Jill:

This is the Accidental Safety Pro brought to you by HSI. This episode was recorded November 5th 2021. My name is Jill James, HSIs Chief Safety Officer. And today, I'm joined by John Morawetz. John has been the director of the International Chemical Workers Union Council Center for Worker Health and Safety Education located in Cincinnati, Ohio, since it was founded in 1988 through NIEHS or the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences worker training grant. The center currently operates on four federal grants and trains members and salaried staff of 12 unions and trade union organizations.

Since 2006, John has worked on federal activities for chemical facility anti-terrorism legislation. The center trains from these unions in industrial hospital and school chemical emergency response, infectious diseases, and disaster preparedness, and has an extensive program to develop rank and file workers as trainers. The center uses various adult education techniques in all of their programs. The unions in the consortium include the International Association of Machinists, The Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, United Food and Commercial Workers Union, The American Federation of Teachers, The American Federation of Government Employees, The National Nurses United, The Labor Council for Latin American Advancement, THe National Council for Occupational Safety and Health, and The United Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The center also works with United Auto Workers and three other partners under a Department of Transportation grant.

This past October, the American Public Health Association Occupational Health and Safety section held their annual award ceremony to honor the work of individuals or organizations who advocate for health and safety of workers in the United States and internationally. It was at this award ceremony where I got to hear John's nomination and acceptance of the EULA Bingham Award for Excellence in Occupational Health and Safety Education and Training for 2021 along with one other awardee. And if you've never heard of EULA Bingham, have a listen to episode 60 of this podcast, where you'll hear my favorite industrial hygienist and health and safety historian, Mark Catlin, talk of EULA's contribution to occupational health and safety. John's body of work is immense beginning, well, quite a long time ago. And I'm so grateful to have him here. John, welcome to the show and thank you so much for being here.

John:

Proud to be here, Jill.

Jill:

So, part of your acceptance remarks the other week during the award ceremony, you referred to your path to this profession as a twisted line. And for everyone who's listened to the podcast in the past, we talked about, I guess what you call a twisted line. Everybody calls it kind of like the accidental way they found this health and safety profession. It seems like maybe that's a good way for us to start. Where did all this start for you somewhere in New York, John?

John:

Yeah, I grew up in New York City. But yeah, I should just say about the award that it's named for Eula Bingham, the main person who started worker training grants, it's called now the Susan Harwood Awards. And she was an amazing person. She was the right person at the right time with the right president and she really showed us what could be accomplished. And times changed a lot. Obviously, we're not back in, I guess it was 1977 when she started. But she really had a great legacy. And she set the goal, the target of what we can all try to get to.

In terms of my line, I come from a middle-class family, with my parents, it's a very unique family. My parents are both professors. My father is a professor of Chemistry. My mother is professor of Mathematics, but I didn't know much about unions at all for some time, probably not like at the college and people were talking about it. But, I didn't know ii was a union town. New York is really a strong union town. And like a lot of New Yorkers, I didn't think I was going to leave New York. I'm in New York was the center of the universe. But I've been very comfortable. It's been wonderful living here in Cincinnati and understanding and working with the union with people from all over the country, it's just really great.

So, starting out, let me just say that there's a bridge of EULA and her generation of women being a professional. She was a professor of Toxicology before she was the head of OSHA and she went back to that. But she reminded me of my mother, a mathematician, who was born around the same time and is similar age, and that was really interesting. And I would say, I credit, both my mother and my father for a basic comfortableness with numbers, which leads me, I would say, my soundbite is that really the political union health and safety and there's a science end, and I got a master's in industrial hygiene and safety. And this field has merged both my science and the politics and it's been wonderful. So, in the beginning, I would say that, and I probably should stop and let you ask questions.

Jill:

That's okay. Keep going. Yeah.

John:

I told the story that in the speech about my father, we always sat at the same place, I have three sisters, my parents dining room table, and I was sat on his left and dining room conversation was not sports. And I had to teach my father baseball. He didn't know anything about it. He is a Czech immigrant. But one subject or another would come up, I don't even know what in particular. And he always had a pen. He'd pull out his pen, would unfold the paper napkin and he'd draw the X, Y axis and a curve and describe something we were talking about. And I learned and was comfortable with graphs at an early age. And I got to say, most people, you don't even get to the curve. You draw the X, Y axis and you've lost them.

Jill:

Exactly. This is not normal dinner conversation in lots of households, right?

John:

Right. But it was my normal. And it's very hard for me to understand how difficult it is for people to understand graphs. And with the pandemic, where there's so many different things you got to look at, whether it's cases of hospitalizations or deaths was geography, with its time, states, counties. It's very complicated. And trying to get down to the main thing, what's going on, is really important, and being comfortable of dealing with a massive amount of data. That taught me very well.

Jill:

Yeah. Wow. So, John, you grew up in this home with two academics, three sisters, raised by immigrants. This informed so much of your life. When it was time for you to think about leaving the nest, where did you go? What happened next?

John:

What happened? Well, my mother taught at NYU, and my older sister and I both went to NYU. And so, leaving the nest, a lot of people, you graduate high school, you leave. And I left the house, but I went to school nearby. And I would say, I didn't so much leave the nest as the world, the country caught up with me. And it caught up with me, I'd say, Vietnam War. But I should backtrack a little bit in high school before I left the nest. I got involved in basically reformed democratic politics.

And so, I knew he was like a year in front of me, the current congressman from Manhattan, one of them is Jerry Nadler. And we helped try to defeat a conservative Democrat, pro Vietnam War, Democratic Congressman Leonard Farbstein. We didn't unseat them, but that was my beginning of political awareness. Then this college, Vietnam war is going on, racism, Black Panthers, Fred Hampton gets killed. So that really, that was, I wouldn't call it leaving the nest, but that's my evolution of understanding what's going on the world.

Jill:

Yeah. And justice was being baked into your bones.

John:

Yes. And that goes back earlier for justice, I would say, growing up with three sisters, no brothers, and all became professionals and my mother, and my father is no slouch. But that's what I grew up with. But basically, the idea that men and women should not be treated equally was, I never heard it. I mean, I didn't hear anybody being made fun of. And so, it was basically men and women are going to be treated equally. And so, that was part of the justice. The other one goes back to justice. It goes back to probably their heritage, where my mother was Southern Irish, Protestant and atheist agnostic. So, the Southern Irish Protestant were really landed gentry. The people ruled Southern Ireland or Ireland. But my mother and her father was sympathetic to the Irish rebellion, 1923, 1916, history of rebellion. And so, I understood that at an early age.

On my father's side, my father is a Czech Jew. So, his father was a very strong Czech nationalist and my father was born when it was the Austria Hungarian empire. So that idea of a country and my grandfather knew Tomas Masaryk, Jan Masaryk, I mean, the presidents of the country. And then, the immediate family left, his two brothers and sisters left before the war started before the Nazis occupied, but my grandparents and my father didn't go to the Nazis occupied. Now, they all got out. I had one uncle who spent the whole war in Belfast where he met his wife and my aunt, that's where he spent the war. But everybody else was in Canada, they moved to Canada. But my father had four cousins who went to the camps. He had three aunts, one I think got in the camps, one died in Poland, in [inaudible 00:11:16], not in a camp, and another one just disappeared. And an uncle who died in the camps. And of those two cousins survived, and I knew them.

So, the whole idea of what can happen Holocaust, pogroms, I mean that was very real and we understood that. And so, in terms of understanding, the genocides that we've seen, Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia. I mean, these are things that man's inhumanity to man, it was very vividly, I knew that at an early age.

Jill:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. And coupled with worker rights movements that were happening, as you're coming of age, essentially. All of that had to collide in your head and inform the lens with which you view the world.

John:

That really happened in college. That happened with the ante-war. It didn't happen earlier. It didn't happen around the dinner table. And this is a diversity of views in the family without getting into detail [inaudible 00:12:17]. I mean, most of us, I won't get into that. But worker issues when I was, I'd say it was more when I was a senior in college. My senior year was '69, '70, Kent State had happened. There had been a strike of the cafeteria workers at NYU that I had helped support.

So, the idea of what workers struggles were about, I sort of understood that. I hung out as I credit later in life work in the factory, the lefties who I hung out with. We did a lot of anti-war work, but also anti-racism work, defense of the Black Panthers. I mean, that was part of it also. And then a year after I got out of college, then the Attica rebellion happened. There were 39 hostages and prisoners, mainly prisoners, but I think they were about 14 hostages who were killed in the takeover by the state troopers. That formed a lot of my understanding of the world also. But there was a lot going on in the world.

Jill:

There really was.

John:

And there were worker struggles. But where it got to me was eventually those lefty pink red friends basically encouraged me to work in a factory. I did a number of different things. I worked at an anti-poverty program, unemployed for a while, I drove a cab for a year. And eventually they said, "Come on, you get to work in a factory, work with workers and try to organize."

Jill:

And John, a real quick question, what did you study at NYU?

John:

Originally, it was a Biology major pre-med. And then I want to drop out, probably about 1968. And let's just say my parents were not too happy. And I still remember a sit-down conversation with my father. And I never thought he was negotiator, but he negotiated. And the deal was, I wouldn't drop out and I change my major to political science, and I graduated.

Jill:

And did he draw the X, Y axis again for you during that conversation?

John:

That came up in that discussion.

Jill:

That's awesome. Okay. So, you've landed yourself in a factory. What kind of factory?

John:

It's a wiring cable factory. It was in Maspeth Queens called Cerro Wire and Cable and it moved to the South and I think they'd later get organized and they'd later, I think, went overseas. I think that's still business.

Jill:

Okay. And so, what did you, you dropped into a factory. I'm guessing this is your first time your eyes have seen something like this. What did you do there?

John:

Well, it wasn't the first time. I mean, along the way, I had worked in a factory in Paterson, New Jersey. It wasn't quite the same kind of factory. I mean, I did different work, but that was the closest to a factory, it's true. I didn't have much experience, let's put it that way. And I did a number of jobs. The job that really, well, there was one where I operated a machine that would check whether there was insulation that was not existent or a blow, or it basically would cause a short circuit, and that was interesting. I once shocked myself, but from not doing the right thing. But that was it, I lived. I think my feet left the ground, but I lived. Well, it was interesting. It lasted three years.

Three of the five years, I got a job in the back of the plant. And I did that in the rubber department, because I was talking to the workers, organizing about different issues, union issues, as well as what's going on the world. And they were watching me. And the only way I could have some mobility around the plant, and it was triple shifted, was to be able to get a job in the back of the plant. That way I could talk to people on the way as I walked out and I could talk to people on the way in for my shift, as well as a locker room or whatever.

So, I went to the rubber department and the rubber department around that time, another part of department there was some lead poisoning. And the company, unbeknownst to me, nothing I knew about it. They sent the workers to be tested for blood lead levels to Mount Sinai Hospital, which had a world renowned program operated by Irving Selikoff, who did a lot of work on the association of asbestos and lung diseases. He really was a great guy. He did a lot of breakthrough work. And there was a friend of mine, Steve Levin, who was just starting a residency in occupational health and I knew him before I got the job, ante-war work. And we were talking back and forth. And he was getting information from me and I was getting information from him. And he encouraged me to go with it.

And then, I think, there was a, I'll show my history here. I was reading the New York Times, even working in the factory. And the front page of the Science Times, which I love the Science Times on Tuesdays had the front-page article was about the hazards for artists. And I called up the guy they quoted in the article, and I said, "You mentioned lead, what's this about lead?" And he said, "Why are you interested?" And I said, "I work in a factory and we are exposed to lead." And he said, "Don't talk to me. Talk to these people at NYCOSH. the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health and now part of the National COSH Network. And so, I went over to them. I think the co-leaders, there were two co-leaders, Debbie Nagin and David Michaels. And David Michaels went on to be head of OSHA under the Obama administration.

Jill:

That's right.

John:

And I remember one thing I did is, I pulled out a fact sheet on the discrimination for black workers. And in the middle of it, it talked about rubber workers. And I'm going, "What? What's going on here? I'm working on the rubber department by then." And it basically said this from the tire workers, that workers with two-way discrimination works, black workers ended up in the dirtiest, funkiest jobs and they were making tires. And the Rubber Workers Union had negotiated with the major Rubberman tire manufacturers to have, I think it was a nickel deal and it was a five cents per day or per hour that went in, I think it was five cents per hour, went into a fund that funded the University of North Carolina to do studies of rubber workers and what cancers they got. And lo and behold, rubber workers in that study had stomach cancer.

And so, one that introduced me to the word epidemiology, which took me months before I could pronounce epidemiology, and I was working in the rubber room. Now, rubber in a tire, rubber in wire and cable, it is sort of different, but the sum is the same. And they mentioned in particular, the Banbury mixer. And the Banbury mixer is used in, I believe in both industries. And I worked around the Banbury mixer and not directly on it. But the Banbury mixer, basically, it's like a giant meat grinder that's about one story up in the air on a frame. And the guy who operates it would dump these 50-pound bags and five-pound bags and there's oil and one thing or another and this is before the right to know, he didn't know, I didn't know what it was. And then basically, the grinder mixes them together, heat and pressure and it drops down into these big rollers and it gets, it is a long process but it gets made to a stripper rubber. So, this really fascinated me.

And then the epilogue on that is that there was a guy, an oil man who went around to oil the machines in the factory named John also, he ended up dying of stomach cancer. Now, it's only one case. I know the Science, one case doesn't prove anything. But when it's the same cancer that showed in other studies in that industry, to me, it hit home emotionally, and again, gave me motivation and first-hand experiences in the wire and cable factor y that I still think was basically my education for health and safety.

Jill:

At that time, were you also worried about your own health, John, as you're reading and discovering these things?

John:

It's a good question. Well, let's just say, I was worried about my health when I put that wire in the machine that I hadn't turned off, and it was energized and my feet left the ground.

Jill:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John:

I never made that mistake again. I don't know.

Jill:

You were really focused on the people around you, it sounds like. The people around you, the people who were doing this for years and decades.

John:

Yeah, I probably began to have some awareness. I don't think I wear a respirator. I probably try to stay away from it when they were dumping the chemicals. But, regretfully, I got to say no, but I think that's what, of the many things that taught me. It taught me how people, workers, anybody basically makes peace with the hazards that you're faced with. You, basically, you're making a living and talking up is difficult. And that was also another education of talking with the union and trying to get the union to have regular meetings and elections. That was a whole another thing.

And actually, when I just moved to a condo downsized, and I was going through, so my papers, and I found a bunch of stuff. I mean, I found copies, I have record file, newsletters, that I used to hand out in front of the plant about health and safety, about contracts, about all kinds of different issues. But also, I found my copies of my freedom of information request for an OSHA inspection that I believe I requested. And I think a draft with a request to NYOSH to come in and investigate health hazards.

Jill:

And you're figuring out and navigating all of that as a pretty young person. John, you mentioned, learning of the word epidemiology when you were discovering all of this in the world that was is rubber and wire and cable. Is that kind of where epidemiology and an interest in that was born for you?

John:

I would say, the moment I heard about the lead problem, and I should back up a little bit, part of the reason the company sent the workers to get tested, because there was one of the workers there who died and I don't know what he died of. But he worked around these big vats, they had. I believe, the PVC, the powder, poly vinyl, but there was lead and there was a lot of other stuff. And he is very pockmarked face and he'd always eat his lunch around the machines. So, his cleanliness was not good.

And I think once I heard that, or about the lead, blood lead levels, and there was a professional article written by Mt. Sinai Hospital about it, it became the perfect match that led to what I said in my speech about, I used turned to my father at some point. I still remember he used to repeat the story and I'd repeat the story. Both of us had different reasons, which is that I said to him, "Dad, I found a field that will make you, mother, and my political lefty friends happy." And it was a perfect merger of my science background and my love of science.

My parents, especially my father had a love of all different fields of science. And politically, what does it mean for the people handling stuff in another level? I don't know, I quite said this to my father. But, he was a chemist, and he knew about some of the hazards. Some of them he didn't know about, he made fun of, but he was respectful of the field. But on the other hand, what about the people who are actually doing the most hazardous and most direct contact with the substances that then you're doing a study in a lab about?

Jill:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. So, you had mentioned, I think it was Mount Sinai, where employees would go for blood lead testing and stuff. Is that kind of where in your story you had met some of the physicians there and talked with them or did I just fast forward too fast in your history?

John:

No. Well, that's only where I met the one guy. I mean, I met the rubber people.

Jill:

I got it. I got it.

John:

But that was mainly Steve Levin. He died a couple of years ago. He was a well-beloved person. But in particular, my wife, and I want to leave New York City, and I left the wire and cable factory. But before I left, I had asked him, this is an interesting field. And I remember at that time, beyond what I said to my father, I didn't tell him this, but I want to work for union. I want to do health and safety full time for union. And I still remember Steve Levin said, "Go get a Master's in Industrial Hygiene." So, that's where, I didn't know a lot of professionals in the field.

So, we went to Boston. I got into the Harvard School of Public Health, and I met a bunch of professors there, some really great people. And that's where I got the Master's in Industrial Hygiene and Safety. And then, at the end of the fall of my second year, one of the professors, Dave Wegman encouraged me to go to the APHA, American Public Health Association. And I went to that meeting as a student. And that led me to APHA, the Occupational Health and Safety section. So that was the beginning of that family.

Jill:

Yeah, yeah. Which, as a reminder, for our listeners, is the entity where you got the award the other week named for Eula Bingham. So, yeah, you've been familiar with them for a really long time. So, you finished your grad program at Harvard. What happens next? What do you jump into career wise, then?

John:

Well, you'd get a job. And Boston, I love living in Boston. But I figured, there were so many people who liked this Boston also who graduated me, and some of them were able to land jobs, stay in the area. I had two job offers. And one was actually from a union in Washington DC, but it was a one year job, it wasn't going to pay that much. I don't know. But the other one was that I got into, I applied for and I was accepted. CDC operates this thing called EIS, Epidemic Intelligence Service. It's a two-year old boy network.

It's gotten much better and I think there are a lot of women at that time, so I call it the old boy, old girl network. And, I think, just about every head of CDC has done their stint in EIS. And basically, that trained me also by the epidemiology. And typically, it's a church picnic or the Norovirus on the cruise ship or something. But if you look at Ebola, or you look at Zika, you look at the regretfully COVID. The EIS officers are on the frontlines trying to figure out what's going on, how's the spreading.

And so, that job was a two-year job in Cincinnati to work for NYOSH and it appeared to me to be a great opportunity. And usually, they only take doctors and PhD epidemiologist. And luckily, I got into it along with another guy who I worked with at NYOSH, we are at master levels industrial hygienist. And my personal recommendation to CDC is that they should open up the EIS class or run something similar to a lot of people because it's a very valuable skill to understand public health in many different areas.

So, I got into that, and that job was Cincinnati, work at NYOSH's, they have headquarters in Atlanta, but they have two main locations, one in Cincinnati and one in Morgantown, West Virginia. And this was in Cincinnati, so I came here for two years. I figured that'd be it. As I said, I'm a New Yorker, I didn't envision living anywhere else. And one thing led to another. I mean, it was a great job learned a lot there. A guy I worked with at NYOSH ended up he had organized American Federation of Government Employees, now a partner in our program into NYOSH.

He went to work from the molders' union, which is the only union based in Cincinnati. And then after a year or so, he got another job at the molders union, research education. Health and safety opened up and I got to say, it's an old boy thing. I got an interview because he recommended me in front of the executive board and I got hired. And then they merged and it was a great job.

When I say I got a degree in industrial hygiene and safety, that safety part really came in handy because one of the major things I did beyond the new directions OSHA training grant and some other stuff was investigating all the fatalities. And one of them was a confined space fatality, one was a lockout tagout fatality, they were just classic problems. And so, they merged with another union, glass, pottery, plastic. They reformed the glass molders, potter worker union, GMP, and they were going to leave, go to Media, Pennsylvania, just outside of Philadelphia. Well, I love the northeast, but I decided I was going to stay in Cincinnati. I stayed. And at the same time, this job offer was there for the chemical workers and that's what I chose and it's been great 33. And that's how I landed at the chemical workers.

Jill:

Wow, for 33 years now?

John:

Yep.

Jill:

Wow. Wow. John, backing up, you mentioned investigating of the job fatalities. How did that, those are very unique experiences for anyone who's done that kind of work. How did that shape the next trajectory of your career, if you will? Or did it?

John:

I don't think it shaped the next trajectory. Let's just say that just as safety and health are two sides of health and safety, that people specialize in one or the other. And in general, I've specialized in training, and it's mainly chemical hazards, but COVID and Ebola, it's an infectious disease. But we haven't trained, we do some safety work with the training center. But the money is mainly supposed to be used to chemical emergency response. So, it hasn't been that much safety.

But then again, I don't do the training. I just wrote the grants to get the money and after about five years, I was out of the picture for the training. And the staff are the ones who do the training, and they do a great job. But I think that it gave me a balanced approach to the hazards of the workplace. And I'll give you one strong example, which is that the Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico had thousands of workers on the beach cleaning up the oil. And this woman, Debbie Berkowitz used to be head of UFCW Health and Safety department and she worked for OSHA at that time.

She emphasized the heat hazards and I think she was right. That a lot of us we concentrated on what was in the oil and the level of exposure and all that, I think it was legitimate concern. A legitimate hazard especially the closer you got to on the barges out there, closer to the spill. But for the majority of workers on the beach in the hot sun, it was heatstroke. And it could kill people and OSHA rightfully emphasized breaks, shade, and water, and I don't think anybody died from heatstroke. So, have that balanced approach and that's what I give a credit to.

Jill:

Yeah, right. I was going to ask about I know that OSHA has been attempting to pass a heat standard for quite some time and it sounds like we're just on the precipice of it right now. And I'm wondering if maybe some of that had to do with pieces of that work at that time?

John:

It's good question. Getting standards is a complicated process. ULA did amazing work. At a time when OSHA hadn't been around even for 10 years. At this point, I think it's extremely difficult, the legal process to get new standards. Quite frankly, companies are well organized. They do all the tricks. They have the lawsuits, the hearings, witnesses, all the rest of it. So, it's much more difficult. And heat as a hazard has been around and the question of a standard for a long time. I haven't followed it. I haven't been involved in it. But it's, my guess is there are a number of things that led to this. And I haven't followed her right now for the last year under the Biden administration, but it's long overdue, and definitely, it's important to get done.

Jill:

Yeah, definitely. You mentioned ULA's influence, how she influenced your work once you got to the chemical workers union. Do you want to talk about that influence on your work and or a little bit more about what the training center does and what they're doing today?

John:

Well, I was limited by five minutes. So, I had plenty of things I could have said about ULA, but limited by time. So, ULA in the beginning before I got hired for this career in terms of the chemical workers, I was in Cincinnati, I might have heard, I certainly heard of her. I don't know when I first met her. But before I was hired by the chemical workers, so I knew anything about the grant they were writing. She basically quite frankly knocked heads and got the steel workers and the chemical workers to put in a joint grant. And I'm not sure all the political ins and outs but it took some doing and I credit her for starting the center the way it started.

So, the steelworkers were part of our grant for until 2005. And then, they left and there's a lot of complicated ins and out. So, bottom line is that by that time the steel workers were about to merge with another union called PACE and PACE was a merger of the paper workers and oil and chemical and energy workers union, OCW I got to say, parenthetically, had a head of legislative and health and safety work called Tony Mazaki, who is just legendary and one of the APHA awards is named after him. He was at the forefront of the struggle for worker health and safety.

And in the beginning, when and just first funded grants, at least half of them were unions, right now it's many fewer. And that was a lot because unions had a very powerful role. The laborers, [inaudible 00:35:58] carpenters in terms of getting this money, because HAZWOPER, and I'm going to back up there, many stories here. But basically, it was hazardous waste work, because hazardous waste workers were looking at the EPA coming out when they were cleaning up a hazardous waste site valley, the drums whatever. And EPA would have Tyvek suits or better suit, level B suit, whatever, level A, SCBA they'd be out there for half an hour, then they'd leave, take samples, whatever.

And these guys would work in their boots and jeans and no respirator or nothing and they're going, "What's going on? I'm working this 40, 50, 60 hours a week. What's going on here?" So, they wanted to get grants to train their members and also give them credentials so that you get jobs. They were trained to deal with hazardous waste. There also Bhopal happened and firefighters were concerned about some of the stuff firefighters had to go into plants that exploded or something going in.

And so, that became Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response, HAZWOPER, an OSHA standard, and actually, OSHA was mandated by a Superfund organization to write that standard, which is very rare for OSHA, legislatively OSHA to be told you got to write a standard. And they had to do it, and they did it. Well, a little piece of the legislation. After that said there's going to be $10 million to NIHS to start worker training grants. And about half of those grantees were unions. And it's grown in the universities, environmental justice groups. And it's really a great family, which all of us I think do some great, we call it gold standard in training. Regretfully, a few unions are there now.

But, that beginning, getting back to EULA having two units to write, to have a common grant is similar to one other union grant called CPWR, originally called Center Protector Workers Rights. I'm going to butcher what their name is now. But they do great work for the construction trades on health and safety and they do research also, and they are multi-union grant. But otherwise, it was individual union grants. So, the dye was set from the beginning, that we were going to be two unions, that the machinist two of the unions that aren't a list of aluminum brick, American flint glass workers joined in 1990, rubber workers later. And those three unions, rubber, aluminum and brick, flint glass merged with steel workers, and then steel workers left.

And to make a long story short, going back to steel workers and OCW, my digression before is that OCW had one of the original gress, and does great training. And so still, we're just going to merge with them. So, they had their own grant. And so basically, there's a parting of the ways, and divorce is never easy, but you know, we parted ways, and they do great training. And we do a lot of common work together and have for years and years. So, that started the training center into what it is now.

Jill:

Wow. And so, on a day-to-day basis, what is your staff working on? I mean, this might be an obvious question, but what have they been working on lately?

John:

COVID, COVID, COVID. So, yeah, obviously, I was going to answer the question by saying, well, do you want the answer before COVID or after COVID?

Jill:

Okay, let's do both like. Yeah.

John:

So, before COVID, I would say, a little bit of everything, or a lot of everything. There's a range of programs. And to name some of the big ones, our basic program that started the program that we still rely on a lot is a four-day hazardous waste job that we teach a lot of the substance. We teach the OSHA laws, we teach various resources and then people dress out in encapsulated suits, SCBA. They understand SVA check out, the dangers, how you monitor your air and all that, how you signal, do you want to get out of a suit. And they have a simulation of a spill or leaks out of drums or pipes, because our training center for 33 years has been in a building in downtown Cincinnati. And the hands-on part gets done in the basement. And so, it can be 100 degrees out, it can be 20 degrees out and icy. We can do training safely.

So, we did that. We got into OSHA training, OSHA 10 and 30. Our programs, general industry construction. One of our partners, American Federation of Teachers has trained teachers to be authorized in New York City, in Connecticut, Chicago, to be authorized to turn around and give those 10-hour classes to their students. And we are able to credit that and report that to NIHS. We got the CPR first aid. After Hurricane Katrina, we got into hurricanes, into mold remediation. We've gotten to other disasters. I mean, a lot of the hurricanes. So, in particular NYKOSH leaned on me, I could still can't believe that we did it.

But it's Peter Dooley, one of the staffs of the National COSH network, called me up. I was hiking on Mount St. Helens. I happened to be back at a hotel that I shouldn't have been it. But anyway, I was there. And he said, "We got to go to Houston as this was after Hurricane Harvey. And we want to go a week from Monday. And I said, "Peter, where are we going to do the training? How are you going to get around town? Where are people going to be staying? The flood is still around. How is this going to really happen? And one by one, he solved each one of those problems. And that Monday that he wants to go, we were there. We ran our program bilingually, English and Spanish with a great organization at Houston, [inaudible 00:41:45]. So, we get into that.

Jill:

Yeah. And you were training the response workers.

John:

Training workers. It dovetailed a lot of community. I mean, having coalitional black trade unionists, with a hurricane in the beginning of Hurricane Katrina and Sandy and all that. But then by Houston, we're getting to bilingual classes, both in hurricane stuff and infectious disease stuff. It's just been a diverse growing kind of program. Well, actually before Ebola, I think it was swine flu, H1N1. We got into some infectious disease, small grant. And it just puts out these great brochures on major hazards, but one on hurricane, on flood, on earthquakes, and Avian flu. As we got infectious disease, and then Ebola happened. And we got a little bit of Ebola training and infectious disease training and train the trainer. So, we have an extensive Train the Trainer program, which is really one of the two pillars along with adult education that make the program work well.

One, I got to say, adult education means workers talk to each other. They learn from each other and we learn something from them also. And lastly, yeah, we add something to them, but really, they learn from each other. And the other one is worker trainers. Almost all the educational staff comes out of the rank and file of our consortium partners. And the second apprentice program, where they go through our hands-on program. They go through a five-day Train the Trainer program, and then they assist us with that four-day program. And after they assist for a while and there's a job opening, then we're talking to the partners, talking to the staff. Were lucky we hired some of them.

Jill:

So, John as our listeners, the people that will be listening to this, are listening to this, you just listed just a litany of disasters, that you've been on the frontlines of providing resources help in training. And it's amazing. And also, you're kind of in maybe an adrenaline junkie, after all this, waiting for the next disaster. How interesting has that been? I guess my question is, you're always responding to something on the frontlines. It's your work. It's your life's work these last 33 years. How do you find your resilience in that?

John:

This could be a whole another podcast.

Jill:

Yeah.

John:

So, there are two main parts of it. One, the disastrous stuff really started with 9-11. And there was particular money, back then it was called WMD. Weapons of Mass Destruction. Well, we know Colin Powell died. His funeral was today. We know about, they didn't find them. But we as a community, and not just trainees, and the staff with NIHS, we understood after a while that we had to deal with all hazards. And in fact, under President Bush, there was a presidential directive that talked about an all hazards approach. And that meant both terrorism and natural disasters.

And so then in 2005, Katrina hit, and we were already talking. I was CBTU, some of their trainers. Before Katrina hit, we had a meeting with them scheduled like the week after to talk about mold. And after Katrina, and what happened at the convention center in New Orleans, all the rest of it, it evolved into a discussion about it and then training about hurricane response and working with some of the other partners. There's a community college consortium we worked with. We learned some of the basics and just the support, so that 9-11 was a lot of what got into it.

The other big factor, I got to say, is having a consortium. Having this big consortium means that it's a lot of work. So, the new director, Sherry Allen's got our hands full, to say the least, as I did. But it means that whatever hazard is around, we're going to have a significant population in one or more, usually, much more of our partners legitimately want to do training in that area for their members. And then just as able to change what was WMD, to an all hazards standalone disaster grant. The other one I got to say, is that from a political point of view, you got to say it's like, let's not think of this just as a blue collar or white collar with this industry or whatever.

There are hazards to your work. I mean, even sexual harassment. The boss harassing you, male, female, not even sexual. I mean, they're all kinds of hazards on the job. And politically, that's where, again, credit progressive lefty politics, understanding that those are important, you got to address them. And when I often mentioned that get back to 9-11, is that I don't know, the number, I think was least 15, New York public employees, federation members were killed in 9-11, who were in one of the towers. And the terrorism gets played up much too much. But the reality is active shooter, all that stuff, stuff happens in the workplace.

Jill:

That's right. That's right. So, then 2020 happens. And the way that your trainers, the way that you guys operate and have operated all these years, suddenly is turned on its head. You want to talk about what that experience has been like, is like, how you had to pivot?

John:

Well, as I often say, we had a choice. The choice is either to do no training or get into web-based training, which I had resisted. And I just said, push it for a long time. And some people were doing it. But we in general, and we still believe that classroom training face to face, people talking to each other is the best kind of training. But March 2020, there was no choice. We're not going to do that. We're beginning, and I still say, we all say we till the day, I die, probably. We're beginning to do and we have scheduled a hands-on program. And the staff will figure out how to do that and how we get back. But we're never going to get back completely.

So, we knew we had to do web training. And basically, we looked at a couple of platforms, and some of our partners had some platforms they want us to look at that they used, and we settled on Zoom. And the pitch resume is that Zoom has the breakout group option, and an active chat room that are really great features that many other platforms don't have. And what that meant is that we could do a presentation. And we had worked with other unions 20 years ago or 15 years ago. The session was called Different Grants. It was called Union Grants. It's called Death by PowerPoint Not. And it was like how do we not drone on and on and not making 12-point font and nobody can read it including the speaker.

So, you have no choice. It's going to be a PowerPoint. It’s going to be visual. You are going to do that. But then, you can do a number of things. One, during the presentation, you can do a poll. You can structure and they got to be yes, no questions, and you can have everybody fill out and they begin to get active. And then you can report back what the responses are. When you have a point, say okay, 80% of the people have answered, here the results. And we can record those. We get those in a spreadsheet. So that's one interactive thing. The chatroom was another interactive thing where some chat room is just a little bit, it's not that active.

We strongly encourage it. The presenter often ask people to do one thing or another and they respond. And some of the instructors are really phenomenal the way they can glance as they're talking at the chat room and know what a question is, and know what the answer should be and say the answer all the time. We have a staff that monitors. He has a dedicated job monitoring the chat room, and stops the presentation. And we also have a trainer. That was the first place we had a worker trainer beginning to be active in taking a role in presenting. We had to find a new way for them. And we never had that before.

The other one in the breakout groups, and this evolved over time, is we have somebody who is the breakout group moderator. And it's staffed if we don't have trainers who can do it, but also a note taker. And then we have a separate training session where those trainers will get together and go over logistics, how they do it, how you record stuff. And you don't want chat room or breakout groups go down any strange rabbit holes to keep control of the conversation. Make sure that everybody gets to have a say, you rotate around people. And those all made it a lot more interactive than it could have been. So that's what we did.

Jill:

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, a really big pivot, very, very quickly, like everyone else in the country, trying to figure out how to do their work and connect with one another. John, we marched through pieces of your education, pieces of your jobs, things that you've been working on. You've done a lot of things in addition to that. From serving on boards to different presentations and things that you've written, some teaching you've done. Do you want to talk about any of those that kind of sprang to mind that you're proud of or you'd like to talk about?

John:

Well, thinking of the career beyond Cerro, which really was my education, our cable factory. I have served on the board of directors for ACGIH, American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygenists. I was the treasurer for two years. I'll just go through it and you can tell me if you want me to elaborate on them. In terms of the time or maybe another talk. I was on for 10 years on a risk assessment committee, which is fascinating and hard work, which was we met, I think three times a year to go over a draft risk assessment document to set three different health effect levels of various chemicals for the public.

So, it was levels who would begin causing some symptoms, but not that serious, would cause irreversible damage, tissue damage, or limit the ability to escape, and three might cause death. And then, you set those levels for at least I think, five, four levels, I think 30 minutes, one hour, four hours and eight hours. And sometimes it was a 10-minute level, depending on the chemical and how quickly it might have a reaction.

Jill:

So, is this work what translated into my NYOSH Pocket Guide to chemical hazards and some of the data that's in there?

John:

No, it was the other way around.

Jill:

Okay.

John:

The NYOSH Pocket Guide got used in the Eagle. NYOSH Pocket Guide is occupational. And that's a very important point. I'm glad you raised. It is because I haven't done it in a while. In fact, thank you for raising it, because I'm going to do it when we end this call, which is to search the initials AEGL, acute exposure guideline level and then occupational, and to see what pops up on the web. Because what's happened from time to time is people take the Ag level and say, well, you know, occupational setting, here's a level that sort of applies.

And my bone of contention is no. Because the studies we used were at variably animal, some human studies that were once in a lifetime exposure. They weren't this repeated chronic exposure. Number two, it is there for the public. So workwise, people are susceptible to diseases, whatever has difficulty, they're going to gravitate out of the workplace. So, you have what's called a healthy worker effect. So it's really there are different tugs back and forth. And the bottom line is you can't use the Eagles for occupational levels.

Jill:

It makes complete sense and hopefully that piques the interest of any of the industrial hygienists who are listening to this, that they're going to want to be googling what you're going to Google after we hang up today. Yeah. Okay, so you were talking about committees and boards.

John:

I talked to various universities, I'm trying to go through my resume, see what else I could talk about. I guess, another one could be that, and this gets back to the work of trainers is that we have a number and we could go through a number. I think there are eight. How many publications? I've had more than, I probably had 12,15 publications. So, about six of them have to do with the work that I do. So, one is about Eagles, actually. I was unhappy with one thing they did there, but unhappy is putting it mildly. But some of the articles about our worker trainers.

And I still remember, we went out, one of our grants is Department of Energy. So, these are the workers who basically build nuclear weapons for the guidance system for nuclear weapons. And they represent mainly by the machinists, one of our partners, as well as the chemical workers. And there are a host of other unions also, but that's for us. That's who we train and who are our trainers. And unlike all the other programs, well, I take that back, I said the OSHA class is different, also it similar. We have a bunch of trainers, worker trainers at these facilities, who work in these facilities, and then come out for three, four days a week, do training, and go back to work. And that means a couple things. One is it means that the weeks where they're not training, they're still accessible to both labor and management to ask questions.

And at one of these meetings, our classical evaluation was working, not working wasn't showing that much. And I turned at these trainers, DOE trainer exchange, I said, "What are we going to do? How can we show this works?" And I still remember one of the workers, trainers standing up and say, "Well, I know what you can do or what it is, but you can't measure it, John?" And I simply said, "Watch me." And he told me what he said, which is they are the go to people for both labor management to ask questions. And I devised a questionnaire to ask people that work trainers about that and they are, and it's not just DOE. I think it's true for all our trainers. I remember talking to a trainer in Cincinnati, when we worked at a chemical plant in Ohio.

And I was telling her about DOE. I made a point of what I was talking to the worker trainers when they came in to help out if I didn't talk to them, I'd end up being recommended I hire them, and I wouldn't know them. So, she was saying, "Oh, I know exactly what you're talking about. I can't even get out of the parking lot some mornings." It's like people are coming to me and say, Hey, what about this? What about that? I mean, they are the go to experts? No, they don't have degree. No, they're not going to answer. I answered the highly technical scientific question. But terms of what workers need to know to make the job safer. They're the best thing around.

So, there are two articles about that. There are another two articles about basically, that we did these wall-to-wall OSHA 10-hour classes, general industry 10-hour classes at a couple of chemical facilities, where the local management agreed. In fact, they paid us often to come in and do the training. We would sent staff, a lot of time, a lot of many weeks, as well, as we began, we didn't do the beginning, but maybe we did. But we began perfecting how to do it, recruiting both labor and management as trainers to help do the trainers, but also said to be in particular labor trainers left at the plant after we had done all the training.

And so, we have two articles about that. And one of them talks about the structure that we put in place to basically handle health and safety issues that came up in the training program. So that's one. And then we have some evaluation of the training program. But what we do is we ask people, when they start the four-day program, either the Sunday in their hotel, they fly in, they used to fly and drive into Cincinnati. And they get this questionnaire that they would tell when they check in or if they drive and they commute. They get it first thing Monday morning. They fill it out for what their activities have been for the last six months. Have you used these resources? Have you tried to improve the supply or quality of gloves, the right gloves in the workplace, and or respirators or labeling of chemicals? And then we also asked them, were you successful or is it in progress?

And then six months later, we have a contractor is who calls him up and says same question, identical question to the same people and we have a therefore comparison pre and post. Not everybody does great stuff afterwards. But the change is pretty dramatic of what people say beforehand what to say after. And there are plenty of active people or some who come in in the beginning. But my idea on what we said in the article is that when you do small group activities you rely on people talk to each other, basically. And we encourage it, that the people who are active spread their stories to the other people, as well as, I'll just say, the last day of the training program, we get people during the week, the three days at tables, where we deliberately and I was deliberate about it, I'd always review it every Friday would divide people up. They would sit at tables with people from other locals and other unions.

And the last day, we say no, everybody from local 31 and local 451, you get together and you're going to talk about what are the hazards at your workplace? What are the priorities of the hazard your workplace? And what are you going to do when you get back? What are the obstacles you're going to have? And what's your strategy, and that was the transition for going back and change the workplace. And that's what the studies showed.

Jill:

Fantastic, fantastic. The importance of the face-to-face interaction you were talking about earlier, you know, John, just listening to your body of work and I that it's essentially scratching the surface in a kind of a short amount of time here. But when you think about the pace with which you've been going for all these years, and the information that's come into your head and how you've applied it. As you're moving through your career, what were you doing for yourself to continue learning? Or was it by experience? A lot of times, guests might share how they're keeping up with things or what they're doing to advance their career educationally or knowledge wise, or whatever that is for them. What would you say that would be for you?

John:

Well, first and foremost, the adult education method means workers learn from each other, and the staff learns from them. And I think that it put a place along with worker trainers, a self-corrective measure for the training program. So, I'm answering the question, not for me, for the center that help self correct. Number two is we had the NIHS community that we would have two workshops a year and we'd bet around key questions. And that helped to figure out where to grow, what to learn. They were very supportive, took a bit to get there, but also fellow grantees from all the different universities involved, the justice or the unions, that we learned from each other and we tackled new problems. And it still is, it's a great community.

The other one, which you didn't ask, but sort of leads to is like, how to avoid burnout. And so, let me just say that...

Jill:

Yeah, the question on resilience. I wasn't sure if you wanted to go back to that or not. Yes, please.

John:

Well, I always tell people, never a dull moment on this shop, for better or for worse. But the partners, it wasn't like a 12-organization consortia from day one. It was actually four, it was us the steel workers, but also University of Cincinnati from the beginning, and also a local labor clinic, GCUHC. So, we added partners, and then we added their staff, we added their industries, and their hazards and that evolved along the way. And then, life changes, 9-11, Ebola, any number of things, we begin devising new classes. The bottom line, I tell people, there's never been two years that have been the same. So, burnout was not a problem.

Jill:

Yeah, it wasn't repetitive, that's for sure.

John:

Yeah, the problem because it wasn't burnout is and there were good benefits. Chemical has been a great institution to work for is that many of us retired at the same time, which was when I retired. So, the poor center has had to figure out where, I think if you go to the second most senior educational staff, they don't even have two years there.

Jill:

Oh, wow.

John:

So, it's a huge challenge for the new director, Sherry Allen. But a challenge for educational staff, challenge for support staff challenge for the partners. But the benefit is, that the people we hired with almost maybe one exception, were people who we have worked with for years. And so, and even Sherry, she's the new director, but she worked there for five years and she was a worker trainer for years before that.

Jill:

So, John, for our listening audience. You've been talking about your life's work with the unions. If someone who's listening thinks, "Gosh, maybe I want to find a role in worker health and safety within the unions." How would you suggest someone start or how do they walk through that door? What would you tell people today?

John:

Without knowing who I'm talking to, the audience, it's hard to say.

Jill:

Yeah, so our audience today is always made up of health and safety professionals, both IH and safety, and I don't want to leave out any HR people who might be listening, but it's a strong foothold in the health and safety world.

John:

Yeah. You are already in the health and safety world, by and large, you have an interest in that. It is a different kind of question, because, well, I got to mention it anyway, is for young people in school of some kind, not even necessarily occupational health and safety. There is an internship program called OHIP and it's run by APHA, our section. Occupational Health Intern Project and one of our partners, AOC Association of Occupational Environmental Clinics runs that program. And so, if they know someone in school, who wants to go to health safety, apply for the OHIP project. It's a paid internship, and we've donated money to it. We've had a number of projects we've worked with.

It sounds like your question is much more directly for working for unions. And I would say whatever job, this is mostly audience...

Jill:

A health and safety job in the unions.

John:

Right. So, most of the people, the audience are health and safety professionals, or they're dealing with it in some way. So, if they want to work for union, the first thing they can all do, is start working with the union before you work for union. And because I think I know, I was reticent to hire somebody who had never worked for the union before.

Jill:

Got it.

John:

So, I mean, I think what I did, I had worked in the wire and cable factory and there was a union job. But then, how to get the chemical workers, I'd work with the molders. And at NYOSH, I was active or a little bit, I worked a little bit with the union there. So, the thing is, to figure out what unions may already exist in your workplace and deal with them equally, rather than dealing just with the other professional who you're dealing with or dealing with management. And a lot of places regretfully are not unionized and that's a more difficult problem, and then you have to go outside your workplace. Or you can say be sympathetic when the workforce wants to organize.

Jill:

Got it. Yeah. John, as we are starting to wrap things up for our time today, a couple more questions for you, I guess. I don't know if this is a really hard question or not. When you look at your work and your contribution to occupational health and safety over all these years, what are some of the things you're most proud of?

John:

Well, I'm not saying it just because it's how you met me, but I'm extremely proud of getting, and there was another awardee Debra Coyle McFadden to get the first year that our section has been given the Eula Bingham Award. So, it's quite an honor and I think I'm very proud of that. But as I said in the speech, though, I got the award, but it really was, it really is, I mean, every work, it's a collective effort. And yes, other staff didn't write the grants, they helped a little bit here, a little bit there or more here and more there.

But at the same time, being an educational staff before COVID, where you'd be on the road for two weeks, come back for weeks and beyond the weekend are on the road again during training. I couldn't have done that. I would know all the bits and I could learn probably, but I couldn't do it. And it's far better that the trainer's actually out of the rank and file rather than someone like me, the middle-class kid of two professors. It's far better. It's the rank and file workers are the full-time staff. So, it's just a difference.

Jill:

Yeah, yeah. Before I ask a last question, is there anything else that you'd like to share or share with our listening audience who are maybe just starting in their careers or maybe they are halfway through it?

John:

Yeah, you take the opportunity, this comes knocking or you make the opportunity. I guess, the three things I tell young people, which is not that your audience is to say, be willing to work hard, get along with people, and lastly, when you make mistakes, be willing to own up to them. Each of those three things are problem in the reverse. So that's my advice in terms of outside health safety. I mean, otherwise, we've gone on, I've had quite a career, but I realized and looking at my list of publications. There's two others on fatalities, which another time we can talk about, but it's been a great career.

Jill:

Oh, fantastic. So, John, last question is this. What do you do for fun? What do you do to recharge?

John:

Anybody who knows me will know what the answer is. I go into the outdoors and hiking and taking pictures where I hike. And I'm quite a serious amateur photographer, and you give me your, I'll email you some pictures and give me an address and I'll mail you some cards. I've turned about 30 of them into these blank wilderness cards. And anybody who knows me knows, I'm going to be at the Grand Canyon or Mount St. Helens within the next year.

Jill:

Oh, fantastic, fantastic. And maybe we can put one of your photographs in the show notes to the podcast episode. So, we can do that. We can do that. Fantastic. John, thank you so much for sharing everything that you have today. And thank you for the work that you've been doing for the greater good all these years.

John:

Well, thank you for doing this podcast. Really. It's reaching out in another way that I'm not used to, but it's reaching more people.

Jill:

It sure is. It sure is. And thank you all for spending your time listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good. Making sure your workers including your temporary workers make it home safe every day. If you aren't subscribed and want to hear past and future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple podcast app or any other podcast player you'd like. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review us on iTunes. It really helps connect the show with more and more health and safety professionals like John and I. Special thanks to [inaudible 01:12:09], our podcast producer. And until next time, thanks for listening.