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This guideline provides the foundations to connect the ways that work creates stress, the ways that stress-related injuries affect mental wellness and strategies to restore safe and healthy work for psychological well-being. In its pages, you will find a detailed overview of psychosocial hazards and effective mitigation strategies designed to ensure your work is safe and healthy for all.

CUPE members are experiencing wildfires that are increasing in number and severity. These fires and the smoke they create harm everyone’s physical and mental health, especially equity-seeking groups like Indigenous populations and people with disabilities. Even if workers are far away, the bad air quality from wildfires can still affect them, both indoors and outdoors. Employers have a duty to take all reasonable precautions to protect workers from the risks of poor air quality, no matter where the air pollutants come from or how far away they are.

Online harassment isn’t new. But with more people working off-site using digital platforms, it’s being reported more often. Harassment is prohibited under human rights and health and safety laws. Workplace policies and collective agreements often prohibit harassment, too. However, different laws, collective agreements and policies define harassment in different ways.

Environmental racism is a form of systemic racism that leaves Indigenous, Black, and racialized communities far more exposed to environmental hazards than predominantly white communities. It includes industrial and environmental policies and practices that lead to environmentally hazardous sites being located close to Black, Indigenous and racialized communities.

Today, we know April 28 as the Day of Mourning for workers killed or injured on the job. What is less known is just how instrumental CUPE was in establishing that day. In 1983, the health and safety director of CUPE, Colin Lambert, came up with the idea of a day to recognize workers killed and injured on the job. Lambert was a former steelworker and miner from Sudbury. He proposed the idea to CUPE’s health and safety committee, and members were quick to endorse the idea.

All workers deserve full protection from hazards and a healthy work environment. If you have a health and safety problem in your workplace, learn about the steps you can take.

CUPE represents just over 73,000 members across over 230 bargaining units in the post-secondary education (PSE) sector. Our members work in universities, colleges and student-led organizations.