September 25, 2024 — Bee involved. Bee active. Bee a voice for your coworkers. That was the buzz at the annual Health and Safety Breakfast during Convention, where staff and Article 18 co-chairs Leisa Abraham and Gabriela Franklyn encouraged participants to create and breathe new life into their health and safety committees.
President Wayne Spence opened the program by relating the story of his partner in parole who was required to go to the firing range while pregnant. With a background in engineering, President Spence knows the science behind sound.
“Water is a good transmitter of sound,” he said. “The fetus is sitting in amniotic fluid. You can’t put hearing protection on a fetus. And there is significant lead exposure on a firing range; what’s protecting the baby? Quite a few law enforcement agencies don’t allow pregnant women on a firing range, but parole was indifferent. We pushed and pushed and pushed and embarrassed the agency into making sure that allowances were made for officers who were pregnant.”
Spence fought for those protections at his local Health and Safety Committee and ultimately unity and tenacity won that day.
“It’s important to document the problems and share it with management and your members to get results,” he said. “When you come across health and safety issues, if you have the ability, take a picture, don’t just describe it. Sometimes a description might not be enough. Show them, this is what my day looks like, this is what the dangerous conditions in my workplace look like.”
Franklyn pulled in the Convention theme of “Moving Together.”
“How can we work together, moving forward?” she said. “I’m pretty sure we all have common denominator issues. Air, water, vehicles: parole officers were driving in a car that caught on fire!”
The Article 18 Health and Safety Committee meets with upper management and the Office of Employee Relations (OER) to jointly establish plans of action on safety protocols, but they can’t do their job without input from local committees who have boots on the ground at worksites.
“It’s very key that you guys memorialize what is going on and show us, we are the liaisons,” Franklyn said. “We are very passionate, and we are very actively working on consistency and communicating information.”
Following the Health and Safety Conference last year in Saratoga, there has been a drive to revitalize and rebuild health and safety committees that largely fell off during the COVID pandemic.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have health and safety committees at each agency level and certainly not at each facility or local level,” Abraham said. “Health and safety is the foundation of our labor union. This is something that affects everybody, including other unions, and we can learn from each other.”
Abraham said there is money out there for training and they are looking for commonalities across agencies, such as de-escalation training, which can be useful for members in facilities, in offices, and in the field. While there is an obvious need at facilities like psychiatric centers, a stabbing at a Department of Transportation office highlights a greater need.
“What a lot of people don’t realize is that under Article 18 there are funds for training,” Franklyn said. “Fire safety, workplace violence, how to conduct walkthroughs, occupational stress, workers’ compensation, writing PESH complaints – there is so much money that you are not accessing, and we are trying to find ways to educate you all about that process.”
Click here for more information about available grants. The Article 18 co-chairs and Health and Safety Department staff can help with applying for grants by email at healthandsafety@pef.org. Abraham also urged delegates to contact the co-chairs or the Health and Safety Department to arrange on-site visits to membership meetings or at their facilities.
“A lot of our members are afraid to talk inside a huge meeting, so we can meet them at tables inside or outside the facility,” she said. “Please invite us.” Abraham and Franklyn can be reached by email at Leisa.Abraham@pef.org or Gabriela.Franklyn@pef.org.
Why bees?
Health and Safety Director Geraldine Stella elaborated on the bee theme.
“Bees have a reputation for being busy,” she said. “There are different roles for bees.” Participants identified some: worker bees, queen bees, killer — let’s go with fighter — bees. “Every bee plays a different role in their colony, and they work together as a group. They can’t function without each of those elements.”
The same holds true for health and safety.
As an activity, delegates worked together with their “hive” to create a sample bulletin board to give members the BUZZ about Health and Safety and how to BEE involved. (Watch this video to see what participants came up with!) If you would like “BEE Involved” themed posters for your bulletin board, email healthandsafety@pef.org to request a set.
