After the Hogg’s Hollow tragedy of 1960, the Ontario government enacted legislation to improve safety on construction sites. There were major improvements but still not enough was actually done. The fact is that construction sites are dangerous places. In January 2014, the Globe and Mail published a list of the ten most dangerous jobs. Many people think policing or being a firefighter is dangerous. Those jobs did not make the list. Logging and commercial fishing are numbers one and two while roofers ranked fourth, structural steel fifth, power line installation and repair seventh, and construction tenth. It has always been thus and that is why unions fight so hard for safety issues. It really is a matter of life and death.
To Gallagher, job safety was of paramount importance. He made it a personal crusade. Every time he considered a project unsafe he would shut it down, put members around it with signs declaring “Job Unsafe,” and call the news media to get maximum exposure to the cause. He even hired a full-time safety representative, Norm Pike.
In the beginning Gallagher received a lot of news coverage for his cause but over time the interest faded. There were two problems with his campaign. First, there had been no real improvement in safety laws. Second, the shutdowns were expensive for the union because members doing picket duty for safety reasons were paid by the local. At the time, I was the secretary treasurer of the local. Our finances were so tight we often scrambled to meet payroll. Safety, however, was too important to abandon. I had to think of another way: to change the law. To achieve that, we needed the support of all major labour bodies. I decided to send a letter to the three major labour organizations, the Ontario Federation of Labour, the Provincial Building Trades Council, and the Toronto Building and Construction Trades Council, inviting them to a meeting at my small office to talk about safety. I did this because I remembered my conversations with Ed Boyer who told me if you want to change something, change the law.
To my surprise, all three labour federations demonstrated a strong interest in this vital issue and came to our meeting. This was a big kudo because I was still just a kid and it was like the mountains coming to Muhammad. Our plan was to change the law, so I thought we should have a lawyer. I asked Syd Robin and he sent along a young lawyer named Ray Koskie. A committee was established with representatives from all three labour organizations. A few months later, the committee came up with thirty recommendations. The two most important were the right of a worker to refuse to work in unsafe conditions and the authority of a safety inspector to stop the work if he or she deemed the job unsafe. Nowadays, these rights are considered of cardinal importance but in those days we were breaking new ground. The committee’s recommendations were included in a brief that was presented to the Ontario government. Most of our recommendations were adopted into law. Gallagher’s safety campaign and the publicity he generated were instrumental in this victory: his untiring efforts raised the profile of the issue and got the ball rolling. What he started saved many, many lives and we are beholden to him.
Safety remains a tricky issue on construction sites and it requires constant vigilance. Sometimes the problem is not lapses in standard practices but the standard practices themselves. Case in point, subway tunnels. In those days, most tunnels, including the subway tunnels, were excavated using a pressurized air system to prevent underground water from flooding the tunnels. This was the system being used at the Hogg’s Hollow site but on larger projects they were much more sophisticated. At the entrance of each tunnel were heavy airlocks to contain air pressure up to fifty atmospheres. At the entrance, there was a chamber for compression and decompression purposes. Each miner had to undergo a process to prevent the bends, much like scuba divers do when they prepare to surface after breathing compressed air under water and dealing with the pressure of the ocean itself. Working with compressed air is a dangerous job if not regulated properly or if the rules are ignored. The problem back then was that there were no clear rules, partly because we knew nothing about the effects of working with compressed air for any length of time.
In fact, it took until 1969, when Dr. George Gamarra, doing his internship at Toronto East General Hospital, approached our local asking for funding to start a study for compressed air work. We agreed immediately. He placed rabbits at various atmospheric pressures and conducted a number of experiments on them with compression and decompression times. He then studied and dissected the rabbits’ livers to determine the effect of the compressed air. The only similar studies that had been conducted before were those of various navies, in particular the U.S. Navy.
Here’s how Liberal MPP D. M. DeMonte (Dovercourt) raised some of Dr. Gamarra’s findings in the Ontario Legislature on February 25, 1969:
Dr. Gamarra of the East General Hospital, Mr. Speaker, who has specialized in de-compression sickness, says that a man can be exposed to compressed air for several months without showing any signs or symptoms. Then, in a moment, he might develop tell-tale signs of the illness: the pain in the joints, the itching skin, the difficulty in breathing and the tiredness, possibly even bleeding from the nose or ears. Furthermore, these symptoms might be delayed for as much as two years after a man leaves the tunnel. How, then, does a lay workman prove his case in the absence of back-up medical opinion in this new field?
This medical specialist is vociferous in his call for a complete set of X-rays before a man enters caisson work. Otherwise, there can be no basis for future comparison. The cause of new lesions cannot be pinned down. He says: “Hardly a man working under compressed air in Toronto has had previous X-rays. I don’t recall anyone having been examined radiologically. This creates a problem, not only for the compensation board, but also for the worker, because there are several other factors which can resemble the same type of lesion.”
Dr. Gamarra came up with a chart with precise time periods for compression, decompression, and time allowed to work under such conditions according to the atmospheric pressure being used—the higher the atmospheric pressure, the shorter the work shift and the longer the period for compression and decompression.
Our findings were presented to the Ontario Ministry of Labour. By coincidence, right at that time there was a front-page story which propelled our cause up the ladder. One of our tunnel workers had been arrested for what was thought to be drunk driving. However, his condition was not due to alcohol but to the bends. He was rushed by helicopter to a Buffalo hospital which had a hyperbaric chamber since none of the Toronto hospitals had one back then. His case got considerable coverage.
Our compression schedule became law. Ontario became a leader in tunnel safety and our union negotiated good bonuses and shorter hours for people working in those conditions. These premiums were substantial. Miners had to undergo a medical checkup before working in a compressed air tunnel and, on a subway project, a doctor was present at the moment of hiring. Over time, compressed air work was phased out as the technology changed. The new method was a system of sinking pipes before the work began to suck and pump out the water continuously. We lost the bonus but the better news was that the technology eliminated the danger of having to work in compressed air.