' International Union of North America (LIUNA).

“ Let’s take this particular swing stage: how do I know that I do not have a hundred of our members, on any given day, standing on this type of swing stage. If there is a fault with this thing, I want to find out.”

On the afternoon of Dec. 24, four construction workers plunged 13 storeys to their deaths at a Kipling Avenue apartment restoration work site when a swing stage they were working on came apart.

The accident killed Aleksey Blumberg, Fayzullo Fazilov, Alexander Bondorev and Vladimir Korostin. A fifth worker, Dilshod Marupov, of Uzbekistan, remains in critical care in hospital after surviving the fall. The Ontario Ministry of Labour has stated that the accident was a complex one and the investigation is ongoing.

The type of swing stage involved in the incident, its capacity and load, proper worker instruction and the wind conditions at the time of the accident, are among the questions LIUNA has about the incident.

The restoration industry has become lucrative over the last five years because there are so many apartments buildings, garage and similar structures built 25 to 35 years ago that now need work, Mannella adds.

Frank Cassano, agent, Ontario Provincial Council , LIUNA, says that in his experience with the restoration industry, highly skilled undocumented workers are being taken advantage of on many jobs.

“The restoration industry is a very highly skilled industry. The four or five guys at such projects have to be really good.

“The project may need them to conduct a variety of duties from the chipping and the grinding to cement finishing and formwork,” says Cassano.

“Also, they are generally grossly underpaid. This is highly skilled labour and dangerous work and a lot of companies get around that by fudging work classification under the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board.”

Over the past four years LIUNA has lobbied the federal government to try and normalize the existing non-documented labour force.

The union still points to a proposal it made two years ago to the federal government designed to stem the deportation of construction workers who do not have permanent residence status.

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