Triangle of Prevention: A Union's Experience Promoting a Systems-of-Safety Health and Safety Program

Abstract

After 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. This article explains the foundations and workings of this program, the role of an expansive worker-to-worker training regimen, and the ways in which the program has transformed workplaces.