The Steelworkers Charitable and Educational Organization (SCEO), the non-profit (501c3) arm of the United Steelworkers (USW), is applying for HWWTP, HDPTP and ECWTP funds to support a training partnership linking two of the largest U.S.-based industrial unions with rapidly expanding immigrant worker centers. The Tony Mazzocchi Center (TMC), the SCEO's training entity, brings together the USW, the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the Labor Institute (LI), and the National Day Labor Organizing Network (NDLON) and Make the Road New York (MRNY). In the next five years through these three submissions, the TMC will provide more than 65,000 workers and community residents with over 950,000 hours of training to help prevent toxic releases, fires, explosions, injuries, sickness and death. Through our proposed HWWTP five-year program, we will conduct 2,745 courses that will reach 55,950 workers, managers and community residents with 633,700 hours of training. To prevent fatalities, injuries, illnesses and releases of hazardous substances, we will focus WTP training and mentoring on H&S committee members and other activists who are in a position to help achieve concrete and lasting institutional changes at hundreds of U.S. worksites and communities. For our worker center partners, the focus will be on building a robust and widely dispersed H&S training capacity (in English and Spanish) for immigrant day-laborers and temporary workers who face a myriad of hazards on their ever-shifting worksites. The HDPTP program will establish a multi-lingual team of trainers (Specialized Emergency Response Trainers - SERTs) who are prepared to go anywhere at any time to provide training to emergency response and clean-up workers and community members engaged in massive man-made or weather-related disasters. To achieve this goal will dramatically increase the supply of Spanish language OSHA-certified Master Trainers who can conduct the full-range of HWWTP-related OSHA courses. We also will establish a SERTs infectious diseases working group to provide training expertise on donning and doffing high-level protective clothing and the proper use of related equipment to protect health care and hazardous waste workers. Our HDPTP program will offer 400 classes that will provide 9,050 at-risk workers and community residents with 119,000 contact hours. In the ECWTP program we will support and enhance workforce development programs conducted by MRNY in Queens and Brooklyn, NY, and the A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI) in Pittsburgh, PA to place unemployed and underemployed workers in decent-paying occupations in construction, environmental cleanup and other green jobs. After providing 15 weeks of training for up to 450 workers over the term of the award, we will place at least 75 percent of these participants in good green jobs. Target Populations: The TMC has access to over 1.2 million USW/CWA workers and managers at facilities located in each U.S. state as well as Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands. They work in oil, chemical manufacturing, nuclear energy, pharmaceuticals, pulp, paper, automobile parts, appliance manufacturing, cement, metal manufacturing, construction, rubber, plastics, shipbuilding, light manufacturing, telecommunications, transportation, electrical manufacturing and health care. Approximately 850,000 of these workers are potentially exposed to hazardous substances covered by OSHA Standard 29 CFR 1910, EPA 40 CFR 311, and DOT 49 CFR 171-177. The day laborers and temporary workers we will reach are employed in virtually every kind of clean-up activity, especially during emergencies, in addition to construction, car washes, cleaning, home care, warehousing and distribution. MRNY has over 16,000 members at its centers in New York in Bushwick, Jackson Heights, Port Richmond, Midland Beach, and Brentwood, Long Island. It is opening new centers in NJ, CT and PA. NDLON is a network of 45 day-laborer organizations in fifteen states and it estimates that approximately 5,000 workers pass through its centers nationwide each day.
Over 300 worker-trainers from the United Steelworkers (USW), the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON), and Make the Road New York (MRNY) will provide hazardous waste training to front-line workers, communities and other-stakeholders in order to protect the worker health and safety, the public's health, and the environment. The workers we represent, who produce, dispose of, and transport billions of pounds of hazardous substances and wastes, will receive HAZWOPER and related OSHA training. Our combined HWWTP, HDPTP and ECWTP proposed five-year programs will conduct over 3,300 classes for 65,000 workers and residents, providing more than 900,000 hours of training.
| Cuervo, Isabel; Leopold, Les; Baron, Sherry (2017) Promoting Community Preparedness and Resilience: A Latino Immigrant Community-Driven Project Following Hurricane Sandy. Am J Public Health 107:S161-S164 |
| Levenstein, Charles; Rosenberg, Beth (2012) Creative mistrust. New Solut 22:283-96 |
| McQuiston, Thomas H; Cable, Steve; Cook, Linda et al. (2012) Triangle of prevention: a union's experience promoting a systems-of-safety health and safety program. New Solut 22:343-63 |
| McQuiston, Thomas H; Lippin, Tobi Mae; Bradley-Bull, Kristin et al. (2009) Beyond Texas City: the state of process safety in the unionized U.S. oil refining industry. New Solut 19:271-88 |
| Bradley-Bull, Kristin; McQuiston, Thomas H; Lippin, Tobi Mae et al. (2009) The Union RAP: industry-wide research-action projects to win health and safety improvements. Am J Public Health 99 Suppl 3:S490-4 |
| Lippin, Tobi Mae; McQuiston, Thomas H; Bradley-Bull, Kristin et al. (2006) Chemical plants remain vulnerable to terrorists: a call to action. Environ Health Perspect 114:1307-11 |
| McQuiston, T H (2000) Empowerment evaluation of worker safety and health education programs. Am J Ind Med 38:584-97 |
