Welcome to the machine!

Have you had your safety meeting this week?

 

If you work on Tour 1 in automation, probably not. You probably didn’t have one the previous week either. Or for that matter, it’s been so long you can’t remember the last time a safety meeting was even held.

 

I’ve written about this in the Dispatch before but it seems that safety meetings are a thing of the past. I seem to remember reading on the Union Bulletin Board back a few months ago that management was going to break up automation clerks in to four separate groups to hold our safety meetings. Something like, Automation 1, Automation 2, Automation 3, and Automation 4. Asst. Clerk Craft Dir. Robert Rodriguez has filed a grievance about the so-called safety talks that were given at the machines and most of the time they were written papers you were to read and sign. But since then, there have been zero safety talks.

 

That was until two weeks ago. I finally had decided it was time to file my own grievance, so on a Tuesday I filed.

 

It was fairly simple. I just stated that according to the Supervisor’s Safety Handbook, EL-801, that it states, “All line supervisors are required to conduct safety talks at least once a week with their employee groups, including temporary, casual, and relief personnel.” And that I was not afforded this requirement the week of March 15-21, ‘08.

 

Two days later, guess what. Myself and about 6 other clerks went to room 1011G and had a safety meeting. Of course I came to the conclusion that it was the grievance that I filed that caused this but I can’t kid myself that my filing had that much influence. Probably just a fluke, because the next week, no such safety meeting was held. But I will ask to see a steward and spend more time in the union cage filing another grievance for this past week.

 

I guess they think we just don’t care. We get use to not having safety talks weekly as required and nothing happens, so why would they pull a 20 to 30 of us away from the machines to hold a safety meeting. They can get away with it, that’s why. But what if a few other clerks were to ask to see their steward also? What if 20 or 30 were to do it? What if 50 or 60 all joined in? That would be incredible!

 

Above I stated that Asst. Craft Dir. Robert Rodriguez has filed a grievance on the safety talk issues for Tour 1. He just sent me a copy of the Step 2-Article 14 grievance for the violation of no safety talks on the DBCS. You can read it here. Why they couldn’t settle this at Step 1 is a mystery. But let’s remember that “Safety is our Number 1 priority”.