By Heidi Mitton 

Truro, Nova Scotia - I was eight years old on May 9, 1992, when my father was summoned to the rescue team at the Westray mine. I have patchy memories of my brother, sister and I milling around in the homes of relatives with news coverage and my concerned mother drifting in the background. All day long, it seemed, the television was broadcasting the mine's damaged entrance and wreckage. I remember trying to see if we could catch a glimpse of my Dad. As children, we didn't understand the risk our father was facing. And we certainly didn't understand why, though my Dad would eventually make it home to his family, the twenty six men who had been underground when the methane gas explosion went off would not be going home to theirs.

Even as adults, the official reason for the disaster must strike us as senseless. The poor design and ventilation of the mine were insufficient in keeping methane and coal dust at acceptable levels, so much so that the methane detectors had been regularly disabled because they were sounding too often. From its opening in September 1991, the mine was feared to be very dangerous. Worker concerns and safety abuses were overlooked by management, and the Departments of Natural Resources and Labour neglected to enforce safety regulations. The disaster could have been prevented, and in the words of the report from the public enquiry into the disaster, the mine was “an accident waiting to happen.” Though charges were pressed against some members of the company's management, no convictions were made.

I often wonder if, bearing witness to the aftermath of the explosion, the rescue teams pondered such blatant disregard for their fellows, or the possibility that they could be in similar danger. The legislative legacy of the disaster, the federal Westray Law, holds corporations criminally liable if workers are injured or killed. But today, Canadians post-Westray are not any safer in the workplace. On average, five Canadians still die every day from work-related injuries or illnesses, a forty-five per cent increase from 1993. It seems our priorities have changed little.

These tragedies reflect the perils of a capitalist economy ever more concerned with profit, and less concerned with the well-being of its citizens or the ecological systems that sustain us. The root causes of worker fatalities are distorted because the majority of us...