Hazardous Waste Worker Education: Long-Term Effects

The International Chemical Workers Union (ICWU) received one of the first of 11 national awards in 1987 from the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences to provide training for hazardous waste and emergency response workers. The Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986 mandated that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration develop a standard for training and regulation of health and safety conditions for workers at hazardous waste cleanup sites, at Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA)-regulated Treatment, Storage, and Disposal facilities, and at industrial plants where workers respond to substantial chemical releases. In 1988, the ICWU established the ICWU Center for Worker Health and Safety Education in Cincinnati, Ohio with an empowerment education approach to training. 1 The Center is the cooperative effort of six industrial unions, a local occupational health center, and a university environmental health department. Although concerned about teaching workers to protect themselves in hazardous situations, the ICWU Center has broadly defined its mission as promoting worker abilities to solve problems and to develop union-based strategies for improving health and safety conditions at the work site. Evaluation of such a broad mission necessitates long-term follow-up at the work site to determine workers’ use of skills gained during the training, and their attempts and successes in obtaining changes in work site conditions. This comprehensive evaluation differs considerably from the typical evaluation design, which focuses on an immediate assessment of information retention and degree of satisfaction with the training program.2,3 Since the late 1970s, most published studies that have evaluated changes at the work site have narrowly focused on assessing specific behaviors following performance-based training.4-9 More recently, evaluators of training programs have recognized the need to assess worker actions to improve conditions. Through these evaluations, several training components have been identified as important for promoting behavioral and work environment changes. These have included small group interactive methods, 10,11 equal union and management participation,12-15 a union support structure,16 worker-produced materials and evaluation measures,17,18 program development based on assessing worker needs and workplace problems,19 and worker empowerment goals.1 This article illustrates how, through its training philosophy, the ICWU has combined many of these components into its teaching methods and specific curriculum content. Evaluation outcomes show successful results in terms of effects on both program participants and workplace conditions.