Union rep and ergonomist work to get the job done
Overcoming doubt requires doing your homework
In a unionized workplace, it’s just a fact of life that employees are going to be at least a bit skeptical of any new ideas introduced by management. At the Navistar International Transportation Corp. in Springfield, OH, management decided that its new ergonomic program would go over a lot better if the main contact person were a union member, not a manager.
That led to an unusual partnership between the company’s ergonomist, Alisha Hensley, BSET, CIE, and Steve Reed, a representative for United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 402. Reed is now ergonomics chairman at the work site, after working 15 years as a safety specialist. Together, Hensley and Reed are in charge of an ergonomics program that has been so successful, it was cited recently by the federal General Accounting Office as an example of an ergonomics program that has yielded positive results. (For more on the ergonomics program, see story, below right.)
Navistar is a truck assembly plant with a long history of union involvement and, not surprisingly, a long history of union/management clashes. When the company wanted to implement a comprehensive ergonomics program for its 4,000 employees several years ago, management looked for ways to avoid the seemingly inevitable clash with the union. One solution was to involve Reed as a sort of liaison between the line workers and management.
"People on the floor were very skeptical of a management person coming out and interacting with them because they thought management would try to take advantage of them," Reed says. "We decided that it might work better for me to go out on the floor with people because they trusted me as their union representative. They knew I wouldn’t lie to them or do something to hurt them."
Also, Reed says it was very important that the company included the ergonomics program in all its business plans. That made the company accountable for the promises it made to the union, and it showed everyone that management was being held responsible for the stated goals, not just the line workers and supervisors.
Union rep does most job analyses
Hensley is a full-time ergonomist, and the company has sent Reed for extensive training in ergonomics and job analysis. They work closely together on a daily basis, and Reed performs about 75% of the job analyses. That is partly because Hensley acts more as the overall program coordinator, but it also is an acknowledgment that the line worker is happier to see Reed poking around his work station than a management representative.
"That has made people in our facility a lot more receptive to what we’re doing," Hensley says. "They know that if they don’t want to deal with management on a problem, they can deal with the union rep. Also, he’s more mechanically oriented and can make some good recommendations that might not have occurred to me."
But that doesn’t mean Hensley sits in her office all day long. She also performs job analyses and makes herself known on the work floor, and Reed has high praise for how well she fits in with the union workers. It’s a team effort, they both say.
Having a union representative so visibly involved in the ergonomics program yields other benefits too. Reed notes that he depends a great deal on the plant’s engineers, maintenance professionals, and other experts to get things done when he and Hensley are making ergonomic improvements. In those situations, his years of experience as a union representative come in handy.
"I’ve never had one of those people say, No, I don’t have time for you,’" he says. "I’ve known most of them for years, and they will bend over backwards to make things happen. Without them, there is very little that Alisha and I can do because we’re not welders or plumbers or engineers."
Hensley and Reed say the same concept should apply to introducing any occupational health improvements in a unionized workplace. Use the union as an ally, they say, or it just might become an enemy.
"Whatever the company wants to do, you have to get the union involved in whatever way works," he says. "Things have gotten a lot better since we started this and got away from all the yelling and screaming. Now we sit down to discuss things."
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