Boston Public Schools (BPS) closed for in-person learning in March 2020 due to COVID-19 and didn't fully reopen until the 2021-2022 school year. Due to the age of schools and absent ventilation systems, coupled with decades of disinvestment in the infrastructure, BPS entered the pandemic with serious challenges impacting the health of students and staff. These challenges were magnified by an infectious airborne virus.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAfter years of watching company health and safety programs fail to prevent major incidents, injuries, illness, and death in industrial workplaces, union health and safety staff and rank and file activists took up the challenge of creating a union-run alternative program. Named the Triangle of Prevention (TOP), the program successfully engages both local unions and management in incident and near-miss reporting and investigation, root cause analysis, recommending and tracking solutions, and learning and sharing lessons. In all phases, TOP uses a hierarchical, systems-of-safety-based approach to hazard identification, reporting, prevention and control while aiming to engage the union, its members, and all other employees of a worksite.
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