Worker Trainers as Workplace Experts: How Worker Trainers Enhance Safety and Health at Department of Energy Facilities.

Worker trainers not only teach health and safety in the classroom setting but also serve informally as important peer resources on the shop floor. They are often the "go to" people, for both hourly workers and managers, when there is a health or safety question-be it about tank vapors or personal protective equipment, confined space, or specific chemicals. These worker trainers actively use health and safety resource materials, both hard copy and online. Documented here, through two surveys of worker trainers-at U.S. Department of Energy facilities, trained through the International Chemical Workers Union Council Consortium of the Worker Training Program of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences-is documentation of this additional contribution that worker trainers make toward safer and more healthful work places.

Labor-Management Cooperation in Illinois: How a Joint Union Company Team Is Improving Facility Safety.

This study of Afton Chemical Corporation's Sauget facility and its International Chemical Workers Union Council (ICWUC) Local 871C demonstrates how significant safety improvements can be made when committed leadership from both management and union work together, build trust, train the entire work force in U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration 10-hour classes, and communicate with their work force, both salaried and hourly. A key finding is that listening to the workers closest to production can lead to solutions, many of them more cost-efficient than top-down decision-making. Another is that making safety and health an authentic value is hard work, requiring time, money, and commitment. Third, union and management must both have leadership willing to take chances and learn to trust one another. Fourth, training must be for everyone and ongoing. Finally, health and safety improvements require dedicated funding. The result was resolution of more than one hundred safety concerns and an ongoing institutionalized process for continuing improvement.

Workplace safety and health improvements through a labor/management training and collaboration.

Seven hundred thirty-nine workers at Merck's Stonewall plant in Elkton, Virginia, have a safer and healthier workplace because four of them were enthusiastic about health and safety training they received from the union's training center in Cincinnati, Ohio. What emerged was not only that all 739 plant employees received OSHA 10-hour General Industry training, but that it was delivered by "OSHA-authorized" members of the International Chemical Workers Union Council who worked at the plant. Merck created a new full-time position in its Learning and Development Department and filled it with one of the four workers who had received the initial training. Strong plant leadership promoted discussions both during the training, in evaluation, and in newly energized joint labor-management meetings following the training. These discussions identified safety and health issues needing attention. Then, in a new spirit of trust and collaboration, major improvements occurred.

Tales of acute risk assessment: health effects made out of whole cloth.

BACKGROUND: Risk assessment utilizes human and animal studies and mathematical models to arrive at threshold exposures for toxic effects of various chemicals. In 1995 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) formed an acute risk assessment committee to assist in the planning for worst case chemical releases. The National Advisory Committee for Acute Exposure Guideline Levels (AEGL) examines the toxicological properties and studies of each chemical and then recommends appropriate levels. For the majority of chemicals, the committee relies on animal data (where the most data exists) supplemented with a limited number of human studies. In some cases, human studies are relied on to derive AEGL values. METHODS: In the published levels for hydrogen cyanide (HCN), the AEGL committee used five human studies and a "weight-of-the-evidence" approach. A number of these studies did not investigate adverse health effects, however, the AEGL committee used these studies as evidence that no health effect occurred. In addition, a number of other errors in conflict with well accepted principles of industrial hygiene were made. CONCLUSION: In order to adequately evaluate human studies, risk assessment committees must be composed of a balance of professionals with a wide variety of expertise, including epidemiology and industrial hygiene.

Impacts of health and safety education: comparison of worker activities before and after training.

BACKGROUND: The International Chemical Workers Union Council (ICWUC) Center for Worker Health and Safety Education in Cincinnati, Ohio, trains workers to protect themselves from hazards due to chemical spills and other chemical exposures. We evaluated whether the ICWUC Hazardous Waste Worker Training Program affects the attitudes and post-training activities, of trained union workers. METHODS: Detailed survey questionnaires were administered to 55 workers prior to and 14-18 months following training. Surveys queried trainees' interest and involvement in safety and health, use of information resources, training activities at their worksite, and their attempts and successes at making worksite improvements. RESULTS: Post-training, the study population showed an increase in training of other workers, use of resources, attempts at improvements, success rates for those attempting change, and overall success at making improvements. Self-reported interest decreased, and self reported involvement in health and safety did not significantly change. CONCLUSION: The study demonstrates that workers are more willing to attempt to change worksite conditions following training, and that their efficacy at making changes is substantially greater than before they were trained. The study confirms earlier work and strengthens these conclusions by using statistically tested comparisons of impact measures pre- and post-training.