Consulted to Death

Twenty years ago governments across Canada adopted–with much ballyhoo-new occupational health and safety laws. Consulted to Death shows how the laws failed to deliver on their promise because, despite their rhetoric, they refused to adequately confront the issue of power in the workplace.

AUTHOR

Doug Smith

Doug Smith has written or co-written ten books, including How To Tax a Billionaire: Project Loophole and the Campaign for Tax Fairness, Consulted to Death: How Canada’s Workplace Health and Safety System Fails Its Workers, and Joe Zucken: Citizen and Socialist, which won the Manitoba Historical Society’s Margaret McWilliams Award. “As Many Liars” was nominated for the 2003 Manitoba Book Awards’ Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award for Non-fiction.

Reviews

For centuries workers have paid the ultimate price – their health – so that corporations could be productive, competitive and profitable. Consulted to Death presents a vivid sketch of the struggles workers and unions have waged to ensure that workers return home healthy and safe at the end of the workday. It provides an excellent context for our present struggles in health and safety, and is an inspiring read. – Lynn Bueckert, Director, Occupational Health and Safety, British Columbia Federation of LabourThis lucid and compelling book should make everyone who is concerned about workers’ health and safety pause and rethink the strategies they have been pursuing. Smith does not pretend to provide all the answers, but he poses the questions that must be addressed if we are to advance the struggle for healthier, more democratic workplaces in the twenty-first century. – Eric Tucker, Osgoode Hall Law School