Promoting Health, Safety, and Recovery Training for COVID-19 Essential Workers and their Communities

Summary/Abstract: Promoting New England Recovery Centers for COVID-19 Essential Workers and Their Communities The New England Consortium-Civil Service Employees Association (TNEC-CSEA) is a worker health and safety training partnership directed by the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UML) based in its Department of Public Health, College of Health Sciences and the UML Climate Change Initiative. TNEC-CSEA delivers open enrollment hazardous waste operations and emergency response (HAZWOPER) related and HAZWOPER supporting trainings and works with diverse groups of public and private sector firms and organizations in the design and delivery of customized contract courses throughout New England and New York State. Consortium partners include four Coalitions for Occupational Safety and Health (COSH organizations: ConnectiCOSH, MassCOSH, NHCOSH, and RICOSH) and the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA), Local 1000, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME). Since 1987, TNEC has been providing participatory hands-on HAZWOPER training to workers throughout the New England region. In addition to HAZWOPER training, the COSH organizations provide a diversified set of health and safety training programs for labor unions, community organizations, school personnel, and other groups and individuals. CSEA represents 300,000 public sector workers in New York State and has been part of AFSCME’s NIEHS WTP-awarded training program since 2003 and provided substantial direct training from 2007 until joining TNEC. CSEA has built effective internal health and safety management systems through site-specific hands-on training and uses a labor-management cooperative peer-trainer model with 150 active Peer Trainers, 24 of which have been involved for ten or more years, and part of the Emergency Management Operations Protocol to be deployed in emergencies and disasters. TNEC/New England’s previous experience in infectious disease training includes: in 2008-09, delivery of seven 6 to 7 hour Train-the-Trainer courses on avian flu pandemic preparedness to Massachusetts public school teachers, who then delivered training back in their school districts; in 2014, delivery of Ebola-related training to 190 workers including employees of the New Hampshire Department of Public Health, members of the Massachusetts State Police, and leaders of the Massachusetts Nurses Association; and in 2020, CSEA and TNEC/New England developed COVID-19 curricula and trained thousands of workers in New York and the New England states on preventing exposure to SARS-CoV2. TNEC- CSEA proposes to establish two Recovery Centers: a Recovery Center in Connecticut as a partnership between ConnectiCOSH and the Naugatuck Valley Project (based in Waterbury, CT); and a Recovery Center in Massachusetts, led by MassCOSH in partnership with community organizations in East Boston (MassCOSH’s Immigrant Worker Center, GreenRoots, and Neighbors United for Better East Boston), Dorchester (Dorchester Collaborative, a coalition of nine community organizations), Brockton (Brockton Workers Alliance and the Brockton Health Equity Task Force), and New Bedford (Centro Comunitario de Trabajadores).