Implementing prevention
After attending conferences and presentations, the Network of OHS Union Representatives’ participants took part in an activity aimed at identifying components of the current context which truly promote a hands-on approach to occupational health and safety. They noticed the significant discrepancy between what the Act respecting occupational health and safety and the collective agreement’s provisions regarding the regulations of the representation and operation of the OHS Committee provide for. Because the healthcare sector has the highest incidence of employment injuries, the participants were obviously surprised that it wasn’t always subject to the preventive measures stipulated in the Act, especially with regard to how many representatives to assign to prevention and the number of hours that could be devoted to their functions.
The union reps were then asked to be more proactive and to register in the next few months for an approach aimed at implementing prevention across all healthcare institutions. The first step of the approach is to speak with the employer and discuss concrete solutions to reduce the number of employment injuries among healthcare professionals. To achieve this, union reps were given tools and arguments to convince employers why it was a good idea to let healthcare professionals and their union reps participate in the prevention process.