Work with unions as partners to improve safety and health
Work with unions as partners to improve safety and health
Cooperation can make union a positive influence on occupational health
When it comes to introducing occupational health improvements in the workplace, one of the most daunting challenges can be selling your program to the local union. The enormous power of these organizations in the workplace can be surprising, especially for health providers not used to working with organized labor on a regular basis.
But labor unions don’t have to be a hindrance to well-founded occupational health improvements, according to providers who have worked successfully with union representatives. To make things work smoothly in union workplaces, they suggest you remember two hard-and-fast rules:
1. The union is powerful, and whether you like it or not, you must incorporate it in your plans.
2. The union can be an asset if you recognize the fact that workers may respond better to union representatives than to someone they perceive as the "company doc."
Those were some of the lessons from recent years at The New York Times organization. The huge publisher’s 4,200 full-time workers are represented by 13 different unions, so any change in the workplace usually involves extensive negotiations with the union representatives. And the difficulty of getting organized labor to accept changes should not be underestimated. If you’ve never worked in a unionized environment, it is difficult to understand just how much control the unions can have when any change threatens the "terms and conditions of employment" that were hashed out in collective bargaining agreements.
So when the Times wanted to implement a return-to-work program with modified duty, it was a bigger challenge than it would be in many workplaces. The concept of modified duty is widely accepted now, but implementing it at the Times required extensive cooperation from the local unions, says Linda DiBenedetto, manager of disability claims.
"It was a new idea to these employees because the union mentality has been that The New York Times just does not have modified duty, and that’s it," she says. "The unions are powerful; the unions did not want to be told how things would be. It was a different thing, and they didn’t like it." (See story on p. 27 for information on using union representatives as liaisons.)
Workers’ comp costs were out of control
The Times needed to implement a modified duty program partly because its workers’ compensation costs were spiraling out of control. Between 1991 and 1994, there was a 400% increase in direct workers’ compensation costs. Since the modified duty program was introduced in May 1995, workers’ compensation costs have fallen 48%, with the duration of lost-time accidents falling from 37 days in 1994 to 17 days in 1996.
The absolute worst approach with unions is to ignore them and just try to implement the occupational health initiative without them. That is guaranteed to create animosity and cause the unions to fight your efforts.
To implement the modified duty program, the labor relations department at the Times contacted all of the unions with a letter explaining the company’s intentions and why modified duty is beneficial to both the employee and the employer. Then the director of labor relations, Jay Sabin, met with the unions to discuss the idea further and listen to their concerns. That was the beginning of a very important process that allowed the union to fully express any concerns, he says.
"The most important steps are the notice to the union and the opportunity for them to understand, respond, suggest modifications, and pose questions," Sabin says. "You have to give them the opportunity to say what is bothering them and then respond to those concerns. Sometimes that takes time, but in the long run that’s much better."
Sabin and DiBenedetto found that the unions had some reasonable concerns about how a modified duty program could affect their agreements about working conditions for their members. Previously, Times employees were used to being sent home with full pay when they were unable to perform their regular duties. And the modified duty program does not allow workers any overtime, and many union members were upset that they would be required to work but not be allowed to work overtime. Many workers regularly work 10 hours of overtime a week to boost their earnings.
In addition, some union agreements specify that light duty assignments are reserved for workers with high seniority. Assigning just anybody to those positions, even temporarily, could ruffle some feathers.
There also were more personal concerns, such as the fear that workers would be pulled out of their regular departments and sent to do light duty elsewhere in the company. Part of the organized labor way of thinking, DiBenedetto says, is that workers should not be taken away from their jobs and sent elsewhere, especially if the light duty infringes on the work of another union. If pulled out of their usual department, the employees also might feel ostracized or not permitted to be part of their regular circle of friends.
Most unions accept the terms after discussion
After a series of meetings in which the unions’ concerns were addressed, 11 of the 13 unions agreed to cooperate with the new modified duty program. It helped that modified duty is a common and widely accepted notion in American workplaces, DiBenedetto says. Another factor favoring the Times was that the modified duty program actually provides a financial benefit to some unions. Under the previous policy in which employees just went home and received full pay, some union rules did not require the employee to continue contributing to the union’s pension fund during that period. But under the new modified duty program, the worker does continue contributing to the pension fund because he or she still is at work.
Unions were most wary of the idea that a Times doctor would be making judgments about who could return to work and under what conditions, Sabin says. The unions wanted the workers’ private physicians to have some say in those decisions.
"We emphasized that a major goal is to get the disabled individual working again, and that’s something that the worker and the unions all want to see," Sabin explains. "It was important to show them that a modified duty program offers a lot of benefits to the worker, that we weren’t just asking them to agree to something that only benefited The New York Times."
The discussions with the union representatives resulted in these agreements about how the modified duty program would be implemented:
• Modified duty would be limited to 13 weeks. The employee must be checked by the in-house occupational health providers after the first week and then every two weeks thereafter.
• The company physician works with the worker’s personal physician to reach an agreement about the disability and what sort of modified duty is appropriate. There is no actual requirement that they agree but Sabin says they almost always reach an accord.
• Modified duty must be performed within an employee’s own department. A printing press worker cannot be assigned clerical duty, for instance.
• No overtime is permitted for employees working modified duty.
• All eligible employees within the cooperating unions must participate.
Program implemented with certain employees
Once the company got the unions’ cooperation, it still was important to introduce the modified duty program carefully. DiBenedetto knew the union representatives and the workers would watch the first cases closely to see just how the Times intended to really use the program.
"We were very selective initially on who we would place in the program," she says. "We chose employees we knew would not be averse to a modified duty job, people who we knew would not be giving us a difficult time, and then they could set an example for how well it could work. We selected the ones we knew had a good attitude, not the ones we knew would go running to the union as soon as they had any sort of problem."
The Times medical department also selected employees who would be likely to return to full duty after the 13 weeks or less of modified duty. The idea was to show workers that the program is an aid to getting back to a regular job life, not a penalty for being injured or a way to exile workers.
After things went well with those workers, the company began to include more workers who were known to be complainers.
"Then they couldn’t say it doesn’t work because it already had worked for others," DiBenedetto explains. "If they refused to go along with the modified duty, we stopped all benefits. So they had an incentive to come back and try."
DiBenedetto and Sabin both say the introduction of the modified duty program has been a success, and Sabin stresses it never would have gone so well if the company had not sought the unions’ cooperation from the very beginning.
"If you operate in a mature collective bargaining environment, you have come to realize that the union is there for the long run, and it is better to work with them no matter what the issue is. Occupational health concerns are no different in that regard than everything else going on in the workplace."
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