Clearing the Air: Minnesota Case Study

Susan Weisman, JD, Tobacco Law Center, William Mitchell College of Law, 875 Summit Avenue, St. Paul, MN 55105, Yugoslavia, 651-290-7516, sweisman@wmitchell.edu

New strategies and community partnerships are necessary to reach blue-collar and service sector workers most-at-risk for exposure to secondhand smoke. WorkSHIFTS, a collaborative initiative of the Tobacco Law Center and University of Minnesota’s Labor Education Service, is working hand-in-hand with labor to provide practical policy and educational resources that support labor’s efforts to address tobacco-related concerns through collective bargaining, policy formation, and assertion of health/safety rights. WorkSHIFTS has been intimately involved in recent drives to enact local smoke-free worksite ordinances in Minnesota. This cooperation may be a model for how to effect more general, and needed, labor/public health cooperation, and thus merits close examination. This is one of three specific case-studies of labor-tobacco control cooperation to be presented as part of the session.

Learning Objectives:

At the conclusion of the session, the participant in this session will be able to

Articulate the range of perspectives of organized labor and tobacco control on issues related to the local smoke-free worksites bans proposed in Minnesota 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 proposal and passage of local smoke-free worksites ordinances in Minnesota; 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: Labor, Tobacco

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I have a significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.
Relationship: employment

Recorded presentation

Clearing the Air: The Evolving Partnership of Labor and Tobacco Control and its Meaning for Occupational Health

The 132nd Annual Meeting (November 6-10, 2004) of APHA