Grass-roots training funds on OSHA’s chopping block
Grass-roots training funds on OSHA’s chopping block
Safety training for immigrant workers impacted
As it has in the past, the OSHA is seeking to cut a longtime source of federal funding for state-level workplace safety programs, opting to offer replacement training that critics say cannot fill the gap.
The $10.2 million targeted to be cut from the OSHA budget for FY 2006 eliminates the Susan Harwood training grants program, which for decades has provided funding to organizations like state-level Committees on Occupational Safety and Health (COSH).
In announcing that OSHA would be requesting that Congress no longer fund the Harwood grants, acting Assistant Secretary of Labor for OSHA Jonathan L. Snare explained that OSHA has a variety of outreach, compliance assistance, and training programs that will provide the training that until now has been funded by Harwood grants.
Judy Elliott, director of New Hampshire COSH, questions whether OSHA’s video and web-based training programs could, as she did recently, pantomime the dangers of mixing household chemicals to a group of non-English-speaking Somali Bantu immigrants training to work as hotel housekeepers.
"We use the Harwood grant a lot," says Elliott. "We train several hundred immigrant workers in workplace safety with those funds."
Because the people the New Hampshire COSH targets are primarily low-wage immigrants who are just learning English, Elliott says the most effective way to teach them basic workplace safety is in small groups with plenty of hands-on demonstration, interaction, and vocabulary work.
"We need to tailor this training to the people who are there, and for that kind of training, I don’t think we could do it without the Harwood grant," she says.
Other programming meet needs
OSHA says many of its alliances with other organizations and associations address training components, and it continues to expand its web-based training resources.
The agency also offers training through the OSHA Training Institute, 19 education centers, and a train-the-trainer outreach training program that reaches more than 360,000 workers annually.
Snare insists that the availability of the OSHA training programs will ensure that training and outreach is not compromised by the elimination of the training grants program.
The grant money appropriated for the FY 2005 budget will be dispersed later this year, says OSHA spokesman
Frank Meilinger. Details are posted on the OSHA web site (www.OSHA.gov).
This is not the first time OSHA has moved to cut the Harwood grants. Similar requests have been made in the past, but Congress always has stepped in to fund the grants.
Grants give big boost to small budgets
An individual COSH might receive $20,000 to $30,000 a year from the Harwood grants, which can be a major part of the annual budget of a smaller COSH, according to Susan O’Brien, associate director of New York COSH.
"It has been really important in keeping some
of the smaller COSH groups open and doing innovative work," says O’Brien. "To do this kind of painstaking outreach, pounding the pavement — this is the way you reach immigrant workers, and they are the ones who do the dirtiest and most horrible jobs and who are most likely to be hurt and least likely to take action to protect themselves."
OSHA’s budget request, despite the more than $10 million that would be cut by eliminating the Harwood grant, is $2.8 million more than last year’s budget. It includes increases in state plan assistance programs and data analysis and performance measurements. The budget calls for funding for 37,700 workplace inspections during the fiscal year, and provides for $1 million for expansion in states that operate their own OSHA programs.
Before the announcement that the Harwood grants would be eliminated, COSH groups expressed approval of the new measures being funded, including the workplace inspection funding, new measures for standards enforcement and compliance, and compliance assistance to states. But the Harwood cuts concern many who say that the most effective programs for reducing workplace injuries, illnesses, and deaths are those delivered in training small groups or individuals, state COSH groups rely on the grants to fund.
From 1997 through 2000, the Western New York COSH ran a joint labor management ergonomics safety training program funded entirely with a Harwood grant at grocery warehouses in western New York, with results highly praised by employers.
One warehouse reported a 30%-50% drop in work-related injuries during the years it participated in the program; the chain’s freezer facility reported its injury rate went from one in five employees to one in 50 after two years in the program.
"The Harwood grants have been great, and offered the general support COSH groups need to keep going," O’Brien says.
She remains hopeful that, as in past years, Congress will appropriate funding to keep the Harwood grants available.
"Other times, we really thought it would be cut, and it wasn’t," O’Brien recalls. "It’s just politics."
Safety training for immigrant workers impacted As it has in the past, the OSHA is seeking to cut a longtime source of federal funding for state-level workplace safety programs, opting to offer replacement training that critics say cannot fill the gap.Subscribe Now for Access
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