Union health and safety activists, health and safety professionals and university-based researchers have come together with a common concern that research agendas in occupational health and safety are too removed from the experience of workers and their abilities to alter the conditions in which they work.
The goal of LOARC is to improve working conditions and health for workers through fostering research collaboration across unions, occupational health and safety professionals and university researchers.
The objectives of the coalition are to:
- Provide unique opportunities to collaboration between workers, their unions, occupational health and safety professionals and academic researchers.
- Effect changes at work that will promote worker health, safety and wellbeing.
- Use our skills more effectively and develop relationships.
- Improve effectiveness of prevention practices by engaging workers through their unions in priorities, decisions and implementation.
Organizing/Coordinating Committee:
Chair: Andy King
Terri Aversa, Ontario Public Service Employees Union (OPSEU)
Alan Hall, Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN)
Nancy Johnson, Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA)
Wayne Lewchuk, McMaster University
Laura Lozanski, Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT)
Syed Naqvi, Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers (OHCOW)
John Oudyk, Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers (OHCOW)
Sari Sairanen, UNIFOR
Ellen Simmons, Workers Health and Safety Centre (WHSC)
Health and safety representative study: Making participation work in the new economy—a study of health and safety representatives in Ontario to identify what type of activities and styles bring the most success.
LOARC Paper—Internal Responsibility: The Challenge and the Crisis—a paper that identifies areas for reform to improve internal responsibility in Ontario’s health and safety system. 
Click here
Events (click for presentations):
- McMasterTeach-In: Tuesday May 25, 2010 at McMaster University
- Joint RAACWI/LOARC Teach-In: Toronto March 31, 2011,
- NEW!!! Teach-In # 3 “Stopping the spread of psychosocial hazards at work in Quebec and Ontario” at University of Ottawa, October 24/25, 2011