[Excerpt] Nearly half of all industrial union contracts mandate joint labor-management health and safety committees (JHSCs). In the past five years, mandated JHSCs have also become common in the public sector in states that have enacted occupational safety statutes for public workers. And now many health and safety activists are advocating state and federal laws that would require all workplaces, union and nonunion, to have JHSCs. Although such laws are vitally important in establishing worker rights to safe workplaces, by themselves joint committees cannot be expected to solve serious health and safety problems.