Worker health and safety representatives have a legally mandated role recommending efforts to achieve safer and healthier workplaces. A coalition of labour, health and safety advocates, academics and researchers want to know how responsive employers have been to these recommendations.

The Labour OHCOW Academic Research Coalition (LOARC) invite union and non-union worker representatives to complete a survey designed to gather information about

• specific activities they perform
• hazards in their workplaces
• recommendations they’ve offered to eliminate or control exposure, and
• whether or not employers have implemented recommendations.

This survey is the first phase in LOARC’s Health and Safety Representative Study designed to “build on the real life experiences, insight and approaches of health and safety worker representatives like you to improve the capacities of all representatives across Ontario to achieve needed changes in the workplace.

The information gathered will be used to produce a guide LOARC believes can benefit all workplace parties who are committed to making the changes needed to achieve safer and healthier workplaces. This includes enhancing or developing new approaches to training worker representatives.

According to LOARC they have come together with a common concern that research agendas in occupational health and safety are too removed from the experience of workers and their abilities to alter the conditions in which they work. An independent research group, their stated agenda is to fill this void by encouraging, conducting and disseminating labour-focused research about occupational health and safety.

The Workers Health & Safety Centre recognizes the need for this important work and is assisting LOARC with the distribution and collection of the Health and Safety Representative survey. We encourage worker representatives to take a few minutes to complete the survey and also offer to participate in the second phase of this study (see link below for additional information). We also encourage the sharing of this information with other worker representatives and ask them to complete the survey.

Want to know more about this LOARC study or to complete the survey?

Want to know about WHSC training designed to prepare worker representatives to fulfill their significant duties and responsibilities? Call 1-888-869-7950 or contact a WHSC near you and ask to speak to a training service representative.