Critical condition

Rapid Response training ‘invaluable’

Rob Burleson didn’t have to see the horrific fatality at Unique Fabricating Inc. in 2000 to know workers would be affected by it for a long time.

Burleson, then a trustee of UAW Local 9699, pulled up to the Rochester Hills, Mich., plant as the ambulance carrying Janis Ruston sped out. The 53-year-old worker UAW member was crushed inside a clam-shell press. Maintenance workers had to disassemble the press to remove her body.

“It was a horrible, horrible sight,” said Burleson, now president of the local. “I cannot imagine how it affected the people who knew her. They were not only co-workers, they were friends.”

Burleson said managers at the plant, who had never experienced a gut-wrenching accident like this, asked the union what to do.

The UAW responded with staff from the Community Services Department who helped workers talk about the accident. The UAW Health and Safety Department investigated the incident and recommended safeguarding the side of the press, according to American National Standards Institute standards.

But what struck Joe Peters, who was then assistant director of UAW Region 1, was that many non-Big Three workplaces such as Unique Fabricating did not have a formal method for responding to emergencies.

“After the fatality at Unique Fabricating, I felt we needed to address this in an organized fashion at smaller manufacturing plants and at technical, professional and office workplaces,” said Peters, now the region’s director. Peters, with the aid of the UAW Health and Safety and Community Services departments, put together the Rapid Response Critical Incident Training program for Region 1. The training gets union representatives and management on the same page should an emergency occur. “It’s a program for management and union because health and safety is everyone’s responsibility,” said Brian Negovan, UAW Local 155 recording secretary and a trainer.

The many questions the trainers ask of the participants usually determine how ready they are to handle an emergency:

• Is there a written plan?

• Are phone numbers of people and agencies to be contacted readily available?

• Can the local hospital handle the types of emergencies our plant could expect?

• Do all alarms work? Does the evacuation plan work? Is it ever practiced?

• What equipment and utilities should be shut down and are the workers trained to do it in the plant at that time?

The training also shows participants what free resources are available before an incident. The Health and Safety Department has a variety of training programs. The Community Services Department can help identify workplace violence issues.

Jim Green, the former owner of Milton Mfg. Inc. in Detroit, called the program “invaluable” for managers because it makes them aware of day-to-day dangers they may not have realized.

Green, who is now a trainer, knows the quickest way to get a worker to the hospital isn’t always by dialing 911. Nearby private ambulance companies can often get to the plant quicker depending on how many calls local first-responders are handling at that time. “The group that is working on this from the UAW is doing a wonderful job,” he added.

Vince Piscopo