The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) on September 29 awarded more than $10 million in Susan Harwood Training Grants to 57 non-profit organizations for safety and health training and educational programs.
"Training and education are the cornerstones of workplace safety and health," said OSHA assistant secretary Edwin G. Foulke Jr. "These grants create new opportunities to reach non-English speaking employees and others in high-hazard jobs and help them return home safe at the end of the work day."
The Susan Harwood Grants support the development of training materials and the provision of safety programs to educate Hispanic and other limited-English-proficient employees, hard-to-reach employees, employers in small businesses, and employees in high-hazard industries and industries with high fatality rates.
OSHA awarded $6.9 million in Targeted Topic Training Grants, which support training to educate employees on construction hazards; general-industry hazards; and other safety and health topic areas, such as disaster response and recovery, working with hexavalent chromium, and workplace emergency planning.
Approximately $3.3 million was used to fund renewal grants for recipients of last year's Institutional Competency Building Grants, which were used to help non-profit organizations expand their safety and health training and education to assist employees on an ongoing basis.
The training grants are named in honor of the late Susan Harwood, a former director of the Office of Risk Assessment in OSHA's 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.
A complete list of the 2006 Susan Harwood Grant recipients is posted at www.osha.gov/dcsp/ote/sharwood.html.
Under the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, employers are responsible for providing a safe and healthful workplace for their employees. OSHA's role is to assure the safety and health of America's workers by setting and enforcing standards; providing training, outreach and education; establishing partnerships; and encouraging continual process improvement in workplace safety and health. For more information, visit www.osha.gov.
