Still Dying for a Living

In 1992, a preventable explosion at the Westray Mine in Plymouth, Nova Scotia, killed twenty-six miners. More than a decade later, the government introduced revisions to the Criminal Code of Canada aimed at strengthening corporate criminal liability. Bill C-45, dubbed the Westray bill, requires employers to ensure a safe workplace and attributes criminal liability to organizations for seriously injuring or killing workers and/or the public.

In Still Dying for a Living, Steven Bittle turns a critical eye on Canada’s corporate criminal liability law. Interweaving Foucauldian and neo-Marxist literatures with in-depth interviews and parliamentary transcripts, Bittle reveals how various legal, economic, and cultural discourses surrounding the Westray bill downplayed the seriousness of workplace injury and death, effectively characterizing these crimes as regrettable but largely unavoidable accidents. As long as the primary causes of workplace injury and death are not properly scrutinized, Bittle argues, workers will continue to die in the pursuit of earning a living.