Two Thoughts From Pennsylvania

I learned a great deal from my participation in the “Building a Disaster-Resilient Small Business” workshop series of the Pennsylvania Small Business Development Center’s Environmental Management Assistance Program. The series consisted of three, three hour-workshops hosted by the Small Business Development Centers of Penn State University at State College, Bucknell University at Lewisburg and Duquesne University in Cranberry Township. T. David Filson and I facilitated each of the three workshops. Mr. Filson coordinates the emergency preparedness and response communications within the Penn State Cooperative Extension. Two issues, in particular, came up during the discussion that I want to share with you. The first concerns fire safety. Dave Filson spoke of how he had participated in group safety training with the local fire department in which each person had to demonstrate that he could put out a fire using the fire extinguisher. The fire fighter who taught the program would carefully start a fire in a controlled setting, giving the chance to learn in a safe environment.

The second issue that arose concerned the unique needs of union workplaces and work rules as set out in collective bargaining contracts. For those small businesses that work with unionized employees, you need to have clarity about what their work responsibilities will be, within the framework of their contract, during a disaster recovery operation. This is particularly important as the union work rules may limit the flexibility of the response to disaster-related needs that you cannot always anticipate in advance.

I thought I would post these comments so that workshop participants in other parts of the country could have the benefit of our discussions. I very much look forward to returning to Pennsylvania. I had wanted to visit a bit, but driving the entire width of Pennsylvania on the turnpike left me little time!