York University hides a lot of health and safety documents behind the Passport York wall. The "YU-Link" set of pages was introduced about ten years ago and, in the process, many documents that were previously accessible are now locked away and hard to obtain.
In other words, this means that many important documents cannot be found via a web search.
For instance, if you go to the YorkU main page, click on the search bar and type in "silica program", what you'll find is an old document from before the YU-Link introduction:
What should be coming up is the HSEWB page on the silica program: (actual link)
What if you have a concern about Health and Safety? Where is the Health Safety and Employee Well-Being department page? Well, it's hidden behind the password wall, too. As is the case for the page on health and safety programs, including those for air quality, asbestos and silica.
In my opinion, none of these pages should be hidden in a manner than blocks access by search engines or chatbots. There is nothing confidential in these documents. Furthermore, these kinds of documents are supposed to be really accessible to workers so that they can be active and full members of the Internal Responsibility System.
I brought up a related issue in an earlier blog post on how the Workplace Incident Report forms (WIR) could not be easily accessed or understood because they were locked behind the password authentication system.
So, in the mean time, this blog post by an engineering professor will serve as a reminder that there are health and safety documents for YorkU employees. Hopefully, when you need them, Google or ChatGPT will point you here and then you'll be able to find what you're looking for.
Conclusion
Health and safety documents should be on public-facing webpages, not hidden behind password protection. It's time for HSEWB to do better.
James Andrew Smith is a Professional Engineer and Associate Professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department of York University’s Lassonde School, with degrees in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering from the University of Alberta and McGill University. Previously a program director in biomedical engineering, his research background spans robotics, locomotion, human birth, music and engineering education. While on sabbatical in 2018-19 with his wife and kids he lived in Strasbourg, France and he taught at the INSA Strasbourg and Hochschule Karlsruhe and wrote about his personal and professional perspectives. James is a proponent of using social media to advocate for justice, equity, diversity and inclusion as well as evidence-based applications of research in the public sphere. You can find him on Twitter. You can find him on BlueSky. Originally from Québec City, he now lives in Toronto, Canada.