Health and Safety Committee

Organization

1. A health and safety committee needs to be rooted on the shop floor. There needs to be a series of safety stewards to feed information to the union members on the joint committee. The system needs to be broad enough to be representative of your facility. Each facility is different, and you need to custom craft your organization.

2. There needs to be a window of communication with management. This is the joint labor-management committee.

3. Local unions need to invest in the health and safety committees - for example, through seminars, classes and company-paid lost-time.

Functions

4. It is important to choose a realistic issue as the "foot in the door" to build more effective committees.

5. Information is power. You get this information from the membership, the International Union, company safety professionals, company policies, etc.

6. If there are minutes, there needs to be a mechanism to have input into how the minutes are developed, what is in them, and their distribution.

7. Try to solve problems at the lowest possible level through the safety stewards, just as you would grievances. If they cannot be solved there, they go to the joint committee.

Road Map for Health and Safety Committees

8. Reach out to the membership.

9. Develop a list of health and safety concerns.

10. Select priorities that reflect the membership's concerns.

11. Deal with priority items first.

12. Make smaller, easier changes first.

13. Build toward larger and more comprehensive changes.