USW’s Tony Mazzocchi Center Partners with Workers to Provide Spanish Language OSHA Training for At-Risk Sandy Cleanup Workers

In October 2012, Hurricane Sandy tore across the Mid Atlantic states, leaving thousands of destroyed homes and businesses and billions of dollars in damages.

In the storm’s aftermath, the task of cleanup and rebuilding went largely to low-wage, nonunion day laborers – many of them immigrants.  Seeing the risks these workers faced, USW’s Tony Mazzocchi Center for Health, Safety and Environmental Education sent highly skilled educators to New York and New Jersey to provide cleanup workers with essential safety training and information about their rights under the federal Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA).  

But during these initial trainings, TMC staff discovered that many of these front line workers only spoke Spanish – making English language training of little use.  And TMC also discovered that there were virtually no Spanish language OSHA-certified trainers in the NY/NJ region.

“We identified a serious, system-wide problem,” said Jim Frederick, Assistant Director of USW Health, Safety and Environment Department.  “It was clear that we needed to break the training bottleneck and get educational resources to vulnerable workers who only speak Spanish.”

So when the federal National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) awarded TMC a grant to continue Sandy-related training, the program teamed up with longtime educational partner The Labor Institute and with several worker centers — organizations providing services for low-wage workers and day laborers — for a train-the-trainer program for Spanish-speaking cleanup workers (OSHA 510/500). 

Participating worker centers included Make the Road NY, New Labor (New Jersey), and the National Day Labor Organizing Network. 

On Dec 9 in New York City, USW District 4 hosted a graduation dinner for the program’s first 29 trainers to receive certification qualifying them to train their fellow workers in OSHA construction safety. They were joined by workplace safety officials and union leaders, including OSHA Director David Michaels, USW District 4 Director John Shinn, Del Vitale of USW District 4, Ted Outwater, who helps manage the federal NIEHS grant programs, Frederick and Maria Somma from the USW International Office. 

Michaels praised the graduates and encouraged them – and those they train – to fully exercise their health and safety rights.

Phase two of this groundbreaking initiative will see these 29 trainers deliver Spanish language OSHA training to large numbers of at-risk cleanup workers in New York and New Jersey.  TMC staff will mentor them as they implement the program.