{"id":1550,"date":"2017-07-11T16:58:48","date_gmt":"2017-07-11T20:58:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/?p=1550"},"modified":"2017-07-11T17:06:04","modified_gmt":"2017-07-11T21:06:04","slug":"killing-harwood-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jordanbarab.com\/confinedspace\/2017\/07\/11\/killing-harwood-program\/","title":{"rendered":"Killing the Harwood Program Means Killing Workers"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"www.earldotter.com\"
Photo by Earl Dotter, www.earldotter.com<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services will vote Thursday on OSHA’s FY 2018 budget. Most of the OSHA budget remains flat, but there’s one devastating exception. The budget calls for the elimination of OSHA’s 40 year old Susan Harwood Worker Training Grant Program.<\/p>\n

Originally created in 1978 as the “New Directions” Program by President Jimmy Carter’s OSHA head, Eula Bingham, the grants are intended “to provide training and education programs for employers and workers on the recognition, avoidance, and prevention of safety and health hazards in their workplaces.” The grants were renamed in the late 90’s to\u00a0honor the late Susan Harwood, a former director of the Office of Risk Assessment in OSHA\u2019s Health standards directorate, who died in 1996. During her 17-year tenure with the agency, Harwood helped develop OSHA standards to protect workers exposed to bloodborne pathogens, cotton dust, benzene, formaldehyde, asbestos and lead in construction.<\/p>\n

Harwood grants are the only OSHA program that provide hands-on training to workers. More than 2.1 million workers in dangerous jobs have been trained since 1978. There are two types of Harwood grants — multi-year Capacity Building grants that enable organizations to build their own safety and health structure, and Targeted Training Grants, that provide one or two year grants on specific subjects, such as new OSHA standards or more current problems that need to be addressed like trench collapses or grain facility suffocation. \u00a0Over the 40 years the grants have been in existence, the total amount has never gone far over $10 million.<\/p>\n

Vulnerable Workers<\/h2>\n

The true value of the Harwood program is that it is able to provide effective training to vulnerable workers and others who OSHA inspectors and compliance assistance staff can not otherwise reach. \u00a0These workers — low wage workers, day laborers, workers whose first language is not English and others who may not have a regular employer who is willing or able to provide the training in the hazards these workers experience — learn about how to make their workplaces safe and about their legal rights. Many of their employers are\u00a0hostile to workers who complain about unsafe conditions or who get injured, and the workers have no other access to information health and safety information. These workers often do not know how to address the hazards they face every day. They don’t know their legal rights, how to contact OSHA or that the agency even exists.<\/p>\n

Other grants go to business associations that represent small businesses that can’t afford their own training, or colleges and universities who not only train their own students, but vulnerable workers in their areas.<\/p>\n

Most of the programs also contain “train-the-trainer” programs, where the initial trainees go on to train other workers, multiplying the effect of the training for generations of workers. Furthermore, to leverage the effect of the grants, OSHA makes available to the publi<\/a>c all materials created by the grantees.<\/p>\n

Unproven?<\/h2>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The President’s “skinny budget” proposes to eliminate the “unproven” program and instead “focusing the agency on its central work of keeping workers safe on the job.” \u00a0Actually, evidence shows that the program has been highly successful and has proven effective in protecting the lives of this country\u2019s most vulnerable workers. Some of its success stories can be found\u00a0here\u00a0<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The origin of this “unproven” allegation and the proposal to eliminate the grant program comes from the Heritage Foundation in their FY 2018 \u00a0budget “Blueprint<\/a>” which alleges that “Despite existing for decades, OSHA does not have any credible evidence that these training grants are effective. Case in point is the FY 2015 Department of Labor performance report that relies solely on the number of people trained to assess performance of the grant program. The number of people trained provides no information for determining whether trainees learned anything new to make workplaces safer.”<\/p>\n

The Heritage report is correct in stating that the number of employees trained doesn’t determine whether they learned anything to make their workplaces safer. But they are absolutely wrong in stating that there is no evidence that the grants are effective, and absolutely wrong is stating that performance relies “solely” on the number of people trained. \u00a0Grantees are assessed on their entire program — the number of workers trained, training materials completed, financial and administrative integrity and the evaluations that they conduct to determine the effectiveness of their training.<\/p>\n

The program requires each grantee to conduct three levels of evaluation\u00a01) training session reaction assessments; 2) learning assessments; and 3) training impact assessments.\u00a0The evaluations measure satisfaction with the training courses themselves, what was actually learned, and most important, an assessment conducted\u00a0three to six months after the training that measure such factors as\u00a0the level of worker involvement on safety committees, increases in the number of problems raised with managers or formal complaints filed, and increases in sharing safety and health information with co-workers who did not participant in training.<\/p>\n

Almost two-thirds of trainees said that “hazards at the workplace have been corrected\u201d and more than half said that \u201cWe are more effective in getting health and safety problems addressed.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One union found, for example, that 98% of trainees had “tried to make improvements in health and safety and\/or be more involved in safety and health activities in your workplace ” as a result of the training. Almost two-thirds said that “hazards at the workplace have been corrected\u201d and more than half said that \u201cWe are more effective in getting health and safety problems addressed.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to the reports from the grantees, there have also been scholarly studies on the effectiveness of the type of training that the Harwood grants provide. A\u00a0groundbreaking 2015 survey <\/a>of 4,387 low-wage workers in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago by UCLA and the California Department of Industrial Relations found that\u00a0workers who had received health and safety training on the job had significantly better injury outcomes that those who had not received training\u2014they were more likely to receive medical care, more likely to notify their employers of injury, less likely to encounter a negative reaction from employers, more likely to receive workers\u2019 comp paperwork, and more likely to file for workers comp.<\/p>\n

The study concluded that\u00a0“It is worth noting that health and safety training appears to serve as a protective mechanism within this survey sample, encouraging more workers to come forward with their injuries and fewer employers to react with threats or discouragement.”<\/p>\n

Alternative Means?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

OSHA states in its FY 2018 Congressional Budget Justification<\/a> (CBJ) that it will use “alternative methods\u00a0to develop and deliver training to reach the broadest possible audience.”<\/p>\n

What are these “alternative methods?” They don’t actually exist. The \u00a0CBJ just lists current OSHA compliance assistance programs like Alliances, Strategic Partnerships and On-site Consultation. According to the CBJ, “Training and outreach programs delivered directly by the agency can provide the same type of information currently delivered through the training grants more efficiently.” In reality, these \u00a0long existing OSHA programs that provide little, if any, hands-on training to workers, and there has been no evaluation of what little training they do provide.<\/p>\n

When Congressman Mark Pocan (D-WI) asked Acosta during his House appropriations hearing<\/a> why the President was proposing to eliminate\u00a0the \u00a0Harwood Program, Acosta attempted to explain\u00a0that his\u00a0budget proposed to make up for the almost 11 million lost in the Harwood grants by adding $4 million to OSHA\u2019s federal compliance assistance budget. Aside from the basic math problem (subtracting $11 million and adding $4 million still leaves you $7 million short), the $4 million added to OSHA’s compliance assistance budget will not serve the same purpose as the Harwood Grants.<\/p>\n

The main purpose of adding money to the federal Compliance Assistance Budget, according to Acosta, \u00a0is to add Compliance Assistance Specialists (CAS\u2019s). This is not a bad thing. CAS\u2019s, who are mostly located in OSHA\u2019s Area Offices, provide assistance, mostly to employers, usually in the form of speeches and presentations to industry associations or other organizations. Their existence allows compliance officers to focus exclusively on enforcement. CAS\u2019s\u00a0are also the main staff that work on bringing in new\u00a0Voluntary Protection Program<\/a>\u00a0participants and re-approving current VPP participants to ensure that they still deserve to be part of the program. But CAS’s don’t provide the same kind of worker training that the Harwood grants provide, and don’t reach the same audiences of vulnerable workers.<\/p>\n

Union Slush Fund?<\/h2>\n

Ultimately, the opposition to Harwood boils down to anti-union and anti-worker bias. A recent article by the anti-worker, anti-union\u00a0Competitive Enterprise Institute<\/a>\u00a0(CEI) called the Harwood program a “union slush fund” because some of the money goes to labor unions. \u00a0Much of the CEI article is based on a\u00a02002 Heritage Foundation report<\/a>. The report contains no substantive discussion about workplace safety or debate about the merits of different strategies to protect workers. Instead, the report states that<\/p>\n

From 1996 through 2000, the DOL used the Harwood grants to transfer at least $1.3 million in taxpayer money to such organizations as the AFL-CIO; the Association of Federal, State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME); and the Communications Workers of America (CWA). Giving this money to such groups frees dues money for the lobbying activities of a few select organizations.<\/p>\n

The opposition to Harwood boils down to anti-union and anti-worker bias.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, the focus of CEI and Heritage is purely on weakening unions and their ability to lobby.\u00a0And just to ensure that even the most vulnerable, unorganized workers also have no means of support, the CEI also goes after Worker Centers as well.<\/p>\n

Actually, the grants do go to labor unions and worker centers, but also to colleges, universities and business associations. Take a look at last year’s grantees. (here<\/a> and here<\/a>). You will find unions like AFSCME and the Steelworkers, but also business associations like the National Association of Tower Erectors,\u00a0the\u00a0Associated General Contractors, the\u00a0Timber Products Manufacturers and the\u00a0Institute for Scrap Recycling Industries.<\/p>\n

You will find colleges and universities like Rutgers, the\u00a0University of Puerto Rico and\u00a0Western Iowa Tech Community College, along with worker centers like the\u00a0Brazilian Worker Center,\u00a0Boat People SOS,\u00a0Worker Justice Center of New York and\u00a0Asian Health Services.<\/p>\n

Money-wise, business associations received almost as much as labor unions, and colleges and universities received far more than either of those categories.<\/p>\n

What Can You Do?<\/h2>\n
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As we\u2019ve said\u00a0before<\/a>, your\u00a0Senators and Congresspersons<\/a>\u00a0will need to know that workers will get hurt and die if the Harwood grants are eliminated. \u00a0And if you live in a district or state with members on the\u00a0Appropriations Committees<\/a>, your voice is especially important. \u00a0The main message:<\/p>\n

Fund the Harwood Grants<\/strong><\/p>\n