Union is Only Non-Academic Institution to Win Alpha Funding
Contact: R.J. Hufnagel, 412-562-2450, rhufnagel@usw.org
PITTSBURGH (October 1) – The Alpha Foundation for the Improvement of Mine Safety and Health has awarded the United Steelworkers (USW) a $600,000 grant to fund a two-year research project focused on finding and fixing health and safety hazards in metal and non-metal mines.
The USW grant is part of the foundation’s first round of awards worth $10 million. The union is the only non-academic grant winner out of 16 recipients.
“We are and excited to begin working on a project that we know will save lives and make all mines safer places to work,” said Nancy Lessin of the USW’s Tony Mazzocchi Center for Health, Safety and Environmental Education. “We will never forget that it took a deadly tragedy to make this possible, and we consider it our duty to make sure such a horrific event never happens again.”
The Alpha Foundation was established in 2011 after an explosion killed 29 at West Virginia’s Upper Big Branch underground coal mine, owned by Massey Energy. Alpha acquired Massey after the disaster and agreed to establish a $48 million trust fund dedicated to improving mine safety.
“There is no more important job for a union than to protect workers, and that begins with health and safety,” said USW International President Leo W. Gerard. “This grant will go a long way toward helping us do that job. No worker, whether they work in an office or a factory or a mine, should go to work and worry about whether they are going to come home.”
The USW grant will pay for a two-year study to identify hazardous conditions in mines and examine ways to fix them, including looking at impediments that could prevent miners from speaking out about unsafe conditions.
The USW represents 850,000 members in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean. It is the largest private-sector union in North America, representing workers in a range of industries including metals, mining, rubber, paper and forestry, oil refining, health care, security, hotels, and municipal governments and agencies.
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