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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Marc Weinstein, PhD, Steven Hecker, MSPH, and Thomas Wiedeman. Labor Education Research Center, University of Oregon, 1289 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR OR, 541-346-3292, marcw@oregon.uoregon.edu
State governments have introduced various workplace safety initiatives. While some empirical evidence suggests that state laws institutionalizing greater worker involvement are associated with a reduced incidence of workplace injuries, there is still considerable variation across firms subject to shared regulatory regimes. In Oregon, for instance, joint labor-management safety committees are mandated in all firms with eleven or more employees, but the extent to which firms comply with Oregon statutes varies as does the effectiveness of the safety committees. This paper reports the results from a study investigating the antecedents of joint labor-management safety committee compliance and active employee participation in safety committees in unionized firms. Our survey of 560 public and private sector trade union locals on health and safety activities and training in their represented workplaces confirms considerable variation in the activities of safety committees. In our multivariate analysis, we find that workplaces with contract language guaranteeing labor input on the safety committee meeting agendas have higher levels of health and safety training (p <. 01), greater employee access to health and safety records (p < .05), and expanded supervisory responsibilities for health and safety issues (p < .05). Comparable relationships were found for contract language pertaining to member selection, lost time reimbursement, and training for safety committee members. These results suggest that workers and their representatives can have a considerable influence over the scope and level of activity of joint labor-management safety committees even when high minimum standards exist in statutory regulations.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Workplace Safety, Labor-Management Relations
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.