Sometimes speaking up about safety may be hard to do (for workers of all ages) however it is important to exercise your right to speak up about challenging and unhealthy conditions at work, such as:

• unsafe things or situations that everyone seems aware of, but never get fixed,
• lack of workplace safety rules, or safety rules that are never followed,
• supervisors that brush aside, or never follow up on hazard reports,
• disrespectful behaviour between co-workers, and co-workers and supervisors,
• workers and supervisors who don’t seem to care about the work they do,
• direct or indirect expectation that safety can be ignored as long as a task is done, or
• behaviours and attitudes like racism, bullying, gender discrimination, hazing, etc.

In these situations, how to speak up, when to speak up, or even whether to speak up, will be different from worker to worker. Depending on life experiences and career paths, some workers will remain in challenging work settings and others will make the decision to leave. It is very important that workers talk to someone about difficult or dangerous work situations, and report hazardous conditions and dangerous work situations to the proper authorities, ie. the OHS Division of Labour and Workforce Development or to local police.