Letter to the Editor: Safety in the workplace: The right to refuse oppressive work

By Justin Rhoden

During a COVID-19-less summer, I sat reading in a coffee shop in the heart of downtown Toronto when a young man, seemingly homeless and destitute, barged into the store. Just by his unconcerned movements, I could sense the despair he feels as he angrily grabbed some snacks off a shelf and charged his way out. The young woman at the cash register immediately notices this and tries to apprehend him. When she failed, she swiftly prompted to call the police to report this.

I have often relayed this encounter when discussing the ways people are criminalized while simultaneously being deprived and marginalized within Canadian society. In that instant, I could not morally understand this young woman’s conviction to have a starving man apprehended and most likely incriminated for being coerced into such a desperate situation. I wondered if she lacked compassion or empathy or was just doing her job— I’m choosing to give her the benefit of the doubt.

Since that summer, I have increasingly noticed those tensions in various workplace settings in which employees are required to mediate the systemic violence individuals and communities face as a part of their job.

In these moments, I am reminded that it is essential to recognize that the violent structures we fight to dismantle are maintained and functional because of individual participation—everyday people, whose mundane work interactions collectively sustain the marginalization communities experience.

The most resonating of these memories to me is a film I watched about the Ferguson Riots. In a heartbreaking scene, Black protesters stood face to face with police officers from Ferguson’s local police department, separated by a single chalked line. I frequently default to the powerful imagery of a Black female officer whose teary eyes capture the affliction of many marginalized people’s experience in work environments. Amid crises and the state inflicting violence on her community, her job demands her to be present on the side of the oppressors, no matter the emotional, psychological, or community impacts.

From what I witnessed, I can determine that she did not want to be there, or rather, she was standing on the wrong side. Nevertheless, this female officer, much like many people, rely on their employment to support themselves. In the day-to-day workplace settings, many people are faced with this contradiction of themselves to satisfy their material needs. This reality makes it unreasonable ever to ignore the material conditions many individuals face and the tensions this creates with their desire for themselves and their communities to be liberated from oppressive structures.

Given the current anti-racism climate in Canada, many institutions are championing discourses about inclusive and diverse hiring practices and workplace environments. While this plays a role in achieving social change, it is unethical to ignore the existing frameworks and power relations in the workplace that manufacture these tensions.

Hiring Black and Indigenous peoples in institutions may allow access to employment. Still, without providing the appropriate rights and freedoms, many will be coerced into participating in their oppression and that of their communities to maintain income. This reality involves daily moral and ethical dilemmas, omitting the culture and histories they embody and mediating and reinforcing inequities—ongoing harm to our communities and ourselves.

I believe that providing workers with ‘the right to refuse oppressive work’ will begin addressing this tension in the workplace.

Currently, the Government of Canada provides workers with three fundamental rights enforced in all work environments across Canada. These rights are the right to know what hazards are present on the job, the right to participate in health and safety activities, and the right to refuse unsafe work.

I believe that including the right to refuse oppressive work will allow workers to deny participating in oppressive practices without termination or threat to their material dependency. This provision is a step toward creating safe and anti-racist workspaces by combatting the workplace tensions that many racialized people experience daily and the impact on individuals and their communities.

Providing this as a fundamental right also involves developing appropriate frameworks that prioritize workers’ positionalities and the lived experiences they embody to inform how their work is performed. It is not enough that workers are solely able to identify and refuse their participation in oppressive actions, while others continue. Exercising this right to refuse should encompass transitions to anti-oppressive practices in any given space to support culturally and structurally safe work environments.

Such frameworks already exist in some capacity. The current government-mandated workplace safety guidelines dictate that employees have the responsibility to protect themselves, their co-workers, and the public who might be affected by their actions. At the same time, employers are responsible for providing a safe and healthy workplace, and so on. These rights and responsibilities at work often translate to employee reporting systems, the use of mandatory personal protective equipment, specialized training, and certifications.

I believe these mechanisms for ensuring physical safety in the workplace should expand to protect from the dangers of oppressive practices at work. As such, employees should be responsible for reporting actions that contribute to the structural harm of their communities and themselves and be provided with the appropriate mediums to express this. These identified safety hazards should be resolved by applying the relevant practices that negate workplace dangers.

Without incorporating this dimension of safe work, Black and Indigenous peoples have no guarantee that their work environments will be harmless or receptive to their lived experiences, communities, and the afflicting tensions present while seeking to address material needs.

I believe all stakeholders should advocate providing the right to refuse oppressive work. If the goal of inclusive and diverse workplace practices is to address systemic racism, then workers should be able to rightfully refuse to participate in their marginalization. This right to refuse is the right to ensure that peoples and their communities are safe from the profound harms of day-to-day work.