Forklift fatalities are all too familiar

Teen Crushed to Death by Forklift reads the headline today: a 16-year-old kid on the second day of his job at a Rona lumberyard in Alberta. Apparently Mitchell Tanner was hanging off the side of a forklift as it was being driven, and the vehicle tipped over on top of Mitchell.

The lumberyard manager told the Edmonton Journal that "the 2,300-kilogram forklifts at Rona are designed for one driver and no passengers." The Rona store manager added that "Tanner had already completed his job training when he died, including workplace safety training, but hadn't received forklift training because he was never expected to use one."

A forklift fatality again! I thought as I read the account. (One of the companies I partner with, The Woodbridge Group, is leading the way in some of their US plants by replacing forklifts with magnetic tracks - an innovative means of saving lives and increasing productivity in the auto industry.)

One comment left in the Facebook group dedicated to Mitchell is a powerful statement of the dangers of forklifts. Greg Rego, of Edmonton, writes:

"..being a forklift safety trainer it pains and frustrates me to see these senseless tragedy's in the workplace; primarily due to the lack of enforcement of the Occupational Health and Safety laws. We can only hope this tragedy will cause a movement in this province to prevent this from ever happening again!"

Huge increase in workplace deaths in Alberta

And as if a 16-year-old boy's senseless death wasn't bad enough, the Journal article goes on to state that in 2007, 154 Albertans died in workplace accidents, a 24-per-cent jump from 2006 - making last year the worst year for workplace fatalities since 1982.

What on earth could be making a Canadian province backslide to the dreadful death toll of 25 years ago?! Could it be the job boom that's struck that oil-rich province - are safety standards and inspections not keeping pacing with employment growth?

How can we, as caring Canadians, make sure this senseless dying of our young workers will stop or, at the very least, decrease dramatically?

Help me here, people - I lost my own teenage son on the second day of his job, just like Mitchell Tanner... I want to see these fatalities stop - and I'm getting impatient.