Using hazard maps to identify and eliminate workplace hazards: a union-led health and safety training program.

The Institute for Sustainable Work and Environment and the Utility Workers Union of America worked with a professional evaluator to design, implement, and evaluate the results of a union-led system of safety-based hazard identification program that trained workers to use hazard maps to identify workplace hazards and target them for elimination. The evaluation documented program implementation and impact using data collected from both qualitative interviews and an on-line survey from worker trainers, plant managers, and health and safety staff. Managers and workers reported that not only were many dangerous hazards eliminated as a result of hazard mapping, some of which were long-standing, difficult-to-resolve issues, but the evaluation also documented improved communication between union members and management that both workers and managers agreed resulted in better, more sustainable hazard elimination.

Beyond Texas City: the state of process safety in the unionized U.S. oil refining industry.

The March 2005 British Petroleum (BP) Texas City Refinery disaster provided a stimulus to examine the state of process safety in the U.S. refining industry. Participatory action researchers conducted a nation-wide mail-back survey of United Steelworkers local unions and collected data from 51 unionized refineries. The study examined the prevalence of highly hazardous conditions key to the Texas City disaster, refinery actions to address those conditions, emergency preparedness and response, process safety systems, and worker training. Findings indicate that the key highly hazardous conditions were pervasive and often resulted in incidents or near-misses. Respondents reported worker training was insufficient and less than a third characterized their refineries as very prepared to respond safely to a hazardous materials emergency. The authors conclude that the potential for future disasters plagues the refining industry. In response, they call for effective proactive OSHA regulation and outline ten urgent and critical actions to improve refinery process safety.

Systems of safety and active worker-participation strategies for a safe workplace: the philosophical and structural underpinnings of the labor institute, and the Paper, Allied-industrial, Chemical And Energy Workers International Union, Accident Prevention Programs.

For the last ten years, The Labor Institute, in cooperation with the Paper, Allied-Industrial, Chemical and Energy Workers International Union (PACE) and several other international unions, has been training workers and managers to prevent accidents in the workplace using what we call a Systems of Safety (SOS) approach. We teach workers to identify major categories of safety systems and sub-systems in the workplace and to assign a hierarchical prevention value to each category. The SOS approach enables workers to look beyond the simplest explanations for an accident to identify the full range of factors that contributed to the event. As a result, Systems of Safety training provides workers with an unparalleled opportunity to reduce the frequency and severity of in-plant accidents. Unfortunately, the full benefits of an SOS system cannot be realized in most workplaces as they are now organized. Our decades of experience--and a review of relevant literature--tell us that worker participation is the key to preventing accidents. Maximum accident prevention is only achievable through maximum worker participation. In most workplaces, hierarchical structures--and workers' internalization of that hierarchy--prevent full worker participation. This article will explore barriers to achieving maximum worker participation, and strategies for providing workers with some measure of control over the systems of safety that determine the level of safety at their work sites.