$10.6M in safety and health grants awarded to 78 organizations
Susan Harwood Training Grant Program supports safety and health training programs
By Jesse Lawder
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration awarded $10,687,000 million through the Susan Harwood Training Grant Program to 78 nonprofit organizations, including community- and faith-based groups, employer associations, labor unions, joint labor-management associations, and colleges and universities. The program provides grants to fund education and training for workers and employers to help them recognize workplace safety and health hazards, implement injury and illness prevention measures, and inform them of their rights and responsibilities.
The Susan Harwood Training Grant Program supports safety and health training programs that educate workers and employers in industries with high injury, illness and fatality rates; underserved youth; limited English proficiency and other vulnerable workers; and small businesses. The award categories for fiscal year 2014 grants were: Targeted Topic Training, including Training and Educational Materials Development, and Capacity Building Pilot and Capacity Building Developmental, including one-year follow-on grants to recipients from Fiscal Year 2013.
“The Susan Harwood Training Program provides thousands of workers and employers with hands-on, critical health and safety training to reduce occupational injuries,” said U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas E. Perez. “The federal grants awarded today will provide workers and employers in some of the most dangerous industries with important tools to identify and eliminate hazards.”
Targeted Topic Training grants, valued at $4,546,147, have been awarded to 39 organizations to support the development of quality training and materials for addressing workplace hazards. The Targeted Topic Training grants require that recipients address occupational safety and health topics designated by OSHA.
Additionally, 14 organizations have been awarded a total of $2,805,085 in Capacity Building Developmental grants to provide occupational safety and health training, education, and related assistance to workers and employers. Organizations selected to receive these grants are expected to create organizational capacity to provide safety and health training on an ongoing basis.
OSHA also awarded $3,335,768 in one-year follow-on grants to 24 of the current Capacity Building Developmental grantees from Fiscal Year 2013. These grantees demonstrated their ability to provide occupational safety and health training, education, and related assistance to workers and employers in high-hazard industries, small-business employers and vulnerable workers.
“Since 1978, approximately 2 million workers have been trained through this program, and it is one of the most effective ways we have for communicating with vulnerable and hard-to-reach workers,” said Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health Dr. David Michaels. “The Susan Harwood Training Grant Program is an essential component of OSHA’s efforts to provide workers in high-risk industries with training about job hazards and their rights, and I am thrilled to see what our grantees will do.”
The training grant program is named in honor of Susan Harwood, a former director of the Office of Risk Assessment in OSHA’s former Directorate of Health Standards, who passed away in 1996.
For information about the Fiscal Year 2014 Susan Harwood Training Grant Program recipients, visit www.osha.gov/dte/sharwood/2014_grant_recipients.html and www.osha.gov/dte/sharwood/2014_grant_targeted_recipients.html.
About the Author
Jesse Lawder is the Special Assistant at U.S. Department of Labor.
