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Participatory Design in Occupational Health and Safety

by Richard E. Hughes
Washington State Department of Labor and Industries

CPSR News Volume 12, Number 3: Summer 1994

THE SOCIAL CONTEXT

In contrast to the Scandinavian context where co-determination laws formalized the right of labor to participate in technological decisions, US labor legislation of the New Deal era codified a labor relations model in which management retained authority over investment and technology decision making and trade unions could negotiate over the resulting impacts on wages, hours, and working conditions. For example, the contract between the United Autoworkers of America and General Motors Corporation explicitly states that decisions over technology are the province of management:

"... the products to be manufactured. the location of plants, the schedules of production, the methods. processes and means of manufacturing are solely and exclusively the responsibility of the corporation." (H. Shaiken, Work Transformed, 1984, p.4)

In Washington state, for example, the Washington Industrial Safety and Health Act requires that employers with more than ten employees have joint labor/management safety and health committees (Washington Administrative Code, 296-24-045). Based on an employer survey, approximately 69% of companies in Washington state have joint safety committees that meet on a regular basis. Traditionally, joint safety committees in Washington have limited their activities to issues of industrial safety and hygiene. However, over the last decade there has been a significant increase in the number of joint ergonomics committees, which use principles of industrial ergonomics to prevent work-related musculoskeletal disorders (such as low back pain and carpal tunnel syndrome). Due to the nature of ergonomics, these efforts have necessarily involved changing work fixtures, tools, work stations, and job designs. Thus, joint labor/management ergonomics committees address limited technology design issues in a participatory context. Moreover, these activities are supported by the joint safety committee regulation.

AN EXAMPLE IN ALUMINUM SMELTING

Kaiser Aluminum and the Steelworkers of America Local 329 in Spokane, WA, have embarked on an experiment in joint/labor management cooperation in the area of occupational health and safety. Kaiser's Mead Works is an aluminum smelter, which uses electricity to reduce aluminum from alumina ore. The prevention of work-related musculoskeletal disorders is one of the priorities of the joint safety and health process at that facility. The Safety and Health Assessment and Research for Prevention (SHARP) program of the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries has assisted their efforts by conducting a epidemiological field investigation, providing training in principles of industrial ergonomics, and developing tools for assessing ergonomics considerations within a PD process.

The participatory design effort at Kaiser's Mead Works is occurring at two levels: one, a joint labor/management ergonomics committee; and two, a participatory engineering design and review process for new capital expenditures. The ergonomics committee consists of hourly and salaried workers. Salaried personnel include engineers and supervisors. Hourly personnel include people from maintenance and operators from three departments. The purpose of the ergonomics committee is to identify and eliminate work place factors that pose a risk of musculoskeletal injury. The ergonomics committee began by focusing on problems that had been identified in the SHARP study such as shoulder and wrist tendonitis, low back pain, and carpal tunnel syndrome. The committee began working on small projects like re-designing tools to reduce the physical effort and biomechanical stress associated with their use.

One of the problematic tools is a manual jack that is used to adjust the height of 400-pound carbon blocks. The committee decided to lengthen the arm of the jack to make it easier to use. It brought the end users of the jack together with the maintenance and engineering staff to jointly redesign the tool. An additional design flaw of the jack was discovered and fixed, but only after some significant tension between several team members. One of the shop floor employees who had direct experience working with the tool said that the jacks often broke, and that the failures had caused some injuries. The mechanical engineer on the committee did not believe this, because his analytical analysis indicated that there was a sufficient safety factor in the jack dimensions. After one of the shop floor employees brought in a broken jack from the work area, the team was able to determine that the cause was deteriorated electrical insulation in part of the jack. The resulting electrical short produced cyclic heating and cooling, and the mechanical failure occurred after the resulting weakening of the metal. The result was a change in the jack design and an increased emphasis on jack maintenance. The jack re- design project illustrates the effectiveness of bringing shop floor personnel who know the intimate details of how tools are really used with the people who design and make them. Moreover, the committee had a shared mission of changing the work environment to reduce musculoskeletal injuries, which made it easier to work through conflict.

Both labor and management realized the necessity of ensuring that new equipment be designed to avoid safety and health hazards, because each capital expenditure represents an opportunity to affect the working environment for decades to come. As a result, a joint labor/management engineering design and review process is being developed. Each project has a project execution team. Each team has representatives from (at least) management of the affected department, hourly department employees, hourly maintenance personnel, safety staff, and engineering staff. Traditionally, the work now done by the project execution team had been the territory of management. The new process will involve the end users of the equipment, becauseÑas in the jack exampleÑthey have the intimate knowledge of safety issues (ergonomics, electrical hazards, confined spaces, etc.) on the shop floor. To provide insight into the size of the projects using this process, a recent twelve million dollar project to introduce a crane mounted jackhammer was initiated. Thus, employees are participating in the design of major capital expenditure projects.

The experience at Kaiser's Mead Works demonstrates that labor participation in technological decisions can happen, especially when focused on safety and health issues. Because of management and labor's commitment to improving work place safety at this facility, there is a strong set of shared values that can defuse contentious debates. It also must be emphasized that PD is taking place because of strong management and union leadership.

CONCLUSION

Occupational safety and health is a wonderful arena for PD activities in Washington state, because the regulatory environment supports such activities. At the national level, the Democratic OSHA reform bill in Congress contains language requiring labor/management safety committees like those in Washington state. Moreover, the Clinton administration has also placed a high priority on OSHA promulgating an ergonomics standard. If these regulatory actions come to pass, the entire United States could have a clearer regulatory framework in which to pursue PD in the realm of occupational health and safety.

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