Worker safety representatives

Worker safety representatives can use this situation just as effectively. As one explained to me, once he has pointed out to managers that they are in violation of some requirement, he knows and they know that they are personally liable in the event of injury and he can be sure of getting the necessary action. For him, the legislation provides a framework which legitimises the requests he makes to management and provides him with a powerful weapon in the struggle to achieve safer working conditions. 

But non-compliance with codes or regulations can expose a company to legal action even in the absence of any harm to a worker. Health and safety officers and worker safety representatives can call in inspectors who can impose prohibition and improvement notices on companies. These notices not only raise the spectre of... 

Worker safety representatives and representatives of empioyee safety have been appointed and are abie to exercise their powers... 

On April 6, 1994, OSHA published its final revisions to the Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) standard in the Federal Register, Vol. 59, No. 66. With the implementation date of July 5, 1994, the regulation, applicable to the general industry, represented major changes in the selection and use of PPE. OSHA believes that through compliance with the PPE standard, safety statistics that track worker safety will improve. These improvements will add up to 712,000 lost workdays and 95,000 recordable cases. 

One interviewee described that employer opposition to the Worker Safety Advisor scheme has halted its development across all industry sectors in the UK [395, 396]. French interviewees described several safety representative state-sponsored schemes in France, but the resources appear far more restricted than in Sweden. There was no evidence from the interviews or literature review to indicate that Germany has such a scheme. Evidence from the interviews indicates that such schemes in France and Sweden link to their strong social health care system, with very high union membership distinguishing Sweden from France. 

Nevertheless as the research reported in the next section shows, trade union health and safety representatives surveyed in the study commissioned by the HSE (Research International 1997) were considerably better informed about OELs than were enqjloyers. The explanation the researchers offered for this finding was that the safety representatives in their survey were mostly drawn from larger enterprises. A further factor would have been the extent of health and safety training received by the representatives - which is considerably greater than that received by the average small enterprise owner manager and which deals specifically with representing workers that use hazardous substances. 

According to the Decree in all enterprises whatever their size a safety representative (RLS) most be elected or naminated. In enterprises employing 15 or less workers the safety iqireseiitative is elected directly from eiiq)lo)%es. To help these small enterprises copii with the obli tion of having a safety representative, the Decree opens the possibility of having territorial safety... 

A representative consequence matrix is given in Table 1.9. The matrix has four levels of consequence covering worker safety, public safety, the environment, and economic loss. There are no rules as to how many levels should be selected, nor does any major regulatory body insist on a particular size of matrix. However, many companies choose four levels three levels does not provide sufficient flexibility and differentiation, but five levels imply a level of accuracy that is probably not justified. The steps in Table 1.9, from low to very severe, are roughly in... 

Even if an ordinary oil industry worker seldom or never meets PSA representatives during a work year offshore, the contact between PSA s employees and union and health and safety representatives is tight. The Labour Inspection Authority, union representatives, platform chiefs and others active in safety work regularly meet PSA representatives in safety conferences and different arenas of tripartite cooperation onshore. This is very different from the U.S. continental shelf, where regulatory representatives are very visible on installations but seldom or never meet elected representatives of oil industry workers. 

In a Partnership, OSHA enters into an extended, voluntary, cooperative relationship with groups of employers, employees, and employee representatives (sometimes including other stakeholders, and sometimes involving only one employer) in order to encourage, assist, and recognize their efforts to eliminate serious hazards and achieve a high level of worker safety and health. 

An engineer is concerned for worker safety during construction but yields to his client s objections at the cost of an on-site representative. 

In some instances, worker unions nominate and appoint full-time health and safety representatives as their formal nominated persons to coordinate the activities of the safety system and also to negotiate on their behalf. 

Field safety representatives for workers compensation insurance companies... 

Chapter 11 examines how HES (health, environment and safety) managers and the workers OSH representatives view the following topics (1) safe use of chemicals, (2) prevention prioritizations and measures of management, (3) collective cUmates of OSH in systems thinking and (4) discourses on legislation about chemical safety. Eorty-nine HES managers and 105 workers OSH representatives responded to an online survey questionnaire. 

---