Health and safety advocacy serves as the foundation of the labor movement. We fight to ensure safer and healthier workplaces. Every USW local has its own health, safety and environment committee. Many also work with employers through union-management health, safety and environment committees to make improvements in our workplaces and communities.
The USW’s philosophy is that a successful health and safety system requires buy-in from everyone in a workplace, from shop floor workers to top managers and non-represented employees. All workers in each workplace must be knowledgeable on the location’s health and safety systems.
Through initiatives like the USW’s Looking for Trouble and the USW’s Tony Mazzocchi Center, the Triangle of Prevention, process safety management, hazard mapping and other efforts, the union provides training to arm USW members with the knowledge and skills they need to fight for healthier and safer workplaces.
As part of the USW’s Tony Mazzocchi Center’s Triangle of Prevention, workers are trained to investigate incidents, to track incidents and near misses and to take on leadership roles in their workplaces—including participating in investigations and inspections.
The USW holds regular health, safety and environment conferences, where hundreds of members from across the union and representatives from management participate in panel discussions, educational opportunities and other efforts to consistently build upon our efforts to create safer workplaces.
Too often, when safety and health incidents occur in the workplace, the first instinct of some employers is to blame the worker involved. The USW pushes back against all efforts to blame workers and instead looks for system failures that did not set workers up for success, and to find and fix workplace hazards. It’s about what failed, not who failed.
When any workplace incidents occur, including near-misses, the USW seeks thorough and timely investigations, focusing on what caused or allowed the incident to occur, and applying the hierarchy of controls – a method of identifying and ranking safeguards from the most to least effective (elimination, substitution, engineering controls, administrative controls and personal protective equipment).
Through the Triangle of Prevention program, the USW seeks to eliminate unwarranted safety discipline for the workers involved. Instead, the USW works with employers, union representatives, and rank-and-file workers to encourage full reporting of all workplace hazards, incidents and near-misses to prevent future occurrences.
The USW’s fight for safer and healthier workplaces goes beyond members’ workplaces and shop floors to the halls of local, state and federal government.
Decades ago, the USW and other unions successfully fought for the creation of the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA). Through these and other agencies, such the Chemical Safety Board, our government is meant to act as a watchdog to make our workplaces safer. Through groups like these, the USW continuously advocates to strengthen worker protections and ensure safer workplaces for all.
In recent years, the union led the way in pushing for stricter controls on hazards such as silica dust and beryllium. The union also lobbied legislators and regulators to expand the rights of workers during incident investigations, enact new heat standards, combat workplace violence and improve personal protective equipment standards.
Our union understands that mental health plays a crucial role in workers’ overall well-being—and ultimately their workplace health and safety. We bargain with employers to provide mental health resources and support systems, and we push to ensure mental health care is part of our health care coverage. We also negotiate common-sense language like “domestic violence leave” in a growing number of our contracts so that workers can attend to their needs without having to fear for their jobs. By promoting mental health awareness and access to care, unions can help workers lead healthier, more balanced lives.
Join the USW members and experience the power of unity. Let’s negotiate better wages and working conditions, advance workplace safety and promote dignity and respect on the job, together.