2
In the context of this debate over workplace safety committees, there have been
successful efforts at government mandates of them in the United States. Since its inception in
1990, Oregon is one of several states to require labor-management safety committees in most
workplaces.
3
Specifically, state law requires firms of ten or more employees to have a
workplace safety committee. Committees must have at least two employee and two management
representatives; companies can have more members on their committees, but management
cannot have more representation than employees. By law, committees are required to meet
monthly, conduct quarterly wall-to-wall inspections of their worksites, and provide written
recommendations to employers on matters of hazard abatement and safer work practices. While
employers have veto power over committee recommendations, they must provide written reasons
for their decision in ten days. Safety committees are also required by law to keep minutes of
their meetings and records of their inspections. Oregon OSHA inspectors may fine companies
that fail to establish a safety committee or do not follow the composition, activity, or record-
keeping requirements of the law (OR-OSHA 1996).
4
Oregon’s safety committee mandate provides thousands of cases with which to explore
the effectiveness of committees in union and non-union settings. Below, I review a previous
study of Oregon safety committees (as well as survey studies of safety committees in Canada and
Britain) comparing performance union and non-union workplaces. These studies generally take
state enforcement activities (and to a lesser extent injury rates) as an indicator of effective
committee performance and find that while committees are effective in union and non-union
settings, they can create an “enforcement gap” between union and non-union firms. However,
these findings are problematic because a unionized workforce is not a sufficient condition for
effective committees and, at least in the case of Oregon, committees may show an overall
positive effect on safety and health performance based on state-wide enforcement activities and
declining injury and illness rates. Further, previous studies examine committee effectiveness
through narrow criteria, excluding important aspects of effectiveness (identification of hazards,
3
Other states include California, Washington, Colorado, New Mexico, and Maine. Congress considered a bill to
create a federal mandate for safety committees, but it never made it out of Congressional Committee (U.S. H.R.
1994).
4
Indeed, failure to establish a safety committee is the most frequently cited violation at Oregon OSHA (Oregon
OSHA 2002). An Oregon OSHA safety consultant with whom I spoke, however, estimated that 80% of Oregon
businesses now have a safety committee of some form.
Convention