Convention Passes Five Health and Safety
Resolutions
Delegates to OCAW's 23rd Convention in Las Vegas, August
18-23, unanimously passed five resolutions dealing with
health and safety issues. The following is a summary of
these resolutions:
Just Transition
Refers to the economic protection of workers and their
communities when bans and phaseouts of toxic substances
occur. The resolution calls for the creation of a
national Just Transition Fund to provide full income
protection, access to sustainable jobs and education for
workers in toxic industries, and economic support for
impacted communities. The Fund would be set up by the
federal government and consist of contributions from
corporations through a surcharge on the substances to be
banned or phased out. The resolution calls for the Union
to support bans and phaseouts deemed sound public policy
by the President and Executive Board provided that
workers and communities are kept whole.
Building Environmental Justice Coalitions
This resolution calls for OCAW to identify groups with
common goals and interests in fighting corporate
injustice. The purpose is to form coalitions and
alliances in order to further the interest of workers,
individuals and communities against our common enemies.
OCAW has already laid the groundwork for these coalitions
by getting together a meeting with Environmental Justice
groups form across the country in Denver to discuss our
common goals and objectives. We have recently been
awarded a $130,000 grant from the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) to partner with the Clean Water
Fund and various Environmental Justice groups across the
country to develop solutions for pollution prevention
through community/worker alliances.
Full-Time Health and Safety Representatives
This resolution lays out the application of national oil
policy regarding the conditions and duties of the
full-time representatives. Some of these should include:
rotation every three years; future representatives chosen
by the Union and from the Joint Health and Safety
Committee; filing monthly reports with the Local and
International; reporting all major spills and accidents,
and investigate all accidents and near misses as well as
coordinating the International's investigation of such
accidents; and, finally, attending OCAW health and safety
representative training and encouraging members of health
and safety committees to attend training. The resolution
places the responsibility for ensuring the policy on the
local union. One of its objectives is to ensure that the
health and safety representative represents the Union,
not management.
Triangle of Prevention (TOP)
The TOP resolution recognizes that typical company safety
and health programs do not empower workers, but rather,
ask for their cooperation in management decisions. These
programs also tend to blame accidents on unsafe behavior
of workers rather than identifying the root causes of
accidents and incidents. The resolution also recognizes
that current OSHA recordkeeping is neither comprehensive
nor preventive in nature. The resolution calls for the
consideration of TOP as a counterproposal to company
cooperative safety programs, and that any cooperative
program agreed to by a bargaining unit contain the basic
elements of TOP which are:
1. A tracking system that measures and calculates a new
health and safety index using:
a) OSHA 200 logs for employees, contractors, and injuries
to members of the community.
b) incidents that require an emergency team,
c) reportable releases of extremely hazardous materials
or flammable over 5000 lbs.
2. OCAW Systems of Safety and Incident Investigation
training.
a) worker-to-worker training to identify safety systems
and correct flaws in those systems,
b) implementation of the OCAW's root cause analysis
method for incident investigation using logic tree
diagramming, and
3. At least one OCAW member selected to serve as a
full-time health and safety representative for the
members.
Downsizing
This resolution recognizes that downsizing initiatives
strongly impact health and safety causing delays in
hazard abatement, a decline in preventive maintenance and
an increase in contracting out of work, and an extra
burden on remaining workers. The resolution calls for an
educational campaign to alert members to the dangers of
downsizing, a mobilization effort to develop a sense of
solidarity and resistance of downsizing attempts, the
formation of alliances with the community on the issue,
and the development of local ordinances to protect the
workers and community from the public health impacts of
downsizing.
Hobbs, New Mexico Local 4-580 is already acting on the
resolution and has taken action against a downsizing move
by Texaco at its natural gas marketing facility in Hobbs.
Working with John Dykes, International Representative,
the local drafted a petition protesting a proposed
downsizing from four to essentially two operators because
it poses a grave threat to the safety of all the
employees. All 56 workers at the plant signed the
petition including some who are not OCAW members.
The petition was sent to Texaco CEO, Peter Biijur, on
September 4. On September 13, the Vice President of
Exploration and Production visited the Hobbs facility and
met with the workers to hear their concerns. The upshot
of the meeting was that Texaco decided not to downsize.
Another approach to the downsizing issue is insisting
that the buddy system be maintained or reinstituted in
plants.
The International has a Downsizing Task Force which is
working on ways to approach the problem of downsizing.
OCAW Reporter, Sept-Oct 1997