Workplace violence and health: The law governing workers’ compensation and prevention in Quebec
This article examines Québec occupational health and safety law as it is applied to violence in the workplace. The first part, grounded in literature drawn from the social and health sciences, situates physical workplace violence in the broader context of workplace violence in general. It also identifies issues of relevance for the prevention of adverse consequences for the health of workers exposed to physical violence at work. It then applies classic legal methodology to determine if workers’ compensation and prevention legislation acts as an incentive for employers to ensure primary, secondary and tertiary prevention. The legal criteria that determine access to compensation are examined in light of our analysis of administrative tribunal case law (1985-2014), and we underline the comparative difficulty in accessing compensation for a mental health problem, as opposed to a physical injury, resulting from physical violence. We then turn to prevention mechanisms provided for in the Occupational Health and Safety Act, but also examine prevention incentives found in the workers’ compensation legislation. Results of a detailed analysis of cases based on experience rating provisions, as applied to requests to externalize costs for occupational violence are presented. This analysis suggests that administrative tribunal interpretations of experience rating provisions and others, added to the effect of the exclusionary provisions of workers’ compensation legislation, diminish the effectiveness of economic incentives for prevention initially imbedded in the legislation. We conclude by underlining the importance of ensuring that the legislated economic incentives provide incentives for primary, secondary and tertiary prevention, an objective that could be attained if the current legal provisions governing experience rating were interpreted and applied more judiciously.