Report 2017-119 Recommendation 10 Responses

Report 2017-119: California State University: It Has Not Provided Adequate Oversight of the Safety of Employees and Students Who Work With Hazardous Materials (Release Date: April 2018)

Recommendation #10 To: University, California State

To ensure the health and safety of employees working with hazardous materials, the Chancellor's Office should prescribe the frequency for which the campuses provide refresher laboratory safety training to employees.

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From October 2021

The issue of refresher training has been successfully bargained and agreed to and the revised policy has been finalized. Employees shall receive refresher laboratory safety training a minimum of every three years.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Fully Implemented

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From October 2020

As reported previously, the Chancellor's Office drafted a new policy to provide a framework for administrative health and safety processes, assessment, and reporting. The draft policy proposes that employees shall receive refresher laboratory safety training a minimum of every three years. Because the proposed policy changes may have an impact on the terms and conditions of employment, and after meeting with the three unions that requested to meet and confer, an updated draft was provided to all employee unions in December 2019 for further review. Only one union (CSUEU) requested to again meet and confer on the revised document but did not provide any dates and has not identified any reasonably foreseeable impact of the revised draft policy. CSU made several attempts to obtain dates from the union. After notifying the union on October 15, 2020 of the CSU's intention to implement the policy on or after November 2, 2020, unless the union articulates reasonably foreseeable impacts and provides prompt dates, the union then indicated its intention to file an unfair labor practice charge with the Public Employment Relations Board for violation of the collective bargaining law (HEERA) if the CSU implements the new policy. The CSU continues to seek dates from the union to complete the meet and confer process.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Pending

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From October 2019

The Chancellor's Office drafted a new policy to provide a framework for administrative health and safety processes, assessment, and reporting. The draft policy proposes that in addition to initial laboratory safety training, employees shall receive refresher training a minimum of every three years, or more frequently as warranted by changing hazards, regulations, or at a campus's discretion to implement training more frequently than prescribed. Proposed policy changes that may impact the terms and conditions of employment have to be provided to the unions for their review. The Chancellor's Office provided the draft policy to the unions in March 2019 and three unions requested to meet and confer. To date, Systemwide Risk Management has met with all three unions and is in the process of incorporating recommended and agreed to edits to the policy. The meet and confer process takes several months and based on the feedback from the aforementioned meetings, we anticipate closure of the meet and confer process by April 2020.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Pending

1-Year Agency Response

The Chancellor's Office drafted a new policy to provide a framework for administrative health and safety processes, assessment, and reporting. The draft policy proposes that in addition to initial laboratory safety training, employees shall receive refresher training a minimum of every three years, or more frequently as warranted by changing hazards, regulations, or at a campus's discretion to implement training more frequently than prescribed. Proposed policy changes that may impact the terms and conditions of employment have to be provided to the unions for their review. The Chancellor's Office provided the draft policy to the unions in March 2019; to date, three unions have requested to meet and confer. The meet and confer process may take several months.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 1-Year Status: Pending

6-Month Agency Response

The Chancellor's Office is drafting a new policy to provide a framework for administrative environmental health and safety processes, assessment, and reporting. The draft policy currently proposes that in addition to initial laboratory safety training, employees shall receive refresher training a minimum of every three years, or more frequently as warranted by changing hazards, regulations, or at a campus's discretion to implement training more frequently than prescribed.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 6-Month Status: Pending

60-Day Agency Response

The Chancellor's Office is consulting with the campuses to help determine the appropriate frequency for refresher laboratory safety training for employees. In addition, the Chancellor's Office is in the process of deploying a new learning management system for academic year 2018-19 and integrating e-learning content available from the Safety Training Consortium.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Pending

All Recommendations in 2017-119

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.