In June 2022, the International Labour Conference included “a safe and healthy working environment” as a fundamental principle and right at work. Continue reading Global: Watch Q&A with Manal Azzi – Implementing the fundamental right to a safe and healthy working environment
International Workers’ Memorial Day 2023 is annually observed on April 28. This year, BWI will highlight ways to put the right to safe and healthy workplaces into practice through the theme “MAKE IT HAPPEN.” This is an effort to celebrate and raise awareness on occupational health and safety (OHS) as a basic right.
Trade unions worldwide will carry out joint activities with employers and/or organise rallies to promote the implementation of OHS as a fundamental worker right. Activities will take place the whole week covering 24-30 April.
On 10 June 2022, the International Labour Conference (ILC) adopted a resolution to add the principle of a safe and healthy working environment to the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. With this groundbreaking development, Occupational Health and Safety is now secured as ILO’s fifth Fundamental Principle and Right at Work.
However, the time for celebration is over; we now shift our campaign to its full implementation. All workers worldwide must become conscious of this landmark agreement, and together, we will call on every government and employer to deliver a healthy and safe work environment.
445 joint declarations covering 480,000 workplaces and 18 million workers worldwide were signed by trade unions and employers calling for the recognition of OHS as a fundamental right leading to its adoption before the ILO. We will now go back to each and every employer who signed the joint OHS declarations and ask them to implement OHS as a right and MAKE IT HAPPEN. We do this by:
For affiliates with uncooperative employers, we call on them to hold mass rallies and demonstrations in front of companies to protest their unsafe working conditions and poor safety records.
BWI regional offices will assist affiliates in carrying out one or more of joint activities with employer signatories, document their activities and distribute knowledge material and information posters.
Please share your plans with your respective regional coordinators.
We will include them on our dedicated website www.28april.org where various materials, activities and events are shared.
During BWI’s Week of Action, document your activities by:
Lastly, share all your content with your respective regional BWI communication teams.
2023 será un año clave para los sindicatos y para los trabajadores y las trabajadoras. El año pasado conseguimos que se reconociera que un entorno laboral seguro y saludable es un derecho de los trabajadores. Esto ha dado un nuevo impulso a la organización en favor de la salud y la seguridad –una parte crucial de la acción sindical–. La Jornada Internacional de Conmemoración de los Trabajadores Fallecidos y Lesionados, el 28 de abril, está dedicada este año a esta prioridad sindical fundamental.
Owen Tudor, secretario general adjunto de la CSI.
Boletín de la CSI – Febrero 2023.
Dear Colleagues,
We would like to share with you the OPZZ’s activities to memorialise Workers’ Memorial Day.
Today two hundred eighteen candles were lit under the OPZZ headquarters building in Warsaw. It is a tribute to the 218 victims of accidents at work in 2021.
In front of the OPZZ building, 218 candles were lit to symbolise the victims of last year’s accidents at work, emphasise the importance of worker participation and stress the role of social dialogue in creating a safety culture at work.
A press conference on safety and health at work was also held.
Andrzej Radzikowski, President of the OPZZ, said: These burning candles symbolise those who died at work. In 2021, it was 218 people. Today, we particularly remember the miners who died in recent days in the Pniówek and Zofiówka coal mines. He said: we honour their memory and express our sincere condolences to their families.
Practice and statistics show that in workplaces where trade unions and the social labour inspectorate actively operate – safety at work has higher standards, and employees are better protected. The time has come for a systemic debate on working conditions in Poland, especially given new threats and challenges resulting from technological progress – continued Andrzej Radzikowski. – Digitalisation of work processes and technological changes have increased the risk of psychosocial problems at work.
Previously unseen phenomena have appeared, such as blurring traditional boundaries between work and private life, limiting the employee’s right to disconnect from the phone and the Internet, or the lack of social interaction. Workplace stress is an ongoing challenge. The number of cases of mental disorders is increasing.
Andrzej Radzikowski drew attention to the fact that the number of victims of accidents at work in Poland is increasing. In 2021, almost 70,000 workers suffered accidents at work – 10% more than the year before, and 218 people died at work.
As a society, we still bear the enormous social costs of accidents resulting from more than 2.5 million days of incapacity to work and the high medical and social costs of post-accident disability.
We trade unionists are hurt by pathologies in the labour market, which have a terrible impact on work safety. Without their elimination, there will be no improvement in safety – stressed Andrzej Radzikowski.
Best regards,
Magdalena Chojnowska
International department of the All-Poland Alliance of Trade Unions (OPZZ) https://www.opzz.org.pl/en/about-us/opzz/
?️”Today, we commemorate International Workers Memorial Day #IWMD22. 3 million workers die of work accidents and diseases each year. Occupational health and safety must be at the centre of fundamental rights” @SharanBurrow
?https://t.co/dCXIY8CTaj pic.twitter.com/wXsUwv0s7g
— ITUC (@ituc) April 28, 2022
“Today, we commemorate International Workers Memorial Day #IWMD22. 3 million workers die of work accidents and diseases each year. Occupational health and safety must be at the centre of fundamental rights” Sharan Burrow, ITUC General Secretary. Continue reading Global: 28 April video message from Sharan Burrow, ITUC General Secretary
IndustriALL news release – 14 March, 2022
As the 344th Session of the Governing Body of the International Labour Organization (ILO) commences on 14 March 2022, global unions are calling for an amendment to the 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work that will lead to Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) being considered a fundamental principle and right at work.
The amendment would see OHS joining the four fundamental principles and rights at work that the Declaration currently recognizes: freedom of association and the right to organize and bargain collectively; the prohibition of forced labour; prohibition of child labour; and the elimination of discrimination in employment.
The Governing Body meets three times a year, in March, June and November. It takes decisions on ILO policy, decides the agenda of the International Labour Conference, adopts the draft programme and budget of the organization for submission to the conference, and elects the Director-General.
The call by global unions’ is consistent with the 2019 ILO Centenary Declaration on the future of work and a global campaign for OHS to be added to the fundamental principles and rights at work. In June 2019, UN experts urged the ILO to immediately recognize and adopt safe and healthy working conditions as one of its fundamental principles and rights at work. A follow-up to the resolution on the ILO Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work called for proposals, including safe and healthy working conditions, to be added to the ILO’s framework of fundamental principles and rights at work.
According to the first joint WHO/ILO monitoring report, released on 27 September 2021, at least 1.9 million workers lose their lives every year due to the work-related diseases and injuries. However, when adding causes of death by risk factors not included and filling in information gaps from poor record-keeping, the number is closer to a staggering three million deaths.
“Health and safety at work is neither a perk to be bargained for nor a favour to be asked. It is our right,” said IndustriALL mining director and OHS lead, Glen Mpufane.
“No wage is worth our health or our life, and no remedy can be granted by an arbitrator that will restore our health or our life, once it is lost.”
At the November 2021 meeting of the ILO Governing Body, global unions finally secured agreement that the agenda for the 2022 International Labour Conference would include an amendment to the ILO 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work to achieve this.
On the back of this achievement, and to maintain the momentum and ensure that the ILO Governing Body takes the decisions workers need on OHS, IndustriALL Global Union calls on its over 50 million members and affiliates to amplify the call by the ITUC to call on governments and employers:
“The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights include a duty and responsibility to protect the health and safety of workers. With the United Nations’ resolution recognizing access to a healthy and sustainable environment as a universal right, another historic moment awaits the Governing Body to make the correct decision,” said IndustriALL assistant general secretary, Kan Matsuzaki.
The health worker death toll due to the pandemic is at least 17,000. This means more than one health worker dies every 30 minutes. Workers across all other sectors have also been impacted to different extents.
“Every 12 seconds, there is a work-related death somewhere in the world”
Millions of workers continue to die due to lack of adequate workplace safety. Every 12 seconds, there is a work-related death somewhere in the world. Many more suffer chronic or acute diseases. Stress and burnout also contribute significantly to undermining the mental health of overworked and often underpaid working people.
This worrisome situation must stop. Despite the formal inclusion of occupational safety and health as a core aspect of the decent work concept, it is not yet an International Labour Organisation (ILO) fundamental right at work (FRAW).
ILO’s recognition of workplace safety as a key FRAW would lead to its inclusion along with freedom of association, the right to collective bargaining and conventions against child labour and forced labour as components of the Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work (FPRW). In remembering the dead we will fight to win this recognition today, and until victory.
An ILO Governing Body decision on 23 March 2021 was a ‘significant step’ towards making occupational health and safety a fundamental workers’ right, global union confederation ITUC has said. The influential committee comprised of government, employer and union delegates overwhelmingly supported a call from worker members to move ahead with the process. It is expected that the decision will be formalised at the ILO Conference in 2022. The net.
The next step in the campaign is International Workers’ Memorial Day on 28 April 2021, when ITUC says “unions can send a message that health and safety protection at work must be recognised as a right for all. Whether it is Covid or occupational cancers, or workplace injuries and industrial diseases, every worker should have a right to a voice and a right to protection. No-one should have to die to make a living.”
According to ITUC general secretary Sharan Burrow: “We will keep up the pressure, on International Workers’ Memorial Day and beyond.” The union-driven move was supported by occupational medicine organisations the Collegium Ramazzini and the Society of Occupational Medicine and leading workplace safety bodies the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) and the International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH). Unions had success at the ILO Governing Body meeting with another health and safety priority, striking an agreement that a Biological Hazards Convention will follow after occupational health and safety in ILO’s ruling making priorities.
It’s Fundamental: Making work safety an ILO Fundamental Right at Work – Hazards magazine, April 2021
