Health and Safety

Beginning with OCAW, we have had a long history of being on the forefront of workplace Health and Safety improvements and gains. Arguably the most prominent and visible person working on our behalf was Tony Mazzocchi.

Carried through under our merger with the UPIU to become PACE, now continued with our recent merger to become United Steel Workers, we continue our goal of providing a safe workplace for our members.

Our current tool to give employees some control over their own safety, as well as to identify and solve root cause issues is known as Triangle of Prevention (TOP). Officially designated as a "Union Led, Management Supported" program, TOP applies a systematic approach to investigating incidents, both "near misses" as well as after the fact. The primary goal of TOP is to fix the workplace, not the worker. Unlike behavioral-based safety programs, TOP works to eliminate the hazard itself through better engineering or design.

Currently, in our Local, both Shell and Tesoro have adopted the TOP program as their primary investigation tool. Shell itself has adopted the TOP program throughout all their US facilities (refining and chemical).

TOP, being union led, encourages and requires the involvement of the membership, both in identifying and correcting hazards. As such, it is our belief that our members benefit by having direct involvement at each step of the investigation, as well as the ability to recommend corrective actions they feel are necessary. With management support, TOP has proven very effective.

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