Focus on Wellness:
Health & Safety Committees

The potential hazards in the workplace, especially those faced by transit workers on the roadways, the highways and the garages, are numerous and expanding daily.

One strategy for addressing workplace wellness issues is with union Health and Safety Committees, made up of union members and occasionally management. Through these committees, workplace conditions can be improved, hazards can be corrected and workers can voice their concerns.

Local Union Health and Safety Committees

What do they do?

• Identify, evaluate and suggest solutions for safety and health hazards
• Regular workplace inspections to identify hazards
• Review information about injuries and accidents to find out what is hurting workers
• Provide a questionnaire that workers fill out to tell the committee about safety and health problems
• Engage in body mapping and hazard mapping with workers
• Decide which hazards need to be fixed right away
• Suggest ways management can improve safety and health at the workplace

Provide information and education:

• Train workers on how to identify and report unsafe conditions
• Keep union members and leaders informed
• Make sure there is a way for union members to communicate their concerns to the committee
• Make sure management does not do anything to discourage workers from reporting injuries and illnesses

Investigate accidents and injuries:

• Develop ways to report accidents, injuries and illnesses right away
• Ask questions about what caused the problem and how it can be fixed

Take action:

• Shut down an unsafe job until the hazard is fixed
• Make sure management fixes health and safety problems
• Check out workplace changes made by management to make sure the changes do not create more health and safety problems
• Prepare for joint labor-management health and safety committee meetings

What do you need?

Union health and safety committee members should be paid for the time they spend on committee activities. The union can pay for this time. Even better, the union contract can give committee members the right to do committee work on employer-paid time.

Access to the workplace

Union health and safety committee members need to be able to go to all parts of the workplace. This allows them to speak with workers about health and safety concerns and to investigate accidents or injuries.

• A basic library and Internet access can help members learn more about health and safety laws and hazards
• A resource list of unions, labor education programs at colleges and universities, and COSH groups (Committees on Occupational Safety and Health) can help the committee get ideas about how to solve health and safety problems

Training

Union health and safety committee members need to get training about health and safety and about how to take action.

Joint Labor-Management Health and Safety Committees

Joint committees function in the same way as local union committees, but do so with management. Some of the activities that joint labor-management health and safety committees can do include:

• Review all health and safety information. This includes injury and illness reports, complaints that have been filed, and results of workplace inspections
• Investigate workplace accidents or "near misses" and any illnesses
• Discuss ideas for changes that eliminate or help reduce hazards. Find out if health and safety changes have eliminated the problem