The overall objective of the International Union of Operating Engineers National Training Fund's (NTF's) DOE training program is to prevent work-related harm by training workers and instructors how to best protect themselves and their communities from exposure to hazardous materials encountered during facility decommissioning and decontamination, demolition, hazardous materials transportation, environmental restoration of contaminated facilities, or chemical emergency response. The NTF utilizes the train-the-trainer model to train its Peer Trainers. This approach supports collective learning that provides workers/trainees with a better understanding of the job hazards and the empowerment to make changes. The training population can be divided into two categories: Peer Trainers and workers/trainees working at DOE sites or preparing to go to work at DOE sites. Peer Trainers are IUOE workers at a DOE site, appointed from their local union training programs, and are existing apprenticeship and journey-level trainers with adult education experience. The NTF also contracts with retired DOE training personnel to conduct training. Thousands of IUOE workers/trainees are employed on or are preparing to go to work on DOE sites, including the Nuclear Weapons Complex. Heavy equipment operators may be lowering lances into underground tanks to mix sludge for removal, removing contaminated dirt or barrels with backhoes, loading leaky and unlabeled drums containing hazardous chemicals into drum over-packs using an excavator, capping or sealing the contaminated materials with cover material using dozers, or loading contained materials for transport to storage facilities such as WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant). Stationary engineers operate, maintain, and repair equipment such as pumps, monitoring wells, or waste water treatment plants, provide filter change service, operate a nitrogen plant, or mix brine with potable water for lower temperature and humidity controlled areas. Over the five-year grant period, the NTF projects to train 19,930 workers with 213,826 training contact hours under the DOE program. Workers/trainees will be trained in selected worker courses including: 8-/24- /40-Hour Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response (HAZWOPER), Radiological (RAD) Worker II, Adult CPR/AED, Basic First Aid, 16-Hour Confined Space Awareness, and several awareness courses. The NTF is primarily training at Hanford, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, but will be reaching out to additional DOE sites over the next five years. Many of the worker/trainees taking NTF health and safety training at the DOE sites are IUOE members, but also include other craft, supervisors, scientists, professional safety and health personnel, engineers, health physicists, and health physicist technicians, among others.
The NTF embraces the belief that workers thoroughly trained in health and safety-related knowledge and skills will establish a safety-conscious work climate for themselves and their co- workers when conducting work in support of DOE's Environmental Management's mission at the DOE Nuclear Weapons Complex. NTF training emphasizes 'empowerment through education' that is based on real-life experiences and has the goal of worker confidence to act. Every day, dangers are avoided, risks are controlled, and accidents never occur because these same workers were well-trained through NTF worker/trainee courses.
