Worker Cleaning Initiative: A model for worker inclusion in safe chemical policy campaigns

While many organizations seek to broaden their coalitions to include the voices of workers and occupational health professionals, a California-based environmental coalition took it a step further to ensure its success. CHANGE, Californians for a Health and Green Economy, allocated staff and related resources to develop a “workers cleaning initiative” as a way to integrate a workers' perspective into negotiations on how to implement the state's Green Chemistry Initiative and related legislative and regulatory efforts. The emerging project, led by CHANGE member Worksafe, has focused on people cleaning products on the job as a unifying theme to bring together over a dozen low-wage and immigrant worker organizations representing janitors and custodians, hotel room cleaners, car wash workers, household cleaners, nail salon workers, and others in Los Angeles and the Bay Area. The project connects these union and worker groups with OSH experts to learn the latest in safer alternatives. It also educates and prepares them to be advocates for safer or “green” chemical policies, thereby broadening and strengthening the CHANGE coalition. Lessons learned from this ongoing project will be shared.