Worker Health and Safety Page

The jobs that our learners hold have many inherent health and safety issues. Jobs such as asbestos removal, CNA, metal plating, landscaping, kitchen work, factory work, laundry work, hazardous waste clean-up, housekeeping and food production carry risks such as chemical exposure, lead exposure, needle sticks, noise, accidents with equipment, injury from heavy lifting, eye strain, burns, lung diseases, stress, and wound infection.

Our learners are likely to have difficulty understanding health and safety workplace instructions because they are in print form written at a high level in English. Moreover, their ability to communicate may be limited, they may not understand their rights, and they are not likely to feel empowered to ask questions. Immigrants, in particular, may also lack knowledge and expectation for workplace safety and may not understand health impacts of working situations.

Worker health and safety issues, therefore, are a natural for both Student Health Team projects and adult basic education classrooms. Health teams may want to survey students to find out the jobs they hold and then research the hazards these jobs may have to educate their fellow students. The state coalition for occupational safety and health is a good resource for information about job hazards and how to address them. Contact Masscosh (Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Health and Safety) at http://www.masscosh.org.

Specific lessons for addressing occupational health and safety that can be used by both health teams and classroom teachers are also available. The Massachusetts Worker Education Roundtable has developed curriculum for ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) low-intermediate classrooms on worker rights. The specific lessons include such areas as (1) what are health and safety hazards, (2) what is OSHA?, (3) worker rights under OSHA and, (4) the union contract. The curriculum and lesson plans are available at http://www.umass.edu/roundtable.

The New York coalition has developed an extensive ESOL safety curriculum that is available at nycosh@nycosh.org

Another excellent source of materials for teaching about worker health and safety is the Labor Occupational Health Program at the University of California. While not specifically geared to ABE and ESOL classrooms, their materials are literacy sensitive, provide creative ideas and instructions for teaching, and include critical background materials such as body parts. The training kit on "How Chemicals Affect the Body" is exemplary. Materials are inexpensive and can be ordered at http://www.lohp.org.