9.4 Joint Health and Safety Committee
Joint health and safety committees are an important mechanism by which workers exercise their right to participate in occupational health and safety matters. Joint health and safety committees comprise employer and worker representatives who regularly meet to discuss health and safety issues. The “logic” of these committees is that they marry the job-specific knowledge of workers with the broader perspective of managers to identify and resolve OHS issues. The legislative requirements for JHSCs vary by jurisdiction and organization size. Unions may also negotiate mandatory JHSCs into their collective agreements.
In smaller workplaces, a joint health and safety committee may not be required. Be certain to refer to your federal, provincial or territorial legislation to determine if your workplace needs a safety committee or a safety representative. Here is a quick reference from the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety:
CCOHS: Joint Health and Safety Committee – What is a Joint Health and Safety Committee?
Among the tasks joint health and safety committees perform are conducting hazard assessments, providing education and training, and investigating incidents. While a joint health and safety committees can propose hazard mitigation strategies, occupational health and safety legislation empowers the employer to determine how to control such hazards. In this way, joint health and safety committees are advisory committees rather than decision-making committees. Research suggests that worker participation in occupational health and safety tends to be more effective in larger workplaces and in the presence of trade unions (Nichols & Walters, 2009). Workers in smaller firms and in workplaces reliant upon various subcontracting and outsourcing arrangements are less likely to have access to joint health and safety committees (Johnstone, 2006).
How workers behave on joint health and safety committees can influence the effectiveness of worker participation. Worker representatives who collect their own information about occupational health and safety assert their knowledge about hazardous conditions, mobilize their co-workers to support demands for improvements, and propose alternative solutions appear to be more effective than more passive representatives (Hall et al., 2006). The effectiveness of this more activist orientation suggests employer occupational health and safety behaviours can be shaped by workers’ behaviour in the workplace, as well as by external enforcement by the state.
Think!
“10.2 Rights and Responsibilities” from Human Resources for Operations Managers by Connie Palmer is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
