NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Introduction by Lida Orta-Anes, International UAW
DR. ORTA-ANES: My name is Lida Orta-Anes. I am an ergonomist with the International United Auto Workers. I am based out of Detroit, Michigan. I would like to welcome you to the employee involvement session, and before I go on and start introducing the speakers of this session, I would like to go through some of the logistics and some of the information that we need to remind you about the session.
This session is being taped. It is being recorded, so we would like to remind you that when you need to make a comment or ask a question during the question and answer session, please do use the microphones and identify yourself and the company that you are working with.
Also, we will prefer to hold onto the questions to the end so that we give all the speakers equal opportunity and time to share with you their experiences. So if you have a burning question, please write it down and then present it during the general session at the end. We will make sure that there is enough time allocated for the question and answers.
A third piece of information that we are going to make some of the illustrations in front, so I would encourage some of you guys in back to move forward so you will be able to see better what is going on. There is plenty of room in front. If you want to do that now, that is fine.
Throughout most of the presentations yesterday and this morning employee involvement has been mentioned and highlighted as a very important component in any type of ergonomic process. The presentations we are going to share with you, hopefully, will help to validate the usefulness of this component and also to give you some idea of how to implement employee involvement when you go back to your home organizations.
This session is going to be co-chaired by Tolle Graham, and Tolle is the program coordinator and senior trainer for MassCOSH, the Massachusetts Coalition of Occupational Safety and Health, and she will be in charge of making the afternoon summary presentation. Weather permitting, I need to catch a plane out of here by mid-afternoon. So Tolle graciously accepted to pitch in and do that for us.
