CONTINUING EDUCATION
Spanish-Language OSHA-10 Classes Offered
Javier Sarmiento has been a carpenter in Seattle for more than 12 years, and has seen more than his fair share of accidents. He attests to the importance of health and safety practices in the workplace. Now he is teaching newly offered Spanish-language health and safety courses for the Pacific Northwest Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Training Center, the only authorized OSHA training facility in our four-state region: Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.
During his career and long before he started teaching, Sarmiento took OSHA courses through his union’s apprenticeship program. The OSHA courses made a difference in his profession, he explains, showing him ways to prevent injuries, such as using safety glasses and hard hats, wearing boots, and connecting harnesses.
In 2008, he completed OSHA 500, which prepares experienced construction safety professionals to teach the 10- and 30-hour voluntary compliance courses in construction safety and health. Then in November 2008, he began teaching OSHA-10 classes in Spanish to day laborers from Casa Latina, a Seattle-based non-profit education and employment office. The two-day course provides participants with a 10-hour OSHA card.
Sarmiento says the workers from Casa Latina are receptive to the course content and interested in his experience. The benefit of teaching the class in Spanish, he says, is that the men don’t hesitate to ask questions. In their native language, the men receive explanations they can more easily understand.
“They feel more confident after they have asked questions,” Sarmiento says.
Offered on average every three months, the authorized OSHA-10 health and safety course in Spanish came from materials Carlos Dominguez, a research coordinator in our department, compiled and substantially edited. Dominguez says he was careful to make the materials accessible to different literacy levels. He and a third instructor, Bruce Millies, also help teach during the two-day course.
Dominguez explains that participants are able to engage and contribute their personal experiences working in the United States as well overseas. Within two weeks after the 10-hour OSHA safety and health construction course, Dominguez follows up with each of the participants, asking them questions and observing their work.
He is pleased with what he finds: the workers recognize unsafe situations and pinpoint common hazards. These trained workers were more likely to take action to reduce workplace risks, such as carrying safety and personal protective equipment with them or asking for them. Dominguez says his follow-up observations show that training can raise awareness and change behavior concerning workplace safety. He cautions that the training is still limited in its ability to reduce hazards encountered by day laborers, whose work makes them particularly vulnerable to injuries on the job.
Javier Sarmiento. Photo by Elizabeth Sharpe
