District 4 Safety & Health Retreat
On July 12th, we had the first District 4 Safety & Health Retreat at the Hyatt Regency Chicago. There were 29 local union Health & Safety activists, along with 4 CWA staff who participated in the Health & Safety Retreat. Jeff Rechenbach, District 4 Vice President, welcomed the participants. These activists represented locals from traditional CWA locals, the Printing Sector, the News Paper Guild and the IUE-CWA. Geographically the entire District was represented with locals from Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin sending activists to the retreat.
There were 4 panels with 2 to 4 panelists on each panel:
Local Union Issues (Local union panel)
Jerry Minkkinen, TNG-CWA Local 34071
Lynn Phipps, CWA Local 4900
Using Joint and Union Occupational Safety and Health
Committees to Identify/Resolve Safety and Health
Issues (local union panel)
Peggy Griffith, CWA Local 4302
Gary Kundrat, CWA Local 4340
Occupational Safety and Health as a Mobilizing and
Organizing Tool (local union panel)
Joe Alvarez, CWA Local 4900
Diane Croom, IUE-CWA Local 84081
Barbara Lynn, IUE-CWA Local 84081
Celia Cody, CWA District 4 Organizer
Achieving Success in Occupational Safety and Health:
Local Union Needs/Resources
Charlie Barrett, CWA Occupational Safety & Health Department
David LeGrande, CWA Occupational Safety & Health Department
There was very lively discussion around each of the panels. Issues that were discussed included hazards faced by our members, setting up effective H&S committees (especially union committees), how to use H&S issues to organize new members and discussing effective H&S collective bargaining language. Participants were able to discuss issues that are common to their work and exchange ideas on how to activate CWA members around health & safety issues. There were a lot of issues common to each of the diverse sectors of the CWA.
