Hard Hats & Hard Heads
Turbaned Sikhs and hard hats.
Seems like a natural headline.
Gets the blood boiling right away.
Are they going to pay the insurance and health costs when one of "them" gets bonked on the head? And so on.
The only problem is that's not the story.
The story is that these guys have been working in that mill and in the industry for years. All of a sudden, the company changes the policy and demands hard hats where they never demanded them before.
As we say in bad sit-coms, "What's up with that?"
Sikhs have been working in the forestry industry here in BC in large and significant numbers for over a hundred years.
Interfor needs to more fully explain the rationale for this change in policy.
2 comments:
I remember when helmet laws first came into effect for motorcycles.
The most signicant change afterwards was motorcyclists started riding a lot faster, because it became more comfortable do drive at high speed wearing a helmet.
Motorcycles got a lot faster; there were the superbikes and sport bikes capable of 200kph plus.
There was no signicant change in the death rate, it actually went up.
A comparison between American states with helmet laws and those without, show no difference in the death rate, but there were many more helmeted motorcylists ending up with spinal chord injuries.
No government will ever admit they were wrong because they would become liable for all those paraplegics and quadraplegics.
Sometimes it is best to leave things as they were.
That may be true for motorcycle riding, but when it comes to a workplace environment where a load of lumber, or metal could conceivably fall on a worker's head, not to mention other possibilities, I think that is a totally different scenario. Safety rules on the job should take precedence over religion. As well, not all Sikhs consider the turban to be a religious requirement; it has more to do with cutting one's hair than the wearing of a turban. It is more cultural and a means of identification as a Sikh.
June
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