Safety Rule Clashes with Beliefs

April 22nd, 2006 by admin

FORT MCMURREY, ALBERTA - A major oilsands company broke human-rights laws when a worker was fired for having a beard, a Sikh man is alleging.
In a complaint before the Alberta Human Rights and Citizenship Commission, the man, Devinder Wadhwa, says Syncrude Canada discriminated against him by requiring him to shave. He argues the company had a duty to modify its no-beard policy when he was hired as an electrician at the UE-1 expansion project north of Fort McMurray back in July 2003.
“In my religion, I cannot shave my beard off,” said Wadhwa in a phone interview from his home in Calgary.
Beards, he noted in a court transcript, are “the symbol … of being a Sikh.”
For Syncrude, the beard policy is necessary “from a safety point of view,” said company spokesman Alain Moore. Construction workers, he pointed out, need to be able to put on a face mask called a Self Contained Breathing Apparatus (SCBA) in case of a gas leak.
Beards — even stubble — can break the seal between a mask and the face, said Chris Richards, a technician with Astec Inc., a safety-equipment company in Gregoire Park. “If you don’t have a seal, some of the toxins in the air can get into the mask.”
Wadhwa, though, says there are alternatives to Sycrude’s standard safety mask. When supervisors took him aside on his first day at Syncrude to explain the company’s clean-shaven policy, he offered in writing to buy himself what’s called a Puma respirator, another type of SCBA mask made by U.S.-based Survivair that works even with beards and other complications like eyeglasses.
Safety experts agree that masks compatible with beards do exist. A hooded respirator that pushes air out (and therefore blocks contaminated air from coming in) may be one option, said Kay Teschke, an occupational health and safety professor at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Whether the Puma respirator would have worked for Wadhwa at Syncrude depends on the level of danger he would have faced. Not all hooded masks protect against the most lethal gases. Sylvain Lefebvre, a manager with safety-equipment manufacturer North Safety Products in Montreal, said the masks his company sells won’t help someone exposed to a gas as deadly as hydrogen sulphide, which is sometimes present on oilsands sites.
Still, he said at least two U.S.-based companies are selling masks that do meet the deadly gas standard. His own company, he added, has developed one that should be on the market this year.
Arman Chak, a lawyer with the Alberta Human Rights Commission, said the province’s human-rights legislation requires an employer to prove that accommodating a worker complaining of discrimination would cause “undue hardship.” In Wadhwa’s case, that means Syncrude would have to show, for example, that an alternative mask was too expensive or not effective and that finding Wadhwa a safer job wasn’t possible.
Back in 2003, Wadhwa didn’t get a chance to find answers to those questions. One of his supervisors, Wadhwa said in the court transcripts, told him “no shave, no job” when he challenged the no-beard rule. A union steward took Wadhwa’s written request for a solution to management, which was refused. Wadhwa left the work site, boarded a bus back to Calgary and soon after filed his human-rights complaint alleging discrimination on religious grounds.
The case does have a big legal wrinkle, though. Syncrude is arguing it never hired Wadhwa and therefore isn’t responsible for the alleged discrimination. He was, in fact, hired by Casca Electric Ltd., a Fort McMurray company contracted by Syncrude to do work at the UE-1 site. It was Casca supervisors who fired him and, in court testimony, one of them, Ryan Heinish, said he never contacted Syncrude management that day to ask if a solution was possible. Being clean-shaven, he said, was a well-known policy for anyone working at Syncrude.
Syncrude, then, says it shouldn’t even be named in Wadhwa’s complaint. A Human Rights Commission panel ruled otherwise last November, but Syncrude has appealed that ruling to the Alberta Court of Queen’s Bench. The Human Rights Commission, in turn, is asking the court to dismiss the appeal.
For Wadhwa, his beef is with Syncrude, not Casca. “I was fired as per the regulations of Syncrude,” he said. “I have no problem with Casca. If Syncrude was to allow me (to work), Casca would have allowed me.”
The question of Syncrude’s responsibility in the case is crucial, said Chak, the lawyer with the commission. Because the company hires so many workers through subcontractors, he argued, letting it off the case would set a bad precedent. “To say that (those workers) are not protected by human rights puts all Albertans at a disadvantage.” Such a move, he said during a court hearing, would have lawyers telling companies: “…contract out your labour … then human rights don’t apply to you.”
Syncrude won’t comment on its appeal. “Recognizing it’s a matter that is before the courts, we don’t feel it’s appropriate to comment at this time,” said Moore, the company spokesman.
Justice Paul Chrumka of the Court of Queen’s Bench is expected to make a ruling on the case soon that will only address Syncrude’s bid to be taken off Wadhwa’s complaint. If the company loses its appeal, the complaint then goes to a Human Rights Commission hearing. If it wins the appeal, its name comes off the case, and the human-rights complaint goes forward against Casca. Chak, though, said the commission would likely appeal a win by Syncrude. “You’d pretty much see us in a long battle rather than a short battle in regards to this issue.”
Wadhwa, meanwhile, is unemployed. He has gotten work through the electricians’ union several times since 2003, including at another oilsands giant, Canadian Natural Resources Ltd. The no-beard rule at other companies, though, has kept some of the biggest job opportunities for electricians in Alberta closed to him.
At CNRL, there is no blanket no-beard rule for construction workers, said Lynn Zeidler, the vice-president for construction management at the company’s Horizon project. Still, she said there is a clear difference in safety requirements at a brand-new oilsands project like Horizon and an expansion one like Syncrude’s UE-1. In Syncrude’s case, an electrician might be working next to plant equipment that is already up and running, which causes an added danger from gas leaks.
For Syncrude, that danger justifies the no-beard rule. Wadhwa, though, says he’s an experienced electrician who knows what it takes to stay safe. “I’ve worked in all types of environments and I am very safety conscious,” he said.
For him, the no-beard rule is outdated. “Their policy is a very old policy which they’re just following blindly. They don’t want to change.”

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