Union Approach to Health and Safety: - United Steelworkers

The Role of the Union in Joint Labor- Management Health and Safety
Programs, Efforts and Committees
The On-going Battle to Protect the Health and Safety of USW Members
Hazardous workplace conditions regularly threaten the health and safety of United
Steelworkers’ members in workplaces across North America. While USW local unions have
successfully achieved the elimination and/or reduction of certain hazards in their workplaces,
many hazards remain, including those that the union has identified, but management has not
addressed. Many hazards in today’s workplaces have been created or made worse by
workplace changes such as work restructuring, new technologies and new management
policies. Downsizing/understaffing, excessive working hours and shifts, speed-up/push for
production, work overload, job combinations, and monitoring can all impact health and safety
conditions on the job. The presence of older, unaddressed hazards as well as newly
recognized or introduced hazards continue to threaten the health and safety of our members.
In some cases the health and safety of communities and the environment are threatened as
well.
Unions have important mechanisms such as joint labor-management health and safety
committees that provide forums for ongoing communication on health, safety and
environmental issues between the union and management. In a document produced in 1989
in the United States by the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor-Management
Relations and Cooperative Programs entitled “The Role of Labor-Management Committees in
Safeguarding Worker Safety and Health”, it states, “It is easy to have a labor-management
committee for occupational safety and health. It is extremely difficult to have one that can
make major inroads into solving tough, long-standing dangers to worker safety and health.”
This is true today across North America, and it is true for all labor-management efforts to
improve health and safety in the workplace, not just joint committees.
A Union Approach and A Management Approach to Health and Safety: What’s the
Difference?
While on one level labor’s and management's health and safety goals may seem similar (e.g.
management wants fewer reported injuries; the union seeks a safe workplace); the reality is
that union and management approaches to achieving those goals can be very different (e.g.
management's implementation of policies and practices that discourage workers from
reporting injuries vs. the union's emphasis on eliminating hazards that cause injuries and
illnesses). In fact, there can also be a great difference between the way the union and
management view what the problems are when it comes to health and safety. Unions view