Literacy can save lives on job sites

Today is BC’s Day of Mourning for workers killed or injured on the job. The purpose of the Day of Mourning is to remember and honour workers who were killed or injured in the workplace. It is also a day for government to commit to improving health and safety in the workplace.

For most of my adult working life I’ve been employed in a small NGO, or non-profit as we more often say in the literacy world. We don’t have a lot of health and safety talks or procedures outside of fire escape routes and strict protocols within our small commercial kitchen. And so, worker safety isn’t often on my radar.

However, when I stop and think about people being killed and injured on the job I realize it’s touched my life more than I think. A friend’s husband was badly injured in the Burns Lake mill explosion. Their lives changed drastically in that one moment. They’ve fought many battles these past two years to get the medical support he has needed to treat the burns on his body. And they’ve struggled to deal with the mental health issues that accompany such a trauma. A few years ago I helped another friend organize to make changes to health and safety procedures in farms in the Fraser Valley. Many of the workers lived with fear and low literacy and wouldn’t admit that they couldn’t understand the safety procedures written on signs or in manuals. The result was continual injuries, or people always at risk of being injured. I think back to my childhood and remember the many funerals I attended because a relative or neighbour had died in an underground mining accident.

When I stop and think on this Day of Mourning I realize that many people are affected by worksite accidents every day. In B.C. alone, 128 people died on the job last year. And an average of nearly 2,800 injury claims are reported each week; 21 long-term disability claims are accepted every working day and 3 work-related deaths are accepted each week. How does this relate to a literacy lens you may ask?

Alison Campbell, principal research associate at the Conference Board of Canada says that applying a “literacy lens” to workplace health and safety can have a broad impact on a workers safety. When I think of the industrial development projects in northwest communities I stop and think about literacy in the workplace and how increasing literacy in the work place can change the lives of many. In fact, not just change but save lives. It seems like a real easy and simple solution.

I’ve pasted an article from the Canadian Occupational Standard’s website. It’s about a 2010 Conference Board of Canada’s research study on health and safety. I think it’s worth the read, especially today the Day of Mourning for workers killed or injured on the job.

Employers have a higher confidence level when it comes to workers’ ability to comprehend health and safety policies, than the workers themselves, and this is creating a gap that can increase the risk for workplace injuries.

This is according to a new study released by the Conference Board of Canada entitled, What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You: Literacy’s Impact on Workplace Health and Safety. The study included a survey of 319 respondents, representing 136 employers, 126 workers, 26 union representatives, 19 immigrant service providers and 12 aboriginal service providers.

Sixty-four per cent of employer respondents felt that their workers understood health and safety practices fully or to a large extent. However, when the same question was posed to workers, only 40 per cent of them agreed.

“This gap in perception creates the potential for accidents in the workplace to occur,” says Alison Campbell, principal research associate at the Conference Board of Canada. “Because employers are confident in their workers’ literacy levels, they are less likely to see the need for training to upgrade employees’ knowledge and understanding of health and safety practices.”

Campbell says the research aims to raise employer awareness of the importance of literacy as it relates to their workers’ health and safety. This two-year project was funded by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, and included a literature review, national survey, interviews with stakeholders and case studies.

Ten companies across Canada participated in the workplace literacy improvement case study: Abbot Point of Care in Ottawa; Atlantic Health Sciences Corporation in Saint John; Bristol Aerospace in Winnipeg; City of Vancouver; De Beers Canada, Yellowknife; Keyera Energy, Calgary; Lilydale Inc., Edmonton; Loewen Windows, Steinbach, Manitoba; Omega 2000 Cribbing Inc., Calgary; and Robinson Paperboard Packaging, Mississauga, Ont.

“We do know that workplace health and safety is a critical issue for Canadian employers, and they already invest quite a bit in health and safety capital investments and training,” Campbell says. About 10 per cent of Canadian employers’ training budgets go towards health and safety, she adds.

Campbell says that the confidence of employers about the level of literacy of their workers stem from the fact that many companies are unaware that they have a literacy skills issue.

Typically, companies would create health and safety manuals and documents that they would then communicate to their employees, without necessarily looking at the workers’ literacy skills that may hinder their understanding and implementation of the health and safety policies, she explains.

“We know from international survey results that foreign-trained Canadians lack the literacy skills they need to perform most jobs well, and that low literacy skills can hinder employees from understanding how to perform their jobs safely and also from understanding their right to refuse unsafe work,” she says.

When incidents occur, the typical response is to review policies and practices, rather than verifying whether individuals have the literacy and basic skills to fully understand or follow set procedures, the report says.

Two-way communication

One health and safety practitioner agrees that the issue of literacy is critical to workplace safety, but notes that the more important aspect of this is ensuring that the workers can communicate back to the employer about issues related to safety.

This is particularly true when language barriers impede that ability to communicate, says Alan Quilley, president of Sherwood Park, Alta.-based OHS consulting firm, Safety Results Ltd. “We have to constantly think about not just getting the message to them, but how do you get it back.”

When it comes to workplace safety, employers have done a good job in communicating the message to their employees in a manner that they can understand, says Quilley. The challenge is getting the workers to communicate and articulate their questions and ideas about workplace safety “because that is really when safety excels.”

“If you’ve got some questions or if you’ve got some process input that you’d like to have on how we’re managing that, that’s also pretty important to the safety challenge,” he says.

When employers don’t pay attention to the need for enabling workers to communicate their thoughts about workplace health and safety policies —hiring a translator, for example — then that’s when communication break down happens, increasing the risk of injury or accidents.

“That, I think is the common shortcoming in all of these studies and all of these results, where we’re focused on the delivery and not on the feedback. Communication is two-way and that is the big problem, Quilley says.

Seven steps

Campbell says the study did look at “broader definition” of literacy and looked at both communication and language skills. “So there’s understanding the policies, and then there’s being able to act on them in emergencies and things like that.”

As a course of action for employers, the Conference Board recommends looking at their health and safety policies from a “literacy lens”.

In particular, the Conference Board outlines seven steps to take as an organizational action plan:

•    Review past incidents through “a literacy lens”

•    Review organizational health and safety policies and practices

•    Examine policies and practices from the perspective of an individual with lower literacy levels

•    Brainstorm solutions to help users understand health and safety documents

•    Measure and track health and safety incidents and improvements

•    Recognize outcomes

•    Reward efforts to improve literacy skills.

Making change through learning partnerships

I’m working with Sarah and Beth on the final report for a 2-year grant that allowed us to explore how women can move out of economic insecurity. As we write the final report, I’m re-listening to the voices of women who shared their stories with us. A persistent theme in these stories is how young women don't see themselves as agents of their own lives. These women might be moms on social assistance, without a safe place to live, maybe with substance abuse problems and ongoing different male partners coming in and out of their lives. These women do not see themselves as “in the driver's seat”, as Lynn Newberry, retired high school administrator and current trustee for our school district, describes. Instead they are shaped by poverty and social assistance, by the men in their household and by the immediate needs of their home, children and family. In these situations, frustration comes easily and resilience is not able to grow. These women are simply surviving, not building a better life for themselves or their families.

In talking with other literacy educators I hear this is not unusual. Many people building literacy skills are tired and overwhelmed with the stresses and angst that comes from poverty. Literacy educators are constantly finding ways for learners to push through this veil of exhaustion and frustration in order to gain the skills, knowledge and confidence to change his/her circumstances. Many a literacy organizer is working at the systems level to change policies and programs so they influence the lives of learners in positive ways.

As I write my sections of the report I think of the words of Paulo Friere. He once said that for education to be liberating, for learners to become an agent of their own lives, there must be a genuine partnership between learner and teacher. They have to be in the business of educating together. This requires a set of principles:

Equality: the relationship is between equals. Nobody’s view is more important or valuable than anyone else. Although the teacher and learner hold different roles each person’s thoughts and beliefs are held to be of equal value.

Choice: In this learning partnership one person does not make decisions for another. Each makes their individual choice and decisions are made together.

Conversation: In this learning partnership one individual does not dominate or control the relationship. Partners engage in conversation and they learn together as they explore and articulate ideas.

Praxis: Together the learner and teacher put ideas in to action. It means the teacher enables the learner to have more meaningful experiences by reflecting on the impact of the new content they are learning within their own lives.

I agree full heartedly with this approach to literacy and yet I am aware how difficult it is put in to practice. This approach to education requires an understanding of power dynamics in relationship, it requires an understanding that literacy is a vehicle that moves us to an imagined future, and that it must be the learner who is imagining the future and seeing her/himself in that future. This means that the literacy “program” cannot be fully designed until the relationship between learner and teacher has started. It means the literacy educator must be open to building a genuine relationship with each learner. It also means that educators must be aware of their own values and principles. This requires a lot of work even before the teacher and learner start a new relationship together. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed about how to do this and then I think of three women who demonstrate this approach in their work. And I rest more easily.

Kate Nonesuch demonstrates how she has been a partner of many students as they engaged in the business of educating. Her blog at katenonesuch.com is one of the most inspiring and useful teaching tools I’ve come across. I think it could become mandatory reading for anyone new to the business of literacy education.

Sandi Lavallie is as unorthodox as an educator can be. She is brilliant, spontaneous, curious and fun and works alongside every student that crosses her path. I’ve evaluated many programs in Houston and Sandi is always referred to as the “go to person.” Sandi sees the students as equal. She embodies the principles mentioned above. Sandi taught me the true meaning of praxis.

Janet Melanson resists calling herself an educator. She is a youth worker. Janet works alongside young people in our social enterprise and her practice helps me understand Friere’s words. Janet is a genuine partner in the business of educating. She believes that the goal of her literacy work is to help young people find self worth, because when that happens all other learning paths open up. Janet listens, nurtures, gently pushes and draws out of each young person a set of skills and knowledge and confidence for them to become who they dream of becoming.

These three women give me hope. I believe they bring hope to the learners that they partner with. Instead of only being shaped by poverty, these literacy educators are helping the learner view their lives through a different lens. The partnership helps leaners see themselves as they dare to dream themselves. It takes them above and beyond the immediate struggles. Because of genuine partnerships the learner, and teacher, are moving beyond surviving and together they are building resilient people and resilient communities.

Literacy leads to engagement

A few years ago we were involved in a national project where literacy practitioners were supported to look at an element of their work through a research lens. Storytellers’ Foundation was the community organization on a BC team that also included Leona Gadsby and Marina Niks. There were other teams from across Canada doing similar work. The national project was called, “Connecting the Dots”. We learned a lot. This research project gave us space away from the busyness of “doing” literacy to give attention to something that has always been of interest to us at Storytellers’. We were able to research about the interplay between literacy and social capital.

Often people think of literacy as a tool in developing our human capital. Human capital can be thought of in contrast to financial capital. Financial capital is the cash, stocks and bonds that reside in bank accounts. Human capital is the stocks of knowledge, skills and personal attributes, which reside within us. Human capital is embodied in our investment in education or job training. If you agree with this definition of human capital then it seems to make sense that literacy and human capital are intricately connected.

We live and work in the Upper Skeena region. All our communities are on the Gitxsan First Nation territories. Most of the people who access our community literacy and learning programs are members of the Gitxsan First Nation. The goal of our literacy and learning program is to support people to build the knowledge, skills and confidence to become engaged citizens. For us to achieve success we needed to know more about citizenship. For the Gitxsan First Nation a citizen must have strong social capital to be engaged. Social capital is embodied in our investment to have reciprocal relationships with our families and neighbours. It means, for us, that literacy plays a role in increasing a person’s capacity for unpaid work. It’s not always about getting a job. Social capital is also a contrast to financial capital. Social capital describes the structures and quality of social relationships between people. The Connecting the Dots project helped us to learn how our literacy work can contribute to building social capital. This led to us creating a social capital engagement rubric:

SOCIAL CAPITAL

GOODWILL - SENSE OF BELONGING - SOCIAL TRUST - INCLUSIVENESS - CIVIC RESPONSIBILITY - RECIPROCITY

Social capital is a way of looking at the trusting relationships we have in our personal lives and in our community life.

1	2	3	4	5	6
AVOIDANCE	AWARENESS	WAKE UP	ENGAGEMENT	ACCESS	ORGANIZER
“I’m disconnected”	“I see beyond myself”	“I influence”	“I effect change”	“I’m needed”	“I’m part of the glue”

This rubric helps us name and measure how and when we are building social capital and how, through this deepening of relationship with others, we are able to engage more in our community. We’ve learned that the more people engage the stronger their social capital and the more a person has social capital the greater their commitment to act for the wellbeing of our community. This means we immerse our literacy programming in community development work. Since we’ve done this we have witnessed people entering our programming seeing themselves as only a learner but soon we see them tapping in to their capacity as leaders and seeing themselves as agents in making change, not only in their own lives but in the lives of our community. This is having a powerful and political impact in our community.

For example, it is that time of year when we are starting our seeds indoors. We’re gearing up for another season of growing and eventually selling produce. One of our literacy programs is known as Youth Works. Youth Works is a social enterprise that sells sandwiches to the local gas bar and sells food at the local Farmers Market. Youth Works also takes young adults on to the territories to harvest wild foods, especially berries, that they turn in to delicious jams and jellies. The outcome of Youth Works is to nurture young people who have been pushed to the margins to become happy, engaged citizens who are in control of their lives and the life of their community.

As we support these young adults to progress on the Social Capital Engagement rubric, we encourage them to engage in real life community projects. This takes courage.

Courtney has courage. Courtney takes great pride in selling at the Farmers Market and helping to run our local chapter of the BC Farmers Market coupon program where anyone struggling economically can get coupons that replace cash to buy local food. Courtney and her Youth Works counterparts are building relationships while doing this. It means while they engage, they build social capital with their neighbours. Courtney and her counterparts are building a food community where famers, producers and, the original hunters and gatherers, are starting to work and live together. When we see Youth Works bringing more of their peers (mainly Gitxsan and Wet'suwet'en) to the market not only as consumers but also as sellers, we see a future. The learner has become a leader and is shaping the social, economic and political future of our community.

Youth like Courtney are blending the gathering from the territories with healthy backyard gardens and small-scale community gardens. And they are showing a pride. They are taking a lead role and they are finding a place for themselves inside their own territories. This is an exciting story at any Farmers Market.  When we think of our recent history in the Upper Skeena, this story becomes a story of how literacy can be political and mobilizing. The influences of colonialism, industrialization and corporatism has resulted in an even higher incidence of people not producing food locally in an area where malnourishment is common and where being able to feed ourselves was historically commonplace.  The legacy has left a difficult relationship between local “foodies” and First Nation people. Now that is changing because of people like Courtney. Our market is bringing together First Nation and non-first nation. It is bridging culture, socio-economic class and it is healing wounds. Our market demonstrates a local living economy where harvesting from the land can be unpaid work and it can allow youth like Courtney to engage in the cash economy. Courtenay’s story is a literacy story. It demonstrates that literacy is a key lever in building community capacity.  And it highlights that when the learner is supported to participate in community life, and increase social capital, they become agent. The quality of their relationships mobilizes them to continue to engage.