Ebola and Infectious Disease Training for Union and Immigrant Workers at Risk

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The Tony Mazzocchi Center health and safety training partnership (TMC) -which includes the United Steel, Paper and Forestry, Rubber, Manufacturing, Energy, Allied Industrial and Service Workers International Union (USW), the Communications Workers of America (CWA),and an affiliate union, the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA-CWA), the Labor Institute (Ll), Make the Road New York (MRNY) and the National Day Laborers Organizing Network (NDLON) and its affiliates - is applying for funds to conduct Ebola Biosafety and Infectious Disease Response Training. Our partnership proposes to train workers who are at risk of exposure to Ebola and other infectious diseases through their employment. We represent 65,100 healthcare workers, 40,000 airline flight attendants, and 7,500 airline airport agents and baggage handlers, 10,00 corrections workers, 15,000 social service workers, and 75,000 telecommunications workers. We also represent thousands of immigrant workers who are employed as community health workers, airline cleaners, baggage handlers and other cleaners in and around hospitals that have been designated as Ebola treatment centers. The TMC joined the WTP effort to respond to the Ebola crisis in November, 2014, when it contracted with health and safety expert, Bernard Mizula (MS, CIH, CET, CHS-V, RPIH) to design and test an awareness level course for USW-represented health care workers. The TMC continued this work through the Administrative Supplement for Ebola Biosafety and Infectious Disease Response Training grant received in May 2015. During that three-month grant, the TMC partners exceeded their goals by providing 1,884 contact hours of Ebola Awareness Level training for trainers and pilot training for a total of 143 at-risk union and immigrant workers. The TMC partners now propose to conduct extensive Ebola awareness level train-the-trainer programs for union and immigrant worker trainers in English and Spanish. These trainers, in turn, will conduct pilot Ebola awareness level training for healthcare workers, airline flight attendants, airline airport agents, baggage handlers, community health workers, airline cleaners and other workers engaged in the cleaning industries. In the first year of this grant we propose to reach 1,602 workers with 11,440 contact hours of Ebola/infectious disease training. These workers will add to the pool of trainers available to be deployed during outbreaks wherever and whenever training is needed. To the best of our knowledge this proposed program will field the largest Spanish-language training capacity in the country to conduct Ebola/infectious disease training for at-risk immigrant populations.