Solvay Locals: What are your Safety and Health Priorities?

This article originally appeared in Standing Strong at Solvay: May 2018.

What are the safety problems at your plant that your members would like fixed? What kind of safety and health training does your local need?

These are the kinds of questions Ashlee Fitch from the USW Health, Safety and Environment Department would like answered so she can provide locals with the type of training they need.

Fitch developed a health and safety survey for Solvay locals. It is the first time such a survey has been given to the Solvay groups.

“You can’t identify strategies and have effective training sessions if you do not have a grasp on what the issues are,” Fitch said. “We need to know the problems first before we can change them. That’s why we need to identify the council’s safety and health needs.”

“For me, whenever the council meets, that’s precious time to do training and determine strategy to resolve health and safety issues,” she added.

Fitch noticed that during the Solvay plant tours and council and local meetings the health and safety issues at each location were similar, but varied slightly. Some locals had health and safety committees, while others lacked them.

“The role and responsibility of each safety committee member is different at each site, which is not bad, but we need to get on the same page about how we are operating,” she said.

The survey also asks locals to describe their health and safety contract language.

“This will help the locals during bargaining,” she said. “When the company says, ‘We don’t have that health and safety language in our contracts,’ the local can respond, ‘Yes, you do. You have it at site XYZ.’”

Fitch said she is reviewing alternative ways to collect this necessary information from the Solvay locals so that health and safety priorities can be set. If any local has not completed its survey or needs another copy, please contact Ashlee Fitch at afitch@usw.org.

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