Solidarity in Safety

USW Activists Build Safer, Healthier Workplaces and Communities

Norm Rogers and his fellow USW oil workers fought to enshrine strict safety standards for refineries in California law, finally winning a hard-fought victory in 2022 with the passage of the state's groundbreaking process safety management (PSM) bill.

Those rules mandated rigorous hazard controls and gave workers the power to shut down operations in unsafe conditions, setting a bar that other states began to use as a model.

Four years later, as a result of an industry challenge, the Golden State's life-saving standards and other vital workplace protections are in danger of being rolled back, putting the lives of workers and the safety of communities at risk.

"This assault is not going unchecked," vowed Rogers, the vice president of Local 675. "We are working to make sure that what we gained in the regulation becomes state law."

Growing Threats

Rogers made his promise to continue the fight as he addressed nearly 2,000 of his fellow USW members during the union's 2026 Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) conference this May in Pittsburgh.

Activists from across North America shared countless stories about the growing threats to the rules, regulations and agencies that help make their jobs safer and healthier.

"Everything that has ever been achieved in the way of health and safety standards has been won by working people and labor unions," International President Roxanne Brown told the delegation in her keynote address. "Yet so many of those hard-fought protections have either been cut or are in jeopardy of being cut."

The White House - with help from corporate lobbyists and anti-worker politicians in Washington - slashed funding for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA), the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), the Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board (CSB), and other institutions meant to keep workplaces safer and healthier.

While continued pressure from workers, unions and other allies was successful in rolling back some of those cuts, federal oversight of worker safety has deteriorated since the Trump administration returned to office, Brown said.

Charlotte Brody, who serves as vice president of health initiatives for the BlueGreen Alliance, moderated a panel discussion on the conference's second day focusing on how workers can confront the growing threats to their own well-being.

"No matter where you live, no matter where you work, no matter who you voted for," Brody said, "you're less safe than you were in January of 2025."

Brown pointed out that OSHA now has only five inspectors for every one million U.S. workers - the lowest number in 45 years - meaning that it would take the agency 191 years to inspect each U.S. workplace.

Workers must demand more robust funding from their leaders in Washington and remain active and vigilant in their own workplaces to identify and eliminate threats to health and safety, Brown said.

"This is not about politics," she said. "It's about doing what's right."

Going on Offense

Despite the relentless attacks from anti-worker politicians and corporate interests, USW members are not content to simply play defense - they are continuing their push for innovative solutions to health and safety issues, including new and evolving threats like artificial intelligence, as well as traditional safety and health concerns like heat and dust exposure and workplace violence.

"You should be leaving this conference ready to collectively fight and push back and reclaim what we lost, and build on that," Brown told the delegation. "That work starts here, at this conference."

The work that USW members did at the conference included five days of panel discussions, workshops and training sessions on topics including identifying gaps in health and safety management systems, mental health, toxic exposures, artificial intelligence and other emerging technology, whistleblower protections, workplace stress, and building collaborative relationships with management.

Members of management at USW-represented sites took steps toward strengthening those relationships by joining their union counterparts at the conference following a one-day session exclusively for union members.

Working Together

The importance of union members working in tandem with management to improve safety and health was a topic that participants consistently returned to throughout the weeklong conference.

Strong HSE committees that address issues directly are the cornerstone of that collaborative effort, said Steve Sallman, director of the USW health, safety and environment department.

"Our local union activists are the first line of defense in our effort to find and fix hazards and keep workers safer," Sallman said.

Setting clear and strong systems in each workplace can help USW members make up for the erosion of investigation and enforcement on the national level, Brown said.

"This is not only a benefit to workers, but a benefit to companies too," she noted.

Rail Safety Effort

The conference provided tangible evidence of those benefits with the introduction of the USW's groundbreaking guide to in-plant rail safety, a 76-page book intended to fill gaps where federal and state regulations fall short. The guide included input from dozens of Steelworkers as well as members of management at Arconic, Cleveland-Cliffs, Goodyear and other USW employers.

Bob Boardman, contract coordinator for Local 979 at the Cleveland-Cliffs integrated steelmaking facility in Ohio, was instrumental in making the rail guide a reality. Boardman said that he realized the need for rail-specific guidelines while attending past USW conferences and listening to his fellow members talk about their workplaces.

He said he was thrilled to support the HSE department's vision for a railroad safety publication, given the high fatality rate in what is typically a small job classification in industrial plants.

"I knew there was a gap in rail safety knowledge and systems, as well as how difficult it was to find unbiased rail safety information," he said. "OSHA has very few rules that cover rail safety."

Boardman and several other USW activists received the union's A.Q. Evans Award in recognition of their work on the guide.

The rail guide is just one item on a lengthy list of strides USW members have made in recent years to protect the safety and health of their fellow workers, said District 3 Director Scott Lunny.

In 2022, the union published a guide on "stop work authority" - which allows workers to halt unsafe work until potential hazards are thoroughly investigated and addressed. And in 2023, through the Women of Steel program and the union's Canadian office, the USW published "Raising the Bar on Women's Health and Safety," an action guide addressing the issue of domestic violence through union activism.

"It's a genuine Steelworkers' success story," Lunny said.

Those successes will continue, as long as workers use the power of their solidarity to demand safer and healthier jobs, Brown said.

Honoring the Fallen

The delegation paid a solemn tribute to their fallen co-workers on the conference's second day, when 43 hard hats lined the front of the stage, and 43 names - those who lost their lives due to uncontrolled hazards at USW workplaces since the last HSE event in August 2024 - scrolled on video screens.

"These losses are preventable," Sallman said. "Their lives were stolen from them."

The best way to honor them and those who came before them, Sallman and others insisted, is for workers to continue to fight every day, in every workplace, for better health, safety and environmental protections.

"That is the power of a union," Boardman said. "That is how we win."