MOOSE JAW — Property damage that city employees caused and motor vehicle collisions in which they were involved continue to be the two biggest safety issues city hall faces, according to a new report.
The human resources department investigated 30 safety incidents during the second quarter of 2024, the same number during the same period in 2023, according to a second-quarter report presented during the Aug. 26 regular city council meeting.
Incidents data for 2023 and 2024 from April 1 to June 30 showed:
- First Aid: 3 / 3
- Dangerous occurrence: 2 / 0
- Loss-time injury: 0 / 3
- No-loss time: 2 / 1
- Near miss: 4 / 6
- Motor vehicle collision (MVC): 5 / 7
- Property damage: 11 / 7
- Non-occupational (involving a non-employee): 3 / 3
“Safety hazards remain the trending hazard. The city is currently mitigating to prevent future occurrences. Incidents have been trending down since January,” the report said.
To correct these hazards, city hall plans to encourage the members of its occupational health and safety committee (OHC) to understand their skills and abilities better and look at new ways to connect the OHC throughout the city, the document continued.
Communication between buildings and groups could then become more seamless, while issues solved in one location do not need to arise in another before they are solved.
Incidents by department
The departments with the most safety incidents during Q2 were parks and recreation, environmental services, roadways and transit, with parks and rec committing the most property damage, transit requiring the most First Aid, and roadways, the water treatment plant, and environmental services causing — or being involved in — the most MVCs, the data showed.
“The highest incident rate is split between property damage and motor vehicle incidents. This is not surprising (because) many pieces of equipment travel around the city daily,” the report said. “This also makes it a focus on training and education to help prevent incidents in the future.”
City administration believes employee education is important in combatting the high incident rates in these two areas, the document continued. Therefore, safety services will continue to develop the safety management system and educate or train staff on how that system operates.
This training and education will focus on identifying the hazards around the work that staff perform and where more incidents occur.
Labour relations
CUPE filed four new grievances during the second quarter, while an arbitrator resolved five CUPE grievances and one Unifor grievance, the Q2 report said. As of June 30, there were seven active CUPE grievances, which was a decrease of two from Q1.
Council comments
City administration said a year ago that it would work to reduce safety incidents, specifically MVCs, but year-to-date, those incidents have doubled to six from three, which is concerning, said Coun. Doug Blanc. He wondered what steps administration was taking to address these problems.
TJ Karwandy, director of human resources, said city employees are not at fault for every incident because residents are sometimes to blame, such as when a vehicle clips the mirror off a bus.
“It does remain one of our trending categories and is certainly something we’re actively looking on, but not every incident means it’s … the fault of a city worker,” he added.
Coun. Jamey Logan said for future quarterly reports, he wanted city administration to separate the statistics of who causes MVCs — staff or residents — since that would clarify the data.
Coun. Kim Robinson expressed frustration with the safety report, pointing out that council agreed to hire a second safety officer several years ago so that person could help reduce incidents. However, that hasn’t happened, while city administration is now admitting that that data — and other Q2 data — may have been inaccurately recorded.
“I think we need to do a better job of quantifying this data so we can see … (whether) that extra safety person was worth the money to hire (them),” Robinson added.
The next regular council meeting is Monday, Sept. 9.
