Les comités de santé et de sécurité dans les petites entreprises multiethniques de Montréal

Abstract

Considerable scientific literature has been published about occupational health and safety committees (OHSC) and their effectiveness. However, none have looked at OHSCs in small multiethnic businesses (SB), and this despite the important role they play in large cities like Montréal. The present article looks at the factors that encourage the presence and proper functioning of OHSCs in multiethnic firms in Montréal. Interviews with OHS managers from 28 SBs in Montréal and with occupational health professionals working in these firms allowed us to conduct this secondary analysis about OHSCs. It is worth noting that these interviews were conducted as part of a study on strategies for promoting OHS in SBs that hire a large number of immigrant workers (Gravel et coll., 2013). The results indicate that the factors that fostered the establishment and proper functioning of OHS were : the size of the business, the activity sector, the presence of a union, the presence of arguments favourable to OHS, the type of business, the presence of an OHS manager who was in a human resource or OHS position and who had university training in one of these two fields or in administration. Two other factors likewise contributed : university training for the owner and the use of external OHS services. The results call into question the belief that SBs do not have OHSCs, especially those that hire numerous immigrants. In the latter, there was a phenomenon of ethnic homogeneousness within the hierarchy. The owners, managers, and workers often all came from the same country. In these businesses, the OHSCs had usually been set up recently and were not generally joint parity committees.

Keywords

• occupational health and safety committee (OHSC)
• occupational health and safety (OHS)
• small businesses (SB)
• immigrant workers
• participation