Hurricane Helene devastated huge swaths of the South in September 2024, including communities that USW members call home.
In the wake of the disaster, Specialized Emergency Response Trainers (SERTs) from the USW Tony Mazzocchi Center (TMC) for Health, Safety and Environmental Education quickly hit the ground to lend a hand.
These highly trained union members helped hurricane survivors fill out insurance paperwork. They showed their USW siblings how to use personal protective equipment to stay safe while cleaning up and digging out. And the SERTs emphasized the risks from mold and other threats that storms leave behind.
Named for Tony Mazzocchi, a longtime USW activist and trailblazing safety advocate, the TMC strives to reduce and ultimately prevent workplace fatalities, injuries and illnesses.
While this remains our core function, the TMC’s mission continues to expand to meet our members’ needs inside and outside of the workplace.
We’re not only responding to disasters but training our members to better prepare for them. And we’re gearing more of our programs to workers seeking a greater voice in workplace safety and preparing for the economy of the future.
We’re not only responding to disasters but training our members to better prepare for them.
Raising Workers’ Voices on Safety
Since the last convention, the TMC conducted 2,482 training sessions, reaching more than 58,362 workers.
The TMC operates with support from the National Institute of Health Sciences, the Department of Energy (DOE) and the USW Triangle of Prevention (TOP) program, enabling us to provide training to local union members at no cost to them.
Our courses include hazard recognition and control, hazardous waste cleanup, Process Safety Management, and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards.
The TOP program, one of TMC’s signature initiatives, covers many of these topics and more.
This union-driven, company-supported health and safety approach combats employers’ tendency to scapegoat workers for injuries and deaths on the job. Through TOP, unions and employers commit to working together to identify hazards, track near-misses and seek the root causes of incidents that do occur.
Dozens of employers and thousands of union members now benefit from the program. Several locals and workplaces joined since the most recent convention, including members of Local 13-202 who work at the Delek refinery in Tyler, Texas.
The Delek refinery manager previously worked at other TOP sites, understood the value of TOP and helped to speed the refinery’s entry into the program. Local union leaders, workers and managers all underwent training—either on the ground, in Pittsburgh or both—before the program there launched in October 2024.
It has been one of the most widely successful rollouts we’ve ever seen. Local President Jeff Gaddis serves as a worker-trainer and trained investigator. Sean Tackett gave up his role as a local vice president to focus entirely on implementing TOP. And, just as intended, the program continues to enjoy deep management buy-in.
Empowering America’s Nuclear Work Force
USW members decommission atomic plants, store radioactive waste underground and perform other jobs at government-operated atomic energy sites.
Our top priority is helping to keep these workers safe as they handle, store and clean up highly hazardous materials, and this commitment to safety begins anew each day.
Worker-trainers educated by the TMC facilitate Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response (HAZWOPER) training at these sites on a weekly basis, ensuring their co-workers stay focused and up to date on safety issues.
In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency requires many of these locations, such as the former gaseous diffusion plants in Portsmouth, Ohio, and Paducah, Ky., to provide workers with related training under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act. This also is led by TMC-educated worker-trainers.
USW members perform many different roles at U.S. nuclear energy sites. But shortages of one kind of worker, radiological control technicians, prompted the TMC to partner with the federal government to train a new generation of RCTs. Local union officials specifically wanted the USW to train these new workers, knowing the union would both equip them with the knowledge needed for the job and empower them to stand up to management.
Since September 2022, 38 RCTs graduated from the program at Portsmouth, with most quickly accepting job offers at that site.
Building Disaster Resilience
Tornadoes, hurricanes and other disasters continue to grow in frequency and intensity due to climate change.
Because these storms often damage the homes, communities and workplaces of USW members, putting lives and livelihoods at risk, the TMC stepped in several years ago to help workers build resilience.
SERT teams proactively go into disaster-prone areas, including parts of Louisiana, Puerto Rico, Texas and the U.S. Virgin Islands, to teach disaster-readiness and mental health resilience.
We follow up after these initial sessions to maintain lines of communication with our local partners and to help union members and community leaders sustain high levels of preparedness.
In June 2024, for example, 14 SERTs and five TMC staff members traveled to Ponce, Puerto Rico, to liaise with union workers, first responders and civic leaders and to receive updates on local incident command center protocols.
The SERTs and TMC representatives experienced scorching heat and a flood during their visit, reminding us of how quickly disaster can strike and providing us with firsthand insights for improving disaster training manuals.
Since the last convention, the SERTs also designed community maps with local union, worker center and community-based organization contacts to help disaster survivors, first responders and other aid workers connect with each other when every second counts.
While it is essential for workers in at-risk communities to better prepare for disasters, we also recognize the need to step in when catastrophe strikes. We deployed SERTs to Augusta, Ga., Asheville, N.C., and Erwin, Tenn., in the wake of Hurricane Helene, just as we sent this assistance to other USW communities that experienced their own tragedies.
Delivering Training to All
It is crucial not only to inform workers of their rights regarding health and safety on the job but to equip our members with the knowledge, skills and tools they need to identify hazards and eliminate them.
We assist all USW districts and sectors with safety initiatives. Among many other examples, this includes a District 12 effort to improve the effectiveness of labor-management health and safety committees as well as a Health Care Workers Council program that is empowering caregivers to step up and speak out on issues affecting them and their patients.
Some of the TMC’s most popular classes include hazard mapping, incident investigation, Process Safety Management, near-miss prevention and OSHA Outreach construction and general industry training, all conveniently delivered at conferences and other settings.
The TMC also partners with other USW departments to customize training initiatives. In recent projects, we collaborated with Education and Membership Development, the Emergency Response Team (ERT), the Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) Department, and NextGen.
Leveraging New Opportunities
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, pushed through Congress with the USW’s help in 2021, provides billions for upgrades to roads, bridges and other infrastructure.
It also earmarks funds for climate-resilience initiatives and related educational programming. Because of the growing danger posed by wildfires in parts of the country, for example, the TMC decided to incorporate this threat into disaster readiness training.
This is just one more example of how the TMC itself maintains a high level of preparedness, adjusting curricula and adding training to meet our members’ needs.
The TMC is committed to furthering our mission, building more partnerships, strengthening our current programs and not only addressing new hazards but harnessing emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, to help respond to them.