CONVENTION! HIGHLIGHTS ° Local 1-500 delegate Saul Marques (1) and National Safety Council chairperson Ray Dease of Saskatchewan Local 1-184, listen to debates. Occupational health and safety resolutions call for legislative action IWA MEMBERS KILLED ON JOB — at future IWA-CANADA Constitutional Conventions there will be a roll call read out listing the names of members killed in ac- cidents on the job or who died of occupational ill- nesses since the last union convention. SAFETY TRAINING CENTRES — the union demands that all provincial governments establish and/or main- tain government funded union-administered safety centres to train safety committee members of the union movement. WCB HEARING BRANCH — once again the IWA will, through the B.C. Federation of Labour and the NDP, fight to re-establish the Hearing Branch of the Workers' Compensation Board of B.C. WHMIS ENFORCEMENT - the union will lobby the propriate government agencies to demand legisla- tion that annual inspection of WHMIS prograrhs take place in all job sites. PESTICIDE AND HERBICIDE USE — the IWA will continue to pressure the forest industry to halt the use of such chemicals in the workplace and will lobby the appropriate government agencies to use alternate methods of pest and bush control. REPORTING SERIOUS AND FATAL ACCIDENTS — the local unions shall report known serious and fatal acci- dents to the National Health and Safety De- partment, who will in turn, return preventative re- ports to the local unions. INJURED WORKER PROTECTION — the IWA National fice will demand that all provincial governments en- act legislation to protect injured workers with retraining programs, the re-introduction of mean- ingful work and the elimination of harassment by employers. WORKPLACE ERGONOMICS - appropriate government agencies and employers will be requested to partici- pate in the establishment of joint workplace er- gonomic committees to identify and make recommendations on workplace design. WORKPLACE DUST CONTROL — the IWA will call on all appropriate government agencies and the WCB to implement and enforce existing regulations that control dust at its source. NOISE AND STRESS STUDY - the government must gin to study stress and noise in the workplace in conjunction with the IWA to determine the total im- pact on workers' lives. WCB CLAIM DELAY — the union will lobby the B.C. WCB Board of Governors to immediately pay WCB claimants when the client's doctor says an injured worker should not work because of work-related accidents or incidents. RELEASE OF WCB INFORMATION - IWA-CANADA de- mands that the WCB current employer practices asking for previous WCB claim history on employee application forms be made illegal by legislation. National safety program sees changes There was considerable debate again this year around the state of the union's occupational health and safety program in absence of a full time National Safety Director. Delegates once again requested the National union to hire a National Safety Director when finances permit. Most importantly the delegates voted to approve basic constitutional changes which regulate the duties of IWA-CANADA's National Safety Council. This year the National Safety Council was elected by acclamation. Its Chairperson is Ray Dease of Saskatchewan Local 1-184 in Saskatchewan. Neil Menard, National Officer responsible for occupa- tion health and safety oversees the Council. Other positions on the Council are as follows: Edith Skiber, Local 1-405 (first vice-chairperson); Bob Patterson, Local 1-71 (second vice); Peter Hayes, Local 1-3567 (third vice); Jack Higgins Local 1-424 (fourth vice); and Tom Graham, Local 1-417 (recording secretary). The traditional constitutional duties of the Council are to formulate and adopt safety and health policy matters, develop and co-ordinate health and safety programs, and present any recom- mendations on policy matters to the National Executive Board or National Convention prior to the implementation of policy or program changes. This year's delegates added some changes which will direct the Council to operate in the following manner. ¢ the Council will meet a minimum of 4 times annually; ¢ all local unions will be notified of Council meet- ings 14 days in advance; e any IWA member may attend these meetings without voice or vote; ¢ local union safety director or local union officer can go to the meeting and are given a voice to dis- cuss or bring matters in front of the Council; ¢ the minutes of the Council will be sent off to local unions. Delegates to the convention also approved a plan to hold the next national health and safety confer- ence in Edmonton, Alberta in the month of June, 1993. In the interim the National office has appointed Organizing Director Lyle Pona to attend to Occupational Health and Safety matters as much as his schedule permits. Brother Pona has also been asked to take on the job of putting on an education- al seminars from time to time. ts In Ontario, National Business Representative Tom Lowe has been directed to attend to numerous health and safety matters as his schedule permits as well. Brother Bob Navarretta, National Business Representative, will be assuming some duties of putting on educational seminars in Ontario. ¢ Jim Parker, Local 1-217 Union says put stop to investigations There's nothing that gets the IWA's dander up like an employer's investigation of workers for medical problems that are unrelated to the workplace. There are many employers out there who continue to use WCB file information for reasons other than claims appeal purposes and will deny workers em- ployment based on an individual's medical history or past WCB claims. Year after year IWA-CANADA has demanded that the B.C. provincial government introduce and en- force legislation to prevent these unfair practices. At this year's National Convention delegates spoke out forcefully in the defence of workers' rights. Jim Parker, Safety Director of Local 1-217 said "the reason why this resolution is here is because we see situations where workers fill out their appli- cation forms and employers will purposely not hire a worker if they put down that they have any sort of compensation history at all... so they (workers) are in a situation where, if they put down anything: on the application form that they've ever had compen- sation claims they know that the employer will ney- er hire them." Brother Parker said "...if an employer happens to find out about a compensation (case) history of any sort after this person's been hired, and they go back to the compensation claim, they fire these people.” "They (employers) should only be allowed things that are pertinent to employment history...if it's go- ae to be effecting the employee's ability to do the job." Sonny Ghag of Local 1-3567 said that during some arbitration case he sees that "employers are not denying the fact that they would refuse to hire these people if they put in their application that they had past WCB (claims)..." " If you were going to get anything done, right now is the time, especially with the NDP in power for the next three years at least," said Brother Ghag. The resolution was forwarded to the B.C. Federa- tion of Labour Convention and NDP Convention. ce 16/LUMBERWORKER/DECEMBER, 1992