Case 1 - The Watamu hotel committee that has no workers on it
Sunrise Bay Hotel in Watamu employs 96 people across three shifts - housekeeping, kitchen, laundry, security and front office. After a DOSHS inspector issued an improvement notice following a slip in the laundry, the general manager formed a “safety committee” of five people: himself as chairperson, the human resource manager, the security supervisor, the maintenance technician and the head chef. No housekeeper, laundry attendant or waiter sits on it. The general manager says this is faster “because supervisors can decide on the spot.” The committee has met twice in fourteen months and the minutes are kept in the HR manager’s personal notebook. A laundry attendant who raised the wet-floor problem was told by her supervisor that “the committee handles that, not you.” There is no written safety and health policy, the staff noticeboard carries no committee names, and no worker has been told the committee exists.
1. Is this committee properly constituted under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, 2007? State what is wrong and exactly what must change.
Read the worked answer
The label does not make it a committee. With 96 employees the hotel is far above the 20-employee threshold, so a safety and health committee is mandatory and must be built in the prescribed way.
What the law expects
- A compact committee - roughly three to seven members: large enough to cover the main departments, small enough to meet and act.
- Both sides represented: management members and worker members, with the worker members chosen by the workers themselves (elected or nominated at a staff meeting), not hand-picked by the general manager.
- A chairperson appointed by the employer and a secretary who keeps a proper record.
- Meetings at a fixed frequency - at least quarterly - with minutes filed and copied to management for action.
- Members oriented or trained on the Act, hazard identification, workplace inspections and incident investigation.
Audit of the Watamu committee
- All five members are managers or supervisors appointed by the GM. Laundry, kitchen and housekeeping staff - the people exposed to wet floors, chemicals and heat - have no representative. This is a management meeting using the committee’s name.
- Two meetings in fourteen months breaches the quarterly expectation and leaves recommendations unmonitored.
- Minutes in a personal notebook are not a committee record: not available to members, to workers, or to an inspector.
Fix: dissolve and reconstitute with, say, five members - three elected worker representatives (laundry, kitchen, housekeeping) and two management representatives - with written terms of reference, a minutes file and a published meeting schedule.
2. The general manager argues that supervisors are better committee members because they can decide immediately. Assess that argument against the committee’s functions.
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The committee’s job is review, inspection and recommendation - not instant decision-making. Its functions are to examine the employer’s safety and health measures, inspect the workplace, examine the causes of accidents and dangerous occurrences, check the effectiveness of training and personal protective equipment, promote co-operation between employer and workers, and recommend corrective action, which the employer then implements and reports back on.
Why supervisors alone cannot do that
- Supervisors see the work as it is supposed to be done; workers see it as it is actually done - the squeegee left across the corridor, the floor still wet at shift change, detergent decanted into an unlabelled bottle. Those are precisely the facts the committee exists to surface.
- Reporting depends on trust. A laundry attendant told “the committee handles that, not you” learns that raising a hazard earns a rebuke. The next hazard goes unreported, and the employer loses its cheapest early-warning system.
- A management-only body simply adds a second meeting to the chain of command. It provides no independent check and leaves the employer unable to show consultation if an accident later occurs.
- “Deciding on the spot” is not lost by including workers. A supervisor’s power to stop an unsafe job is unaffected; the committee handles the slower work - the hazard register, the inspection schedule, the corrective actions and their follow-up.
Conclusion: the GM confuses speed with effectiveness. The committee’s value is exactly the participation his arrangement removes.
3. Set out a practical 30-day sequence for reconstituting the committee and making it functional.
Read the worked answer
Days 1–3 - announce. Written notice to all staff in the languages used on the floor (noticeboards, shift briefings, induction folder): a safety and health committee is being formed and nominations are invited from each department and shift. Nomination slips go to a neutral point; a shop steward or the most senior non-management employee chairs the nomination meeting if workers prefer it.
Days 4–7 - elect. Hold elections within each department or shift; a show of hands with a recorded count is sufficient. Confirm a total of five to seven members with at least half drawn from the worker side. Record names, departments, shifts and votes.
Days 8–14 - constitute. The employer appoints the chairperson in writing and issues one-page terms of reference: purpose, membership, meeting frequency (quarterly minimum), quorum, and how recommendations reach the GM and how the GM responds in writing.
Day 15 - first meeting. Elect a secretary, set the next four meeting dates, agree an inspection schedule (laundry first), open a hazard register and an action log with named owners and deadlines, and agree how workers raise issues between meetings.
Days 16–30 - make it work. Book member training with DOSHS or a registered safety and health advisor; post names, contact points and meeting dates on the noticeboard and in induction; open a minutes file in a locked cabinet accessible to members and inspectors; write to the area DOSHS office confirming the committee is in place and file the date in the establishment’s safety record.