While labor unions’ growing expertise and involvement in workplace health and safety can spark clashes with U.S. companies, such efforts also have driven collaborative efforts with employers that bring improvements for workers and the companies.
Unions point out that they have championed worker safety as a core value throughout their history. But in recent years, they have increasingly invested in health and safety education and technical expertise, in part to improve their appeal among workers, observers say.
And it is not unusual for union and management differences over health and safety practices to become contentious bargaining-table topics, or a means for rallying union members. In one recent, high-profile example of the significance of health and safety issues in labor contract negotiations, the United Steelworkers union and the nation’s major oil producers late last month reached an 11th hour agreement that prevented what could have been crippling strikes for the U.S. petroleum industry (see related story).
“Often safety issues are contentious within contract negotiations and in discussions between employers and employees,” said Stephanie Bloomingdale, secretary-treasurer for the Wisconsin State AFL-CIO in Milwaukee. She cited a decade-long demand by nurses nationwide to increase hospital staffing as an example of employers and unions diverging on spending for safety.
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