USW participated in a training seminar in July that brought
together Unite representatives at container company Crown from
across the UK.
The purpose of the seminar was for Unite to
pilot a training on behavior-based safety programs. Crown is
introducing these programs into its UK worksites.
The training was held at the Unite training
facility in Esher.
Crown has already introduced behavior-based
safety programs into a number of its USW-represented worksites in
North America. USW representatives from Crown and from the union’s
Health & Safety department provided input on their experiences
with these programs.
Behavior-based safety programs are often
referred to as blame the worker programs because management
implements them with the intent to decrease the number of reported
injuries and shift responsibility for maintaining a safe workplace
from management to workers.
USW and Unite used the occasion of the
training to discuss a global campaign against blame the worker
“safety” programs.