By JANE LaTOUR

Safety and health activists sharpened their skills recently in a full day of discussion, expert instruction, and role-playing.

The goal for the Nov. 15 conference was to provide the tools for members of joint labor management health and safety committees to function effectively, said Lee Clarke, director of DC 37’s Health and Safety Dept.

DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts greeted participants at the “Working Together” conference. She pointed to the tremendous resources provided by the union department: “They bring home the message that we’re not going to have members working in an unsafe environment.” Joel Shufro, executive director of the New

York Committee on Occupational Safety and Health, told the activists, “You are the eyes and ears of the union in dealing with the prob-lems on the shop floor. Your job is to raise hell, and this will not necess-arily be looked on with favor. But without that, brothers and sisters in the workplace suffer.”

Sylvia Pryce, director of the Citywide Office of Occupational Safety and Health noted that “COSH has a longstanding policy of attending every agency’s meetings. She then proceeded to participate in all of the day’s events.

In workshop sessions, participants saw a PowerPoint presentation on the mechanics of successful committee work, raised questions and discussed issues. Members brought up concerns including fire drills and bomb threat procedures, elevator maintenance, their right to conduct safety tours in the work-place, smoking violations, laundry facilities at juvenile justice centers, and the importance of comm-unication, documentation and follow-up to ensure that committees function effectively.

“Teams played the ‘labor’ and “management” roles at a mock safety meeting. Management from the “Dept. of Façade and Monuments Preservation” faced off against labor representatives from the fleet operators, office workers, façade maintainers, and architects’ locals.

Participants’ evaluation sheets showed that the conference, organized by DC 37’s Health and Safety Dept., successfully addressed a need of the front-line enforcers of safety standards. “The conference was well planned and much needed,” one member said. “The role-playing session allowed me to see that things can be handled in different ways,” said another. Many of the members requested additional conferences and suggested topics.