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Alberta employers will no longer be required to have an occupational health and safety (OHS) committee at every work site, come Jan. 31.

The United Conservative Party government said the change eliminates red tape for employers while upholding workers’ rights to have a say in health and safety on the job.

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“We have heard that the current rules around health and safety committees are not working,” Labour and Immigration Minister Jason Copping said in a government news release on Friday. “Employers are still responsible for ensuring healthy and safe work sites and the new rules provide the flexibility to meet the unique needs of each workplace.”

Under the UCP’s changes, employers can now have one committee for all work sites, rather than one committee for each location.

“This is frustrating and disturbing because we’d finally gotten to the point of catching up with the rest of the country in terms of making these very important workplace health and safety committees mandatory,” Alberta Federation of Labour president Gil McGowan said Saturday.