Occupational health and safety

Follow these steps:

1. As soon as you become pregnant, make an appointment with your attending physician or professional monitoring your pregnancy.
2. Before going to your appointment, read pages 5 and 6 of Protective leave or reassignment for pregnant and  breastfeeding workers to learn about ergonomic, chemical, biological, physical and psychosocial risks. Identify any hazards in your work environment and discuss them with your physician or professional. If you work in more than one activity centre or institution, make sure you have identified hazards in each of your work stations.
3. If necessary, your professional or physician will give you a “preventive withdrawal and reassignment certificate for a pregnant or breastfeeding worker” (Certificat visant le retrait préventif et l’affectation de la travailleuse enceinte ou qui allaite). For the certificate to be valid, your attending physician or professional must consult the physician designated by the public health director for your region.
4. Give the completed form to your employer, who is required by law to act on it immediately.
5. You will be reassigned to duties that do not involve any hazards, or, if this is not possible, you will immediately stop working.

You will keep all of the rights and advantages associated with your job, exactly as if you had continued to perform your work. The Act respecting occupational health and safety and the national provisions of your collective agreement ensure that all rights and benefits related to a job are retained, as if you had remained at work, This will be the case whether you are reassigned to other duties or are on preventive withdrawal. Among other things, you can:

• accumulate vacation and sick days;
• accumulate seniority and experience;
• maintain your participation in life insurance and health insurance plans;
• apply for any job posted;
• obtain replacement assignments according to the availability you have indicated.

When you go back to work, your employer must reinstate you in your usual position.  Also, you can keep any assignment you had obtained before your preventive withdrawal or maternity leave if this assignment is still in effect when you go back to work.

If you are reassigned to new duties involving new hazards that are not identified in your preventive withdrawal certificate, you must see your physician again to get a second certificate identifying these new hazards, and repeat the process of applying for the For a Safe Maternity Experience program.

For more information, see the brochure: Preventive withdrawal for a pregnant or breastfeeding worker.

If you are reassigned to new duties involving one or more of the hazards identified in your certificate, you should ask the CNESST to study the issue and determine whether or not the reassignment complies with your certificate.

You can choose either to continue with the reassignment or to stop working. However, your right to an income replacement indemnity will not be recognized until a decision is made about the reassignment you are contesting, and the indemnity will be given to you retroactively only if the CNESST confirms that a hazard is present at the work station to which you were assigned.

The APTS can provide you with financial assistance while your case is under review. For more information, talk to your local executive or union counsellor.

For full details, see page 30 of the CNESST brochure:  Programme Pour une maternité sans danger.

For a summary in English, see the following pamphlets:
Safe working conditions for a safe maternity experience
The Safe Maternity Experience program and indemnities

When your employer knows, or ought reasonably to know, that an employee is exposed to physical or psychological violence in the workplace (this includes spousal, family or sexual violence), the employer is required to take measures to protect the employee.  This obligation is spelled out in the Act respecting occupational health and safety, which means your employer can’t argue there’s nothing they can do about it or that intimate partner violence is a private matter. 

For more information, see our factsheet Show Your Solidarity: Intimate Partner Violence and  the  Workplace

A micro-aggression is any adverse event that has (or may have) affected your health or safety in performing your duties, as well as any violent incident that you witness or experience, even if the incident does not result in time off from work.

Report the incident using this form provided by your employer or the ASSTSAS (the joint occupational health and safety association for the social affairs sector).

DOWNLOAD FORM

For more information, see our brochure Trivializing micro-agressions no more! and our special section on Micro-aggressions (in French).

Yes. According to Article 51 of the Act respecting occupational health and safety, your employer must take the necessary measures to protect employees’ health and ensure their safety and physical well-being.

For more information on what your employer can do to support your psychological health, see our brochure Protecting our psychological health: it’s our right.

According to the Chair in occupational health and safety management at Université Laval, the four most significant sources of stress at work are:

1. work overload
2. not being recognized or valued by colleagues
3. poor or non-existent relations with supervisors
4. not being informed and not being involved in decisions

For more information, see our brochure Psychological distress can be defused! (page 10)

Stress has many consequences, including

1. physical symptoms: abnormal blood pressure, muscular tension, stomach ulcers, cardiovascular disease
2. psychological symptoms: anxiety, irritability, exhaustion, insomnia, memory problems, difficulty concentrating

For more information, see our brochure Psychological distress can be defused! (page 11)

Québec’s public health institute, the INSPQ, has developed a tool to assess psychosocial risks at work (Grille d’identification des risques psychosociaux au travail). The tool provides a concise evaluation of a group’s psychological health, using widely accepted indicators to determine levels of psychological risk. We think you might find it useful as a source of ideas.

The following brochures also provide valuable information:

• Keeping watch to safeguard your psychological integrity
• Optimizing at what human cost?
• Psychological distress can be defused!

You may experience post-traumatic shock when you are exposed to a traumatic event in which you directly face death (for instance, the death of a CHSLD patient under adverse conditions), or experience fear of death or a threat to your physical integrity or someone else’s. The event is sudden, intense, unpredictable, and uncontrollable.
Neuropsychologist Sonia Bellefleur explains the symptoms of post-traumatic shock in a videoclip: “Comment vivons-nous les événements traumatiques?” (in French).

Work overload is a recognized risk factor: it is one of a number of psychosocial risk factors arising from the organization of work, management practices, employment conditions, and social relations. For more information, see our factsheet on work overload.

Personal protective equipment or PPE (including procedure and cup-shaped masks), and collective protective equipment (barriers, handrails, etc.), are protective materials that stand between the source of the risk and the person exposed to it. These are protective, not preventive, measures. 

See our factsheet (in French) for more information.

 Noise is a source of fatigue and stress; it acts on the nervous, cardiovascular and digestive systems. But, most importantly, prolonged exposure to a certain level of noise leads to hearing loss – a slow, insidious pathology.

See our factsheet (in French) for more information.

Musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) are painful conditions affecting muscles, tendons, and nerves, that can take the form of back pain, shoulder pain, tendinitis, bursitis, epicondylitis, low back sprain, or a herniated disk. You may develop a musculoskeletal disorder if you’re exposed to one of the following risk factors at work.

Ergonomic risk factors:

• restrictive or static postures, or repetitive movements
• a badly arranged work station
• excessive effort

Psychosocial risk factors:

• excessive workload
• lack of autonomous decision-making

How do musculoskeletal disorders develop?

Find out what musculoskeletal disorders are in a video featuring Claude Villeneuve, ergonomist at the CISSS de l’Outaouais (Direction de la Santé publique) (in French).

When you complete and file a report, that makes it possible to take corrective measures that will prevent a similar incident from occurring. It will also help you if you decide to present a claim for an employment injury on the basis of your rights under the Act respecting industrial accidents and occupational diseases. Your report is required to protect your rights if the length of your absence does not exceed 14 days or if no costs related to the injury are claimed.

Your report is a fundamental tool for reparation and prevention. Your institution’s form for this report should include space for you to describe the event and indicate when and where it occurred. For more information, see our brochure:

We recommend reporting circumstances in which you had a near miss – a close call that didn’t result in injury or material damage, but that made you say “Wow, that was close!” The goal is to formally make your employer aware of a situation that must be controlled or corrected as soon as possible to avoid a workplace incident or accident. Your report makes it possible to identify, assess and correct a non-compliant situation at work. For more information, see our brochure:

Do you think you have been exposed to COVID-19 and haven’t found a solution with your immediate supervisor? You can exercise your right to refuse to work.

The employer’s obligations under the Act respecting occupational health and safety apply during a pandemic. The employer must take the necessary measures to protect the health and ensure the safety and physical well-being of employees. Their obligations include:

• seeing that the institution has the appropriate lay-out and tools to limit the spread of the virus and protect workers;
• monitoring the state of the workplace to prevent the spread of the virus;
• providing safety equipment and ensure that it is kept in good condition;
• ensuring that no contaminant or dangerous substance adversely affects the health or safety of any person in the workplace, and ensuring that hygiene rules are in place;
• providing the worker, free of charge, with all personal protective measures and equipment (masks, gloves, visors, etc.), and ensuring they are used at work.

Despite these measures, you have the right to refuse to work if you have reasonable grounds to believe that a situation is dangerous to your health and safety. However, you cannot exercise this right if your refusal to perform the work would immediately endanger the life, health, safety or physical well-being of another person, or if the work is performed under normal conditions.

There are reasonable grounds if, for example, there are no preventive measures in place.

The danger does not have to be immediate; it can be a suspected risk of contracting COVID-19. Each case is analyzed individually. A distinction must be made between the risk inherent in your profession and the fact of working in inadequate conditions. The employer must rectify potentially dangerous situations.

To exercise the right to refuse to work, you must take the following steps.
1.    You must tell your department head and the APTS that you intend to exercise your right to refuse to work, and you must remain available on the worksite.
2.    You must explain the reason for your refusal.
3.    Your immediate supervisor must then contact the safety representative and notify a union representative.

Three reactions to your refusal are possible.
1)    The employer and the union consider your refusal justified. The necessary corrections must be made before you go back to work.
2)    The employer and the union do not agree on the existence of the hazard, or the corrections required. One of them must then request the intervention of the CNESST.
3)    The employer and the union decide there is no risk. You can either go back to work, or continue to refuse to work and call the CNESST at 1-866-302-CSST (2778). Before you do, be sure that you understand your union’s argument.
The CNESST can require that the necessary corrections be implemented and order your return to work. Its decision must be executed immediately, even if the parties don’t agree. You can file an application for review by the CNESST within ten days of the decision.
NOTE: Your employer can’t impose a disciplinary or administrative sanction if you exercise your right to refuse to work, unless you have acted abusively. 

If you’re on your own in a setting where you can’t be seen or heard by another person, and have no way of contacting anyone, then you probably fit the definition of “working alone.” See our factsheet for more information.

Causes include high levels of humidity and mould on ceilings and walls; inadequate room temperature and poor CO₂ levels; insufficient number of air changes.

The chief symptoms are headaches, sinus congestion, watery eyes or excessive tearing, dry throat, shortness of breath, nausea.

Talk to the occupational health and safety representative on your local APTS team to assess the situation and find out what you can do. Tell your institution’s safety officer about the problem; if there is no safety officer, tell the person responsible for occupational health and safety.

APTS resource people specializing in occupational health and safety provide local teams with assessment tools so that they can identify symptoms associated with poor air quality. A tool to inspect work environments is also made available to identify the most likely causes of poor air quality.

For more information, see pages 11 to 19 of the brochure on this topic: Clean air is vital to our health.