HEALTH AND SAFETY
Dear colleagues,
I’m Lauren Collister, a faculty librarian in the University Library System in the Office of Scholarly Communication, and I’m also a member of our bargaining committee.
Health and safety is a fairly straightforward part of the contract, and is important for all workplaces. This part of the contract helps us deal with known hazards to our safety in our work environment. In a university setting, this might be the most intensive for research labs and clinical spaces where chemical or biological materials are present, but these provisions are for all of us. We learned quite a bit about air quality during the COVID-19 pandemic, for example!
This article would cover the responsibility of the administration to provide a safe working environment, and the faculty members’ process and procedure for reporting any concerns about health and safety issues. The federal Occupational Health and Safety Act (OSHA) does not apply to public employees, and Pennsylvania does not have its own equivalent law or agency for workers like us, which means that having a health and safety provision in our contract is an important priority.
Our proposal also includes provisions for training in relevant health and safety processes and procedures for a particular unit; for example, as a librarian, I might need training on how to protect myself and our materials from damage during an emergency, or how to safely handle older materials that may be in a variety of conditions.
Finally, our proposal includes regular meetings of the Labor Management Committee specially devoted to health and safety. This allows for regular discussions of issues that may be on the minds of the campus and our colleagues, or new developments in health and safety that our campus community should know about.
In solidarity,
Lauren Collister, Faculty Librarian, ULS
Links!
I’m Lauren Collister, a faculty librarian in the University Library System in the Office of Scholarly Communication, and I’m also a member of our bargaining committee.
Health and safety is a fairly straightforward part of the contract, and is important for all workplaces. This part of the contract helps us deal with known hazards to our safety in our work environment. In a university setting, this might be the most intensive for research labs and clinical spaces where chemical or biological materials are present, but these provisions are for all of us. We learned quite a bit about air quality during the COVID-19 pandemic, for example!
This article would cover the responsibility of the administration to provide a safe working environment, and the faculty members’ process and procedure for reporting any concerns about health and safety issues. The federal Occupational Health and Safety Act (OSHA) does not apply to public employees, and Pennsylvania does not have its own equivalent law or agency for workers like us, which means that having a health and safety provision in our contract is an important priority.
Our proposal also includes provisions for training in relevant health and safety processes and procedures for a particular unit; for example, as a librarian, I might need training on how to protect myself and our materials from damage during an emergency, or how to safely handle older materials that may be in a variety of conditions.
Finally, our proposal includes regular meetings of the Labor Management Committee specially devoted to health and safety. This allows for regular discussions of issues that may be on the minds of the campus and our colleagues, or new developments in health and safety that our campus community should know about.
In solidarity,
Lauren Collister, Faculty Librarian, ULS
Links!
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