It’s great to see a plan come together

by Frank Miramontes, Local 18 President and Joint Safety Institute Administrator

After approximately a year and a half of working through the DWP’s bureaucracy and City Hall’s roadblocks, the Joint Safety Institute is finally up and running.

There has been a lot of work and planning to get the JSI structure formalized and in place. It took much discussion and brainstorming to come up with realistic, specific short- and long-term goals that would make a difference to our workers.

We are now starting to see the dissemination of good safety information, and we are getting invaluable input from the front line workers through our Worker Safety Group Tours.

We are presently sponsoring and coordinating safety training classes throughout the city, Boulder and the Owens Valley. We are working at putting together targeted new safety training classes for front line lead workers, supervisors, Safety Trainers and Training Coordinators.

We have begun to build a comprehensive safety library that will be available to all workers.

Although both Chuck Kokoska and I realize we have just started and there is still a long way to go, it is nice to go out in the field, meet with the workers and see some of the things we have been planning for so long start to fall into place.