As a supervisor, you are responsible for seeing that all health and safety laws pertaining to your worksite are obeyed. You are required to:
Explain to your workers the legislation that affects them.
- Train your workers to perform their job safely.
- Enforce safety rules.
- Arrange for purchases, maintenance, repairs, etc. needed to restore safe conditions on the worksite.
- Shut down any operation where the conditions or methods of operation create a serious risk to injury.
- It is important that you be familiar with provisions of the Occupational Health and Safety Act regarding the worker's right to refuse imminently dangerous work. You must understand the worker's rights and responsibilities in order to respond appropriately in such a case. Responding appropriately also means you must know the employer's responsibilities as you are the one who must carry them out.
There are serious consequences if you do not obey health and safety regulations - even if you did not know about them. You risk having your company fined for violations of health and safety regulation and code. More importantly, you risk getting a fine or going to jail yourself if workers under your supervision are injured because of substandard conditions and acts.
What this means is that it is more than just a good idea to keep up on the laws that apply to your crew. It's not something you can plan to do "as soon as there's a little extra time" knowing the legislation that pertains to your worksite is an essential part of your job as a supervisor.