When tragedy first strikes a community, support and empathy can be found in abundance. Greater Sudbury residents have collectively wrapped their arms around the friends and families of two fallen miners, Jason Chenier and Jordan Fram, to let them know they do not walk this road of grief alone.
Anyone who has experienced loss knows that there comes a time when that road becomes lonely, confusing and, perhaps, even frightening. When the immediacy of the crisis fades away, those who grieve are sometimes forgotten. As a community of supporters, we need to remember this. That’s why it’s so encouraging to learn about a program that is in place through United Steelworkers (USW), called the Emergency Response Team.
The team focuses on helping family members and workers immediately after an incident, but also focuses on following up with them for a year afterward to provide support. When an incident happens, the team is notified through the local union.
Al McDougall, Emergency Response Team co-ordinator with the USW, recently visited Sudbury to assist with the relatively new program following the fatalities at Vale’s Stobie Mine June 8. (Read the story on NorthernLife.ca)
“Everybody’s here right now for the family and the members of the union,” McDougall, a former Greater Sudbury miner, said. “But what happens to the family in six weeks from now? Two months from now? Seven months from now? We just don’t go there when everybody else does ... We go there when there’s no one else thinking about them.”
The purpose of the Emergency Response Team is unique in that it will assess all catastrophic injuries and workplace fatalities involving USW members, as well as assist families and co-workers financially, legally and emotionally. They take a step back and fully assess what needs to be done on a holistic scale.
The confidential nature of the team’s work means they can’t discuss specific examples of how families have benefited in Greater Sudbury, but McDougall gave an example where he dealt with an incident in Alabama where a young man died while using a machine on the job. The victim’s father-in-law worked on the same machine, on a different shift.
Following the fatality, the company wanted the father-in-law to continue working on the same machine. McDougall said he talked with the company to find an alternate arrangement.
It wasn’t an earth-shattering solution, but it made the world of difference to one man and his ability to continue on with his work, in spite of tremendous tragedy.
It’s too bad that many workplaces lack this kind of support — support that is empathy-filled, logical and required.
We as workers, are due for a correction. According to Human Resources and Social Development Canada, one in four Canadians work 50 hours per week or more, compared to one in 10 a decade ago. We are working harder and for longer hours.
Many of us in the workforce live in a realm that moves from fighting one fire after another. Rare are the days when employees can take a step back and assess what needs to be done — we are too busy jumping from hot spot to hot spot, without keeping the end game in mind.
From the perspective of an ideal employer, the end game is usually to operate a successful business that is dynamic, responsive to the market, as well as financially and professionally rewarding to all. From an employee’s perspective, it should be the same.
But we all know there is a disconnect. Times of crisis, such as a workplace accident, brings this dichotomy to the forefront. We have a lot of work ahead of us in terms of figuring out how to balance the needs of people with the needs of doing good business.
That’s why it’s so important that we as workers remember that we too are a community of people who can support one another over the long term.
The USW’s emergency response team assists families and co-workers with things as simple as making phone calls on the families’ behalf, dealing with medical papers and insurance documents, or accessing resources and helping families with legal assistance.
In its simplest form, this is what community is all about. Caring for one another in our community need not be complicated. All it requires is simple action, with meaningful purpose.
Wendy Bird is managing editor of Northern Life.
Posted by Vivian Scinto.
