Richard Cicerone, Shop Steward at Stop & Shop #2551 Hampton Bays, submitted his Safety Inspection Form to the Local 342 Safety Department to report several hazards in his shop that couldn’t wait to be fixed.

Richard reported that the Stop & Shop company had installed a new freezer door that if closed by incidental contact, the worker would have to sound the alarm that was located at the right hand side of the inside of the freezer door. What used to get you out of the freezer prior to that, was a knob that you would push and the freezer door would swing open. All workers knew about the knob procedure.

Well, the new freezer door did not have any knob to push, so if a worker were looking for it, it would not be there. You now had to push the alarm and hope someone would come open it for you.

While Safety Director Egan was on the phone with Shop Steward Cicerone, Union Representative John Feretti and Field Director Bob Lazzaro were in the store for an un-related issue. Egan had asked the steward to put Bob Lazzaro on the phone. She then asked Lazzaro to check out the freezer door in question and to actually go in the freezer and shut the door behind him, with Representative Feretti waiting outside the door, just in case. Well... in order to now get out of dangerously cold conditions Director Lazzaro had to push the alarm to see if anyone else besides representative Feretti would come to his rescue. About two minutes after the exit alarm was set off, three company supervisors came running to the back room to see what the commotion was all about. To their surprise Director Lazzaro came out of the freezer.

What if those company supervisors were not in the building? What if the shop steward didn’t send his report in? What if the Local 342 Safety Department didn’t call the shop steward that day? What if a clerk would have been helpful to a customer and went to retrieve product from the freezer and didn’t know of a new procedure with an alarm, which actually did happen. We never want to deal with "what if!"

Every shop steward needs to get involved and continue to stay involved in the Local 342 Safety Inspection Program and stay on top of safety hazards and get the store management to always do the right thing, because WHAT IF THEY DON’T?