Health and Safety
By John Hess, English, Health and Safety Committee
FALL 12
The Health and Safety Committee is a university committee composed of representatives of the three faculty and staff unions and management. Here are its Mission Statement and Objectives.
Mission Statement
To serve as a university-wide ombudsman: receiving reports of incidents, concerns, and issues; providing recommendations to improve processes related to workplace health and safety; and maintaining communication regarding workplace health and safety, for a diverse and representational group of university personnel.
Objectives
1. Initiating discussion surrounding incidents and issues of concern.
2. Providing follow through of existing issues until adequately resolved.
3. Facilitating access to and dissemination of existing health and safety protocols and other educational information to the broader University community.
4. Examining health and safety problems/issues and developing plans/procedures to address them.
5. Reviewing processes and recommending improvements to data collection and reporting systems that track hazards, incidents and injuries on campus .
The committee was an effective venue to push for and oversee repairs to the Wheatley roof and then to address air quality issues in the Education offices on the first floor. From that experience H&S developed a template for handling major safety problems in the future and for assuring proper communication to all affected parties. Current concerns are clarifying procedures for dealing with infectious diseases, centralizing incident reporting information, and identifying potentially hazardous conditions on campus.
Next semester we are hoping to unroll a campus wide “Culture of Safety” campaign to make everyone on campus aware of the need for safety and to make sure that everyone knows how to report any accidents, incidents, or hazardous conditions, and where to report them.
The FSU has three reps on the Health and Safety Committee: Julie Winch, Cat Mazza, and John Hess. If you have any safety concerns, please contact one of the reps or fsu@umb.edu.