Employee Health and Safety Always #1 Priority
I am very confident in saying UCANE members have always made the safety of employees their top priority. The goal is to make sure that all their employees get home from the jobsite, to their families, safely at the end of every day. The work that we do is inherently dangerous, but we do everything we can to try and prevent accidents and ensure safety.
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CANE is again offering safety classes this month. One is the Asbestos Cement Pipe Certification class. Any worker that may handle or come into contact with an asbestos pipe needs to be certified. This certification is for a five year period, so make sure that you haven’t let yours or your employees certification expire. We will also be offering our annual Confined Space Entry/Competent Person seminar taught by nationally recognized instructor John Barrasso. While this seminar is always well attended, it takes on additional significance this year as OSHA has made trench safety enforcement a priority for 2019. Call the UCANE office to sign up for these classes or to recommend any other type of safety training you would like to see UCANE offer. In addition to these traditional types of safety training, UCANE is getting involved in an issue that can have a dramatic impact on an employee’s health and well-being: opioid addiction. The construction industry has been disproportionally affected by the opioid crisis our country now faces. A report released by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health last year found that almost a quarter of the overdose deaths in Massachusetts over a five year period were people who work in construction. Because of the nature of our industry, the workforce is more suscepFEBRUARY, 2019
tible to abusing painkiller medication, which can lead to addiction. The numbers are staggering. Drug overdoses are the leading cause of death for Americans under 50. A report by the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation found that opioids have kept an estimated 32,700 people from participating in the labor force in Massachusetts over the past seven years and that 4.2% of the total employed in the state reported misusing pain relievers. Nationally, the economic cost of the opioid epidemic is estimated at $504 billion. UCANE has joined other construction associations in taking steps to address the problem. We participated in an Opioid in Construction Summit with various healthcare and industry professionals to discuss best practices employers can use to identify and help employees dealing with addiction. We have also met with Health and Human Services Secretary Marylou Sudders about how we can partner with the state, as Governor Baker has made tackling the opioid problem a priority of his Administration. In the coming months, UCANE will be offering programs and information to members on this issue. I encourage all members to participate and get involved so we all can play a part in helping to end this horrible epidemic. n
“BUY FROM THE ADVERTISERS IN CONSTRUCTION OUTLOOK”
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