Criteria for the annual Workers Health and Safety Centre (WHSC) student scholarship competition has just been posted.
 
This year WHSC is inviting high school students entering publicly-funded Ontario college or university in September 2017 to share their views in a poster or essay about who is responsible for ensuring safe and healthy work.
 
According to Ontario’s Occupational Health and Safety Act, various workplace parties have specific and general duties regarding worker health and safety. “What many people don’t understand though,” says Dave Killham, WHSC executive director, “is Ontario law places the most significant obligations on employers and supervisors.”
 
Still, workers are far too often blamed when they suffer injuries, develop illnesses or are killed at work. “This is often the case for young workers, including students, who continue to be wrongly branded as risk takers or just careless,” says Killham. “This misguided messaging leaves the impression it is their duty to ‘work safe’ when exposed to workplace hazards. This couldn’t be any further from the truth or what the law demands in terms of employer and supervisor duties to take every reasonable precaution to protect workers.”
 
For more than 30 years, WHSC training has delivered hazard-based, prevention-focused training to workplaces in all sectors of the economy. This emphasis has helped us to prepare employers and supervisors to meet and exceed health and safety law and worker representatives to participate in achieving safer, healthier work in a full and meaningful way.
 
Submissions are due no later than Friday, June 9, 2017, 4:00 pm. Please read the scholarship rules and application form very carefully. https://www.whsc.on.ca/Resources/For-Young-Workers/Scholarship-Bursaries
 
Up to six candidates will be selected and will be eligible to receive a $1,200 scholarship.
 
No portion of WHSC revenues or grants from the Ministry of Labour support this important awareness initiative. All student scholarships are financed solely through funds raised at the Annual Cliff Pilkey Invitational Golf Tournament.
 
Want to access WHSC Young Worker resources?

Want to know more about WHSC training programs and information services? To learn more:
 
Call:   1-888-869-7950 and ask to speak with a training services representative
Visit:   www.whsc.on.ca
Email: contactus@whsc.on.ca