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OSHA and NAHB Provide Resources for Hispanic Worker Safety Programs

With evidence showing rising numbers of job-site fatalities and injuries among Latino workers at a time when the trend has been moving in the opposite direction for the U.S. workforce overall, focusing on improving the safety of Spanish-speaking employees should be a major concern of home building companies, according to experts in occupational safety, and there are a number of resources available to assist in this undertaking:

• Protecting Spanish-speaking workers has emerged as a top concern at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Acting on the findings of its task force on Hispanic workers, the agency has created an OSHA en Espanol Web page (www.osha.gov/as/opa/spanish) and a special toll-free telephone number accessible to Spanish-speaking individuals (800-321-OSHA). A range of OSHA materials are in Spanish and its Resource Center Loan Program offers 38 video titles in the language. Topics of those videos include electrical safety, fall protection, foot protection safety gear, eye and face protection, scaffolding and hand and power tool safety.
• NAHB is at the forefront of developing training materials to assist residential construction companies in Spanish, and bilingual titles are available from BuilderBooks.com.  NAHB's "Toolbox Safety Talks: English-Spanish," the bilingual "NAHB-OSHA Jobsite Safety Handbook," "Scaffold Safety Handbook" and "Jobsite Phrasebook, English-Spanish" are available.
• Oregon OSHA has compiled a dictionary of OSHA construction terms in English and Spanish (www.cbs.state.or.us/external/osha/pdf/dictionary/english-spanish.pdf).

To read more in this issue about the focus on job safety training for Latino workers, click here.

For more information on this issue, e-mail Rob Matuga at NAHB or call him at 800-368-5242 x8507.

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