Safety Updates

Safety Rep School

            We will be holding a Level I Safety Rep School on Feb. 24, 25, and 26.  This is a school for  Safety Reps who are just getting involved in the Committee and who have not attended a school before.  The response has been terrific and we have 14 Local 480 members and 4 Local 9705 members confirmed to attend.  Our Committee is looking forward to training these new Reps and anxious to put them to work dealing with safety and health issues within the operation. 

Planning Session

            Our Committee is currently taking part in a Joint Health & Safety Planning Session with the Company’s Health & Safety Dept.  The purpose of these sessions will be to prioritize health and safety issues facing employees, how we plan to deal with them and a commitment to time lines for getting the work done.  Our Committee feels this is a very valuable exercise and will be beneficial in establishing Joint Committees to work on and resolve health and safety issues within the operations.

HPI Crew Talks

            By this time, all employees should be receiving High Potential Incident reviews through crew talks.  This is a very valuable communication tool to inform employees of incidents on our worksite as well as incidents from other worksites that may pertain to us.  These reviews have been deemed mandatory by senior management.  If you have not attended one of these reviews, ask your supervisor why not. 

Lockout Committee

            The Joint Lockout Committee will reconvene in the next month to address some of the questions and concerns that have been raised since the revamp of our lockout procedures.  There have been issues raised such as green lock application, care and control of keys and key box lockout list retention.  A lockout audit checklist has been developed and this will be reviewed.  I expect the Committee will be able to discuss all the concerns raised and communicate answers to these issues to all employees as soon as possible.

Advanced Safe Lifting Training

            We have had numerous calls in the past with regard to the duties that may be expected of employees who have taken the advanced safe lifting course.  It seems that some supervisors may be expecting these employees to perform work beyond the intent of the training.  I want to reiterate that this training was given to these employees to service themselves!  This intent was confirmed when the course was being developed, as well as when it was being rolled out to employees and again this week at a meeting with management.  If you have any concerns regarding the tasks you are being given with regard to safe lifting, please inform your supervisor.  If the concerns are not resolved to your satisfaction, please contact me or a member of your Safety Committee. 

Norm (box this)

Congratulations to the Leaching Business Area for achieving 1 year LTI free!

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