December 2020 Safety Committee Minutes
MINUTES OF ST. LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY SAFETY COMMITTEE
HELD VIA ZOOM ON FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2020 STARTING AT 8:00 AM.
Chairperson: Patrick Gagnon, Co-Chair
Present: Nick Ormasen, Co-Chair, Susan Johnson, Secretary, Mary Charleston, David Geleta, Ethan Townsend, Kasarian Dane, Jim Kozsan, Marsha Sawyer, Suna Stone, Sharmela Garcia-Martin and Traci Grainger
Apologies: Jill Pflugheber, Stacie Olney-LaPierre, Marcus Sherburne, Tim Kinch, Dan Seaman, Stacy Vassar, Bill Ritchie and Timothy Corbitt
Open comments, introductions and guests: Eric Shinnick
Approval of the Minutes
New Business:
1. Review of incident (injury; near-miss) reports without disclosing employee names.
The corrective actions identified through the incident investigation process should be presented to the safety committee for review and comments.
Employee Incident (injury; near-miss) Report Process:
*Employee notifies supervisor the same day the incident (injury; near-miss) occurs
*Supervisor completes incident report the day of the incident
*Form is forwarded to Human Resource to the attention of Katlin Herron and EHS to the attention of Bill Ritchie, Suna Stone or Nick Ormasen.
Suna Stone and Jaclyn teRiele maintain a student incident/injury and near-miss report for lab safety
2. On a semi-annual basis, share WC claim data with the school's safety committee. Use the data to discuss trends and discuss opportunities to drive improvements in categories where losses are occurring. Determine if a subset of the data could be appropriately shared with all employees of the school to increase awareness regarding the root causes of events and the importance of the safety program.
Eric explained that being self-insured enabled St. Lawrence to better respond fairly to employees who are injured on the job. Managers/Supervisors must help with corrective action and to be sure it is communicated to the employee to avoid repeat incidents.
We reviewed several graphs explaining Worker Compensation claims per year and cause, total claims by injury description (top three being strains, inflammation and lacerations) and total claims by occupation (top three food service, custodians and administration).
It is good to note that the average number of days an employee takes to report an injury may not only worsen the injury but exacerbate the treatment, cost and return to work date. REPORT EARLY AND AS OFTEN AS YOU NEED TO.
Supervisors/Managers should remind employees of the Shoes for Crews program through our purchasing department.
3. “Can you add ….Door maintenance at Student Center .Door frequently opens next to Cafe Kitchen entrance.Entry of wildlife has happened a few times. Thanks for your review of above items.”
These concerns have been shared with Marcus Sherburne, Jim Kozsan, Dan Seaman and Crysta Corbett.
Old Business:
Pet Policy needs to be rebuilt and a committee has been formed: Sharmela Garcia-Martin, Stacie Olney-LaPierre and Pat Gagnon. Debra Mousaw from Human Resources will be joining the committee. Initial Meeting has been scheduled for November 18th. The committee had their initial meeting and they are obtaining comparisons from other schools. Evelyn Jennings will be joining the committee as well. The current policy will need to be enforced or rewritten and that is what this group will be discussing in their next couple of meetings. Please note this policy is for Faculty/Staff which is different from the Pet Policy that is utilized for the Student Handbook and Student Accessibility Services for Emotional Support and Service Animals.
Tabled:
1. Review Integrated Pest Management Plan –Needs to be reviewed/revised. Last updated in 2006. Marcus advocates streamlining the current document, as there is a lot of information in there that needs to be replaced; much editing to do and at this time, the plan refers mostly to grounds and needs to incorporate the entire campus. He hopes that he and Suna can have something for February/March 2021 meeting. In preparing for ash borer it takes 21 years for total destruction; Marcus will be planning on a 12 year plan and replace instead of treating as the treating process has a 95% failure rate just delaying destruction that will happen anyway. It is cheaper to replace the trees than treat them. Suna updated the committee stating that St. Lawrence will be adopting the Colgate Plan and modifying it to St. Lawrence’s practices. They will be interviewing Facilities and Dining Managers for input and hope to have an update for our next meeting on December 4th.
It is requested that any new business to be added to the Agenda be forwarded to Susan Johnson no later than January 4th, 2021.
There being no further business, the meeting closed.
Meeting Adjourned at 9:02 a.m.
Future Meetings:
Meetings will be held via Zoom from 8am-9am. Dates of future meetings will continue to be the first Friday of the month: 1/8/2021, 2/5/2021, 3/5/2021, 4/2/2021, 5/7/2021 and 6/4/2021