Working Alone, Intersectionality, and the Caring Person Test for Safe Work Practices

Dave Elniski
Industry Advisor, Safety & Compliance

This article has been accepted for publication by CVSA’s Guardian magazine; their digital editions can be accessed at this link.

I was recently having coffee with some work friends where we were discussing safety in the workplace.  Somebody shared a story of a construction job they had in high school.

My friend said he was working on the roof of the complex one day without fall protection, an illegal but common practice at this job site.  When he got home that evening, his mom told him she had seen him working at height, that it didn’t look safe, and that she had called the employer. She threatened them with a call to the authorities if they ever sent her son to work without proper safety protection again.  I don’t know if the authorities were ever involved, but my friend ended up finishing the project with a fall restraint harness and lanyard.

My friend at that time lacked the experience and knowledge necessary to make the right safe work decision despite working alongside others. If he had been working unsafely while alone, the risk of a negative safety outcome would have been even higher due to the lack of workplace oversight – provided, in this case, by a concerned mother instead of a regulator – and the lack of available first responders should something go wrong.  Unfortunately, many people in the trucking industry perform hazardous work on a regular basis in near or complete isolation; their safety performance is monitored only by themselves.

Two factors make working alone extra hazardous: first, a complete reliance on the individual’s adherence to safe work practices and, second, the reduced ability of society to help.  The second factor is most obvious.  When someone gets hurt alone, no one is there to give first aid, and no one to call for help.

There is more to unpack with the first factor.  A call to 911 reduces the impact a bad thing has on someone, but working safely prevents the bad thing from happening in the first place.  I am deeply grateful for the modern emergency response system available to me throughout North America, but my gratitude for emergency workers doesn’t mean I take extra risks while driving or working alone.

A major challenge lone workers face is that their employer is primarily relying on them to ensure safe outcomes.  People face different pressures and have different inclinations that affect their willingness to follow certain rules.  I’ve known flatbed truckers who have elected to bypass a lumber mill’s automatic tarping station in favour of tarping alone on the side of the road.  Why?  Reasons cited have included time-related pressures, a frustration with the tarping station’s design, and pride in their ability to perform the work without “all the hand-holding” – a real quote, minus some expletives.

These decisions to choose more hazardous work were made at the intersection of multiple factors defining the person at that moment.  This is intersectionality, a term described by Kimberlé Crenshaw in the early 1990s as the way a person’s multiple identities are experienced when they intersect.  Crenshaw same up with the term when she was studying an employment case where an African-American woman was not hired at an industrial facility.  The woman believed it was a result of her identity as an African-America woman, but the case was dismissed in court on the basis that the industrial facility did indeed hire African-Americans and women [1].  It was true that industrial facility hired African-Americans and women, but what was also true was that those in industrial positions were primarily African-American men, and those in front-office positions were primarily white women.  African-American women lacked the specific combination of identities favoured by this particular employer, but this complexity was not acknowledged in the judge’s decision.  Crenshaw saw how the subtleties of the industrial facility’s hiring practices reduced opportunities for African-American women.

Intersectionality, while not a commonly used term, is deeply important in safety management.  While eliminating hazards or controlling them through engineering solutions are best in terms of reducing risk, not all hazards can be treated this way.  Safe work practices, rules, and personal protective equipment (PPE) become the next best way to control hazards, and these require active participation in the safety program by the worker.  And any time someone’s participation is required for a process to be effective, intersecting identities and factors require consideration.

This is easier said than done.  I’ve heard many managers and safety professionals describe their ideal world, a world where everyone just follows the company’s rules.  In such a world, they imagine, safe work practices will offer better protection than they do now because no one will deviate from them.  And they’re probably correct.  However, this is fantasy; every truck driver, enforcement officer, manager, dockworker, and all other people have their own, unique reasons why they come to work.  These reasons will certainly centre around major themes like a need to earn an income and a preference for certain working environments, but individual motivations differ and will impact individual willingness and ability to follow rules.

So, what is the “caring person test” I put in the title [2]?  It’s a person’s questioning of a given situation to see if someone who cares deeply about them would feel about the situation.  In the story I opened with, my friend’s mom was concerned for his safety and did not approve of how the work was being done.  An individual worker can ask themselves “would my [insert person who cares deeply about them like a parent, partner, child, friend] think I’m doing this safely?”, and then alter their behaviour if the fictional response is negative.  Many other slogans like this exist in safety.

Is this “caring person test” and similar sayings something worth using?  As an individual, I see great value.  I am personally fortunate enough to have people in my life who, despite benefiting from a life insurance payout, do not want to see any harm come to me.  So I would personally recommend that people working alone consider this test before starting a task.

But, I would not suggest a company add this saying to their list of slogans in the hopes their workers start working safer because they’re thinking of their loved ones.  Instead, I suggest employers use this test by asking themselves the following question: how do our safety and management teams empower lone workers to use the “caring person test”?

This question can’t really be answered without intersectionality.  In terms of a safety program’s safe work procedures, intersectionality means considering what factors contribute to why a rule may not be followed at the time when it is needed.  The moment the rule is needed is likely not similar to the moment when the rule is taught or reinforced at a safety meeting.

When a truck driver has to perform a challenging and hazardous task when they are alone and out on the road, what else is going on for this person?  This is the question that leads to intersectional thinking in safety.  My ability and willingness to follow a safe work procedure will change from situation to situation as a function of my unique identities and constantly-changing external forces.  A driver may be able to flawlessly demonstrate the chaining up procedure and answer the safety-related questions during an in-yard orientation.  But, what about when the weather is bad, the traffic is heavy, other drivers in the same area are frustrated, and the individual’s pay is dropping every minute they spend stopped at the chain-up?

Companies often have contradictory practices when it comes to operations and safety. While perhaps, reasonably speaking, this is unavoidable, increasing the degree to which workers follow safe work procedures requires more than writing a robust set of rules.  What barriers does the employer create to the safety of their own workers?

Intersectional safety is deeper and more complicated than compliance.  It’s sort of like the hours-of-services (HOS) regulations versus fatigue management: simply ensuring drivers are HOS compliant is not the same as ensuring they are not fatigued.  Similarly, simply asking people to follow rules and use the “caring person test” or other slogan is much easier than addressing internal safety practices and barriers.  However, if the goal is increasing safety performance (especially for lone workers), those in a position of influence need to consider the multiple pressures produced by themselves, others at their company, and the external environment.  This requires examining the intersectional position of their workers to see if policies and procedures are equitable for those with different and intertwined identities (such as race, gender, culture, and economic means) across the range of circumstances seen in operations.

I feel bad introducing such a complicated and heavy topic and then wrapping up the article, but the goal here isn’t to provide a roadmap to intersectionality for safety managers but instead to just raise a little awareness.  The commercial transportation industry needs to talk about intersectionality in safety while maintaining our grip on existing safety and compliance practices.  Other people in the safety field already are [3, 4, 5, 6, 7].

References

1 – Crenshaw, Kimberlé. “The Urgency of Intersectionality.” Posted to YouTube by TEDTalks on December 7th, 2016. Accessed March 15th, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akOe5-UsQ2o.

2 – I originally wanted to call the “caring person test” the “mom test”.  Upon reflection, I decided to make this change because the language in “mom test” is not inclusive of those without a mom or with strained relationships with their mom.  Inclusivity matters.  While “caring person test” may not be as catchy as “mom test”, the fewer assumptions we make about others the better

3 – Habib, Rima R., Kareem Elzein, and Nadia Younes. “Chapter 11: Intersectionality: the value for occupational health research.” In Handbook on Gender and Health, edited by Jasmine Gideon, 189-202. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781784710866.

4 – Hanson, Natasha. “The intersections of global capital and family rhythms in truck driving: elucidating the Canadian trucking industry labour crisis.” Applied Mobilities 6, 2 (2021): 153-168. https://doi.org/10.1080/23800127.2020.1809969.

5 – Maphumulo, Zipho. “An Investigation into the Challenges Confronted by Long-Distance Female Truck Drivers in South Africa.” MSS diss., University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2021. https://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za/handle/10413/20001.

6 – McLean, Amie. “‘Four Guys and a Hole in the Floor’: Racial Politics of Mobility and Excretion among BC-Based Long Haul Trucker.” Transfers 6, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 45-61. DOI: 10.3167/TRANS.2016.060105.

7 – Mousaid, Sarah, Deborah De Moortel, Davide Malmusi, and Christophe Vanroelen. “New perspectives on occupational health and safety in immigrant populations: studying the intersection between immigrant background and gender.” Ethnicity & Health 21, no. 3 (2016): 251-267. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13557858.2015.1061103.