Employee Participation

Employee Participation (Health & Safety)

A fundamental ingredient in reducing the rate of accidents and deaths in New Zealand workplaces is to ensure workers play an active and equal role in all areas of Health & Safety management.  Almost without exception studies and research, whether they’re union funded or independent reach the same conclusion.  That is that effective Health & Safety can only be achieved if workers participate in the development, implementation, enforcement and monitoring of health and safety programmes.

While this common feature runs through most successful H&S systems the systems themselves vary considerably.  Obviously factors such as the size of the organisation, available resources and legislative framework will influence the form of any given H&S programme takes. 

Effective employee participation means more than worker representatives on H&S committees, although this is obviously very important. The basic premise is that workers have a greater knowledge of the health and safety issues involved in their job than management and union officials do.  Therefore the best solutions will only be achieved if an environment is created where workers are actively encouraged to identify and report hazards.

We are beginning to recognise more and more workplace hazards.  Many of them are not unique to a given industry.  It is important that unions provide information and training on such hazards.  For example, stress and fatigue, workplace violence and drug and alcohol impairment are all examples of hazards that are sometimes not immediately recognised.  It is important therefore that employee representatives are provided with all the necessary information and support to promote these issues as genuine health and safety concerns that need to be addressed through whatever H&S management system is in place.

There are other opportunities for workers to be actively involved in health and safety.  For example, workers in companies that are part of the ACC partnership programme need to be involved in areas such as the auditing process.  It is a requirement that participating companies involve workers in health and safety but the reality is that very often it does not happen. 

Non-compliance with Partnership requirements should be partially addressed with the amendments to the HSE Act.

Participation means Unions

The April 1999 issue of Hazard Magazine reported on an American study on “Factors that support effective worker participation in heath and safety”.

The key findings of the report were,

1.    Effective strategies for involving workers appear to be conditional on a number of variables, most importantly on worker activism and the effective use of formal union negotiations. 

2.    Union education and training is also a critical variable in achieving effective arrangements for worker participation. 

3.    The probability of an OSH inspection, duration of the inspection, and sized of the penalties were significantly higher in unionised work sites.

The report highlights the important role of unions in assisting workers in accessing and understanding health and safety information, negotiating agreements that protect workers who refuse dangerous work and confront management about their health and safety concerns. 

The report is consistent with other studies that emphasize the role of unions in shaping opportunities for effective worker participation.  The challenge for unions is to develop strategies that will ensure workers are both given the opportunity to play an active role in health and safety and make the most of the opportunity.  This means that workers need to be playing an active role at all levels of health and safety.  This includes industry level (National Safer Industry Groups) and enterprise level (H&S committees and H&S representatives).  Unions need to provide the training, information and ongoing support for workers. 

It is important to recognise that throughout the often tragic history of worker health and disease, the worker played a primary role as the basis of every significant improvement in legislation, factory inspection compensation, correction and prevention.

The Canadian Ministry of Labour conducted a survey in 1993 that reached the conclusion that “union supported health and safety committees have a significant impact in reducing injury rate”.

The Ontario Workplace Health and Safety Agency found that 78-79 per cent of unionised workplaces reported high compliance with health and safety legislation while only 54-61 per cent of non-unionised workplaces reported such compliance. 

Research in the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and the United States all reach the same general conclusion.  That is that unionised workplaces with effective worker participation in health and safety are far safer than non-union workplaces with poor worker participation. 

There are numerous examples and models for effective worker participation.  It is not practicable to go into any great detail in this paper.  However, it is important to identify the different steps at which workers must be fully involved.  By way of example of the different stages workers should be involved in.

Policy

From the beginning workers need to be involved in developing the overall objectives of the H&S programme.

Organising

Workers need to take responsibility for specific tasks, training and communication.

Planning

Workers need to be a part of designing and implementation of the programmes.

Measurement

It is important that workers are continually monitoring and striving to improve the agreed H&S programme

Audit & Review

The purpose of the audit process is to identify any existing or potential flaws in the programme.  Therefore it is important that workers are involved in this process. 

The role of the Union is to provide all the support, information and training that workers need to properly and confidently participate in the management of health and safety.