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>> I can imagine that employers these days are feeling
overwhelmed with the opioid crisis just spiking.
I mean, in the '80s, it was flat and then now,
and 2020 it's going up.
It is a crisis.
>> About two and half years ago,
we lost five apprentices to overdose.
All of them were working.
All of them were going to school as apprentices, and we lost five
of them in an 11-month span and they were all under the age
of 30 from opioid overdose.
>> We had 2,000 people in Massachusetts die last year
of an opioid overdose, I mean that's five deaths a day.
>> And so when we saw that our members were affected by this,
we knew we had to jump in with both feet and deal
with the problem and try to find ways to deal with it,
not only temporarily and immediately,
but for the long term, making sure that people get back
to work and they can stay at work.
>> For employers, you don't have to be a specialist, but you need
to learn what the resources are
and there are plenty of resources.
The CDC has beautiful resources.
>> We know that construction is difficult work.
It's seasonal work.
They struggle even in the best of times
with certain exposures in the workplace.
Pain and injury are far too common among construction
workers, but the good news is there are solutions
to substance use disorders among construction workers
and NIOSH believes that just like any chronic disease,
a substance use disorder is manageable, it's treatable,
and employers and workers together can work
to solve this solution.
A substance use disorder should not mean a lost job.
It should not mean never returning
to meaningful employment again.
So we're developing a series of important interventions
around the concept of workplace-supported recovery.
In workplace-supported recovery programs, employers
and workers really work together to recognize
when substance use disorder is occurring, to help workers
who are struggling, to lower the all too common stigma associated
with substance use disorders, and employers really take steps
to help workers get the care they need.
That really is the goal
of a quality workplace-supported recovery program.
>> The Building Trades Employers Association decided it would be
a good idea to put on Building Trades for Recovery Week,
and we chose a week-long because we thought
that it takes a lot more than a day to educate people
on substance use disorder, what goes into it, how it works
in the brain, and how to make an effective EAP referral,
employee assistance referral,
how to treat somebody once they have become overdosed,
and how to help someone who's struggling, so we put on a week
and the whole goal behind it was I wanted to save lives.
I wanted to start a conversation amongst labor and management
and I wanted to save lives.
>> I feel that our company is really just starting
on a journey that's going
to take us several years into the future.
We've had some of our workforce trained
to use Narcan on projects.
We've had for some time now, supervisors and foremen trained
under reasonable suspicion training to recognize some
of the signs and symptoms with drug use and opioid use.
Our participation
in the Building Trades Council Recovery Week was a boost
for us.
It was the start of something new for us.
We know that it's something that we have to focus
on as a company, and we're willing to do that,
and I think that particularly in the Boston area, you see a lot
of other companies following suit in regards to stepping
up their game and participating.
>> Workplace-supported recovery programs really do a great job
at the start by preventing work-related injuries
and illness.
They also take steps to decrease work demands that might lead
to daily pain or difficult working conditions.
These programs also really promote the use of alternatives
to opioids for pain relief
when people do get a workplace injury or illness.
They provide information and access
to care when it is needed.
They also take steps to lower the stigma associated
with seeking care and they give people access
to medication-assisted treatment along
with the individual counseling that is critical.
>> One of the first things that we know that we do well,
that we can impact them on, was making sure
that they had all the safety prerequisites
so that they were working safely on the job
and preventing injuries using all the resources of NIOSH
and our other partners to make sure
that they were getting the best and most up-to-date training,
because the safest way for us to do it is
to prevent the injuries in the first place.
They also are supportive of second chance employment
for those people who've lost a job due
to substance use disorder, and they take steps
to offer peer support and peer coaching
to bolster those social supports that are so important to workers
in recovery, and you know, perhaps most importantly,
they're very keen to protecting workers' privacy
and confidentiality associated with seeking care
in a very difficult and challenging condition.
>> We've had 25 individuals be dependent.
Our members go through the extended care program,
and the average length of stay is 180 days,
because they're entitled to stay longer if they choose to do so.
We've seen that a 78% success rate.
We run a voluntary program.
There's no disciplinary action, unless you have issues
on the job or at the school or any of the facilities,
so it's a strict voluntary,
confidential program that we run.
>> We're encouraging contractors
in the union construction industry
to rehabilitate the guys and not terminate them,
and I think the program
that Karas & Karas Glass has should be served as a model
for the rest of the industry.
>> It's very easy to write somebody off who's gone
through treatment or suffered from some addiction,
but as a company, our belief is that it's important to give
that person a second chance, to stand up for that person,
allow them an opportunity to seek recovery and recovery
in life, not just from that addiction,
but to get their life back on track.
>> I struggled with addiction, with heroin, fentanyl,
and I was working for Karas and I asked them for help.
I told them I needed treatment, and they assisted me in getting
into long-term treatment.
>> Just to have a company to make you feel comfortable
that they're aware that you are putting in the effort
to redeem yourself, that gives me more fuel to my tank to keep
on doing good in life.
>> So the two key things for this opioid crisis
to be gotten ahead of, talk about it
and get yourself educated.
It really comes down to those two things.
>> The NIOSH webpage Opioids
in the Workplace hosts very helpful, actionable information
which will be valuable to employers and workers.
In addition to the NIOSH webpage, the CPWR,
the NIOSH-funded National Construction Center also has
links to lots of great information
on various aspects of this issue.
We are continually updating our data on the crisis,
the latest research, as well as the latest resources
for workplaces that wish to be supportive of their employees
and communities as we all face the opioid crisis together.
>> But you can't do this alone.
You cannot go through this alone.
That's been proven over and over.
As many things as I've tried on my own, different ways
of doing different things, none of them were successful
until I stopped making decisions for myself and let people
who had been there before me guide me in the right direction
and when I became willing to accept
that help, everything opened up.
>> Well personally, you know, I'm in recovery myself,
so that's how this, you know, journey started for me,
but I was the guy that I talk about in my education program.
I was that guy who was in the throes of a disease.
I didn't know how to handle it.
I thought it was a willpower thing.
I thought I could just stop, and I just never could,
and the consequences got worse and worse,
and the pain got greater,
and someone put their hand out to me.
Someone from the union came to me and said Brendon,
you don't have to live like this anymore
and the next thing I know, I was on a plane and I went to a rehab
and it changed my life.
I have three children today
who have never seen me pick up a drink or a drug.
They don't know that guy.
They know Dad, the baseball coach and the basketball coach,
the guy who goes to work everyday
and provides for his family.
They don't know the person who was in the throes
of a disease for so many years.
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