OCCUPATIONAL SAFETY AND HEALTH RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, the AFT represents members who confront myriad work-related hazards in:

• schools--where teachers, paraprofessionals, office maintenance personnel and food service workers are commonly exposed to indoor air pollution, asbestos, radon, pesticides and dangerous chemicals used in art and science classes; and

• office buildings--where public employees must frequently cope with inadequate ventilation, friable asbestos as well as poorly designed video-display terminal work stations; and

• public agencies and maintenance facilities--such as bus barns or shops-that present the potential of chronic musculoskeletal injury and of exposure to dangerous chemicals in addition to the hazards of poorly maintained equipment and operations; and

• health care facilities--where nurses and other professionals must contend with ionizing radiation, anti-neoplastic drugs, waste anesthetic gases, ergonomic strain and blood-bone diseases; and

WHEREAS, AFT members in Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Dakota, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia and Wisconsin are denied full and comprehensive coverage under a federally approved state OSHA plan; and

WHEREAS, AFT members in federally approved OSHA plan states are often inadequately protected:

RESOLVED, that the AFT urge Congress to amend the Occupational Safety and Health Act (1971) to extend to all public employees in the United States the rights and benefits guaranteed by the law.