Recorded presentation

Graham Kelder, J D, Organized Labor and Tobacco Control Network, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, 44 Binney Street, Boston, MA 02115, 617 632 3210, Graham_Kelder@dfci.harvard.edu

While tobacco use among union members, especially blue-collar and service workers, is extremely high, and exposure to secondhand smoke is a major occupational health threat, labor and tobacco control, in the past, have seldom cooperated in addressing these issues. Now, however, these two groups have begun to form mutually beneficial partnerships to pass smoke-free worksite regulations and laws, help unionized worksites adapt to these laws and regulations, and implement labor-specific cessation programs and coverage for these programs. This cooperation has led to a broader acceptance of the addition of tobacco control issues to labor’s agenda, and a greater sensitivity among tobacco control organizations to the broad occupational health and safety issues labor confronts. This cooperation may be a model for how to effect more general, and needed, labor/public health cooperation, and thus merits close examination. The panel will first offer an examination of this historic turn in labor-tobacco control relations, how and why it has occurred and why it is significant. Individual panelists, representing both labor and tobacco control, will then discuss specific case-studies of labor-tobacco control cooperation: New York City, Massachusetts, and Minnesota. These case studies will emphasize both the successful tactics and potential pitfalls in the process of creating new health partnerships.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the session, the participant (learner) in this session will be able to

• Articulate the range of perspectives of organized labor and and tobacco control on tobacco related issues and how and why these perspectives have changed over time.
• Describe cooperative efforts of labor and tobacco control on tobacco related issues, in particular the passage of smoke-free worksites legislation.
• Identify ways in which effective partnerships between the labor and tobacco control communities effect a more comprehensive integration of tobacco control efforts into union health and safety programs, as well as serve as a model for building labor-public health partnerships.

Keywords: Tobacco, Labor

Related Web page: laborandtobacco.org

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.

Recorded presentation