Established in 1981, the right to preventive reassignment for pregnant or breastfeeding workers is a major social achievement in Quebec. Its aim is to enable workers to have a safe pregnancy and breastfeeding period.
Despite the success of the Safe Motherhood Program, business representatives constantly question its legitimacy. Instead of promoting this achievement, the bill modernizing the occupational health and safety system weakens it. It makes you wonder if this is really a modernization or a step backwards for pregnant or breastfeeding workers.
Yet the Safe Motherhood Program is working and employers are increasingly inclined to provide accommodations for pregnant and breastfeeding workers. In fact, job retention during pregnancy went from a proportion of just over 10% in 1992 to a proportion of 56% for the year 2018.
Concretely, it is pregnant or breastfeeding workers who assume the responsibility of seeing to the application of the recommendations listed on their preventive withdrawal certificate. They participate in the identification of risks and in the search for solutions promoting prevention at work. These skills are also provided for in the Act respecting occupational health and safety.
When deciding to exercise their right of preventive reassignment, workers are used to turning to their attending physician or other health professional to discuss the dangers associated with the performance of their work and to establish the recommendations facilitating their continued employment. In addition to treating physicians, specialist nurse practitioners and, more recently, midwives are empowered to intervene in this area.
In turn, these professionals and the attending physicians turn to occupational public health to complete the certificate. Over time, a form of collaboration with members of the public health network in occupational health was established to determine the conditions of employment that involve dangers and recommend means to promote healthy maintenance. employed.
A right in danger
Unfortunately, Bill 59 jeopardizes the right of preventive reassignment of a pregnant or breastfeeding worker, then narrows the scope of the Public Health Act.
First, it adds protocols indicating the dangers and the conditions of employment associated with them, then it centralizes their management at the Commission des normes, de l’énergie and occupational health and safety (CNESST). Although the Public Health Department is responsible for developing these protocols, they meet the needs communicated to it by the CNESST. Likewise, the Commission is responsible for publishing them.
These changes that the minister wishes to make to the Act respecting occupational health and safety will probably reduce the possibility for workers to have work-related hazards recognized during pregnancy or breastfeeding. As they are excluded from the development of these protocols, this has the effect of weakening their capacity to judge the risks involved in their work and to seek solutions to eliminate them.
In addition, the bill undermines the independence of the doctors responsible for the company’s health services. Under the new proposed provisions, these doctors with the power to issue a preventive withdrawal certificate can henceforth be selected by the employer alone and not be affiliated with Public Health. In doing so, they can act without having to collaborate with Public Health and other health actors. These proposed changes undermine the principles of parity and undermine the stewardship of Public Health in terms of prevention.
Modernization or going back?
Even if pregnant or breastfeeding workers are kept in employment longer and the days of compensation are on the decline, the Quebec Employers Council, in 2021, considers it preferable to remove them from the workplaces and to relieve employers of their responsibilities in this area.
Recall that at the time, the Parti Québécois understood that the only way to promote equality between men and women in the labor market was to include workers with their specificity in the Act respecting health and safety. work.
Real modernization in occupational health and safety cannot be achieved without respecting the participatory and joint principles of the current occupational health and safety regime. We invite Minister Boulet to seize the opportunity of reform in occupational health and safety to guarantee for good to pregnant or breastfeeding workers the right to a healthy and safe job.
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