As a state senator, I met with Bryan Klipfel when he moved over from the Highway Patrol to lead North Dakota Workforce Safety & Insurance. He seemed a good, solid guy, like most of our state troopers.
This week, I re-evaluated that opinion when I read his comments in Mike McFeely’s story about the workers who walked off the job at Three Lyon’s Pub because their employers laughed at the workers’ concerns for themselves and the public’s safety. Klipfel is quoted as saying, “We set up a special number (at Job Service) … and this number is only for those employers who have tried to get their employees back to work, but because of some reason they don't want to come back, so we need to know that so if those employees are collecting unemployment insurance benefit we can look at moving them off of that."
The lack of concern for employee safety is completely contrary to the mission of the agency Klipfel heads. It is literally “Workplace Safety and Insurance.” Their website begins with a letter from Klipfel that includes these words: “WSI’s vision is a safe, secure, healthy North Dakota workforce,” and “Every North Dakota employee deserves a safe work environment.” Yet, now, when employees complain about the safety of their workplace, the response from WSI’s leader isn’t to take the workers’ concerns seriously, it is to tell employers to let them know about the workers so they can be denied unemployment compensation.
The attitude coming from the agency committed to workplace safety reads like they have already made up their minds that workers have no right to insist on a safe work environment. It reads like our state government assumes that every business owner will decide the level of acceptable risks for their workers’ health, and this in a situation where no one knows anything about the risks.
Instead of threatening employees, the agency should be advising employers about CDC guidelines, state government recommendations and the liability risks of opening unsafely for either their workers or their customers.
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Potter, D-Bismarck, represented District 35 in the North Dakota Senate from 2006 to 2010.
