SESSION II: Health and Safety
A. Jerry Morris, CWA, local 9000, Los Angeles
This issue provides some light at the end of the tunnel. You can use safety and health as a component of organizing, both internal and external organizing. In the work place, there are three main health andsafety issues: stress, toxics, and RSI, which is really a series of cumulative trauma illnesses. Stress is builtin to jobs. RSI is easier to address. We started a "train the trainer" program" to train workers to train others workers about ergonomics. We trained 9 people over 4 days. With normal grievances, 5% of the workers are 90% of the work. Healthandsafety gives the union an opportunity to interact with members on a daily, positive basis. We work on work place rearranging. In southern California, the goal is for every local to have an individual plan and let the people know the union is doing this. At PacBell, we have had little success. We have a joint Health & Safety committee, but with little progress. At GTE, we have been more successful. The GTE Megacenter gives people six months training, but no training in how to use ergonomics furniture. We trained the stewards. In the work place stewards train the workers on company time. Injuries lowered. A word of warning: injuries go up at first because people recognize their injuries.
In the latest negotiations with Pac Bell, not one bargaining issue was health & safety. Healthandsafety is something everyone knows about. One has to remember: "There are no problems. There are opportunities." One union negotiating item can be that every new employee receive four hours of training, provided by the union, on company time.
B. Dr. Felipe Sánchez, CILAS, Mexico
Traditionally, work place health has been solely as safety, or in the best of cases, as hygiene and safety. According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), however, in reality, work place health is not solely the absence of sickness but physical, social, and psychological wellbeing. A change in working conditions is bound to have health repercussions. There are 7,000 work place illnesses that have been identified. These include ergonomic, psychological, biological and mechanical maladies.
The union has to be involved in the analysis of risk factors in order to be able to confront them. In Mexico, we do not have regulation regarding ergonomic or psychosocial maladies. There are no standards. There is a lag with respect to international norms. There is a need to standardize these norms.
With respect to work place safety, there are 500,000 accidents per year in Mexico. There needs to be recognition of occupational illnesses. There are others that aren't specifically occupational, but which do affect the work, such as dust or noise. These are obvious. But there are others, such as the lack of a fixed schedule, which leads to absenteeism. There are also costs for failing to invest in health and safety to cover complete disability, permanent or partial disabilities.
There has been a reform the Mexican social security laws in affecting 350,000 people unable to work.
The most basic thing is to have information in order that we can evaluate and at the same time we need to take into account all the risk factors, not only physical or chemical, but also psychosocial which is going to become more important.
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