Bical 4-85 joins Weyco and
| SAFER to fund safety video
High school students in Port
Alberni and all over B.C. are now
viewing a new video entitled
Offroad Limits to promote safety
and awareness around the use of all
terrain vehicles on industrial roads.
On January 9, IWA Local 1-85 joined
Weyerhaeuser, the SAFER Council,
and representatives from the

Alberni and District High School to
unveil the 12 minute production,
created by the school’s Grade 11-12
student media class. Funded by the
union and industry, the video high-
lights the importance of the safe use
of industrial roads by ATV users. It
is an especially important issue to
the local community which suffered
the tragic loss of 18-year old Crystle

= New video was seen by

Crystle’s family, Weyerhaeuser
employees, school mates and the

IWA’s George Rogers (top right).

Attermann, whose ATV ran into the
side of a logging truck in Sproat
Lake Logging division in May, 2001.

“The intention of the video is to
get the message out to school kids
and others, about how careful they
have to be around active industrial
roads,” says Local 1-85’s George
Rogers, who was also an uncle to
Crystle. “There are thousands of
people in the country who ride their
ATV's, snowmobiles and 4 wheel
drives out in places which can be
very dangerous.”

The video has been distributed to
all IWA locals, Weyco operations in
Canada and all B.C. school districts.

IMIRP being considered for
panel board operations
Efforts are taking place to expand
the Industrial Musculoskeletal Injury
Reduction Program to the panel

gy) board sector
of the B.C.

| industry. The
WCB's
Executive
Council has
given its
approval in
principle and
the forest
industry is

| being solicit-
~ ed for sup-
port, says Brenda Wagg, IMIRP’s
program manager. Between 1997-
2001 musculoskeletal injuires
accounted for about 37.6 per cent of
all panel board WCB claims, costing
‘over $5.7 million and over 32,000
lost days of work. A jointly-run
IMIRP has already been developed
for the sawmill sector.

= Over 330 delegates, from both the IWA and management, attended the SAFER 2003 conference in Victoria, B.C.

PHOTOS BY NORMAN GARCIA

VICTORIA IS HOST CITY OF BIENNIAL CONFERENCE

SAFER has a big get together

IT WAS ONE OF THE BIGGEST get togethers of
union and management people seen in years. On
January 21 and 22, over 330 people gathered at the
Victoria Conference Centre to attend the SAFER 2003
conference. SAFER, the Safety Advisory Foundation for
Education and Research, held its third biennial educa-
tion conference with participants from the B.C. Coast,
southern Interior and Alberta.

“This year was another large success,” says former
national first vice president Neil Menard, who co-chaired
the conference along with Rob Ondrik of Tembec B.C.

“The conference offered another opportunity for union’
and company people to work together, to share ideas and
pledge to continue in health and safety in a spirit of coop-
eration,’ says Brother Menard, who went into semi-retire-
ment late last year. “Some of the workshops put an
emphasis on health issues, which often get overlooked.
We need to put health back into health and safety.”

An honourary panel consisting of IWA Canada nation-
al president Dave Haggard, the WCB’s vice-president of
prevention services Roberta Ellis, Weyerhaeuser’s senior
vice president for Canada Bill Gaynor and TimberWest’s
vice president of timberlands operations John Mann gave
brief presentations and sat on a panel.

Driving safety to the workplace

AT THE SAFER 2003 conference
national IWA president Dave
Haggard said that health and safety
activists have to take their knowledge
and skills back to the workplaces
where they come from to really make
a difference.

“Somehow we as trade unionists
and working people and WCB (reps)
(and company reps) have to figure
out how to take these programs and
the education that we have and push
them back down into the workplaces

Brother Haggard spoke on the issue of taking safety
back to the workplace (see story below) and against the
policies of discipline for safety infractions and drug test-
ing, which he said don’t get at the root of safety issues.

Ms. Ellis said all parties must work together to do
more and that the IWA’s Task Force report on logging
safety is a good attempt to make recommendations to get
all parties to live up to their responsibilities.

Mr. Gaynor said his company is achieving lower acci-
dent rates via lower recorded incidents and that in
September of 2002 no incidents were recorded in Coast
sawmills. “We will not operate a unit that continues to
injure people,” he said.

Meanwhile Mr. Mann said commitment to education is
important because “you can teach an old dog new tricks.”

Delegates participated in either two day intensive work-
shops (the Courage to Care, Incident Investigation, the
WCB’s FallSafe Program or on joint OH&S committees)
or rotated between various two hour, introductory work-
shops. The topics included were return-to-work programs,
peer observation for safety, annual OH&S planning,
ergonomics, the “industrial athlete,” dealing with invisible
disablities, reality-based safety initiatives and “getting to
the whole person at work.”

Haggard challenged the confer-
ence’s participants to take their
knowledge back to the workplace and
“look after the guys working beside
you. That's the challenge that we face
and that we have to accept as people
who have dedicated our lives to
accident prevention and safety,”
he added.

The following month Haggard
met at the national office in
Vancouver with occupational health
and safety directors from IWA

where the people are getting injured
and killed,” he said.

Brother Haggard, a former welder
from MacMillan Bloedel’s Franklin
River on Vancouver Island, noted
1974 WCB statistics when 34 work-
ers were killed in the B.C. forest
industry. The IWA had about 50,000
members in the industry at the time.

Then he said that in 2002, there
were 28 killed in logging alone, dur-
ing a year where the union was lucky
to have 25,000 working.

= National IWA president Dave
Haggard said more must be done.

“J don’t have to be mathematician
or a brain surgeon to tell you that
they don’t add up,” he said, adding
that despite all of the “mission state-
ments and fancy clichés we have
dreampt up over the years, and all of
the programs that we have put
together, not enough progress has
been made despite some of the
excellent programs that take place.”

Canada local unions to talk about the
same challenge — driving safety back
into the workplace where the rank-
and-file are. The IWA’s national
health and safety council and safety
directors are circulating a survey of
union operations to assess the mem-
bership’s priorities and most impor-
tant concerns and issues. “We will be
looking at the survey results later
when they are completed in order to
use the data as a guide to develop a
strategy,” says Brother Haggard.

APRIL 2003 THE ALLIED WORKER I 17

co