These recently posted rules are good – with one major exception.
When I sat on President Clinton’s Maritime Advisory Committee to Occupational Health and Safety, one embarrassing thing kept coming up when we discussed accidents. The Department of Labor’s lawyers kept saying “You people in the ILWU have the best safety tool ever invented in your contract – Why don’t your people stand by on health and safety more often?” We either don’t know our own contract or we don’t know how to use our own contract!
Which is why rule number three above is totally wrong (and wussy)
Never threaten to call your Business Agent when there is a safety issue, period! Never say that action must be taken for safety...OR ...you will do something, period! Never call the BA to tell him you are doing something unsafe. period!
Why? Because you shouldn’t be do anything unsafe and you don’t have to do anything unsafe! Why? Because, back when people had some balls, they fought to get it into your contract!
for longies (from the PCLCD): 11.41 Health and safety exception. Longshoremen shall not be required to work when in good faith they believe that to do so is to immediately endanger health and safety.
and for clerks (from the PCCCD): 11.41 Health and safety exception. Clerks shall not be required to work when in good faith they believe that to do so is to immediately endanger health and safety.
When it’s dangerous to work, you don’t phone ANYBODY! – YOU JUST DON’T WORK!
How do you go about that?
Here is what Longshore agreement says:
11.43 General Procedures for Health and Safety and Onerous Disputes.
And almost identically, the Clerks’ agreement states:
11.42 Procedures for health and safety disputes.
Note that (in both agreements) you call the BA only “IF AGREEMENT CANNOT BE REACHED” in the previous step! If you are working in a situation where there is not an “official” steward handy, YOU (or anyone that you decide should do the talking) are the steward.
Go directly to your immediate supervisor or boss and tell him: This is dangerous. I won’t do it. I am standing by on health and safety. (notice that the word ‘or’ does not occur in those sentences)
Soon you will be talking to management about the beef. His options are identical in both the Clerk and Longshore agreements:
The employer shall have the option of having the men who raise a question of health and safety stand by until a decision is reached or “working around” the situation until it can be resolved, and no further work shall be performed on that disputed operation until the health and safety issue is resolved.
Which means they either a. fix it b. work you somewhere else (where there is no danger) or c. have you stand by until the issue is resolved If none of these things are happening...THEN the BA is called.
The Employer hates this part of the contract – until you are hurt – then he LOVES it! Then he gets to say it was YOUR fault - because you didn’t have to do it! (Happens ALL THE TIME)
This applies to anyone, registered or casual, working under our contracts. If you follow this procedure, you cannot be fired. By the way, this has NOTHING to do with the Safety Code. The purpose of the Safety Code is only to provide a MINIMUM safety standard. YOU determine if what you are doing on the job is unsafe. If it is unsafe, you don’t call your BA...you just stop doing it!
If you do your job instead of calling your BA to do it for you, it might free him up to do his job better... and, oh yeah, it might save your life! (duh)
frats, ole
p.s. Sorry, Jon, another long one, I’m afraid! But as an old BA, who has answered many hundreds of calls from people who wanted me to come and witness them doing something dangerous before they stopped doing it....
