Hundreds of trade unionists attended a 24 April 2026 preparatory webinar for International Workers’ Memorial Day, organised by ITUC’s Asia Pacific office (ITUC-AP). The event, on the theme of how unions can challenge psychosocial hazards at work, included case histories on informal work, content moderation and gender, and featured presentations by ITUC-AP general secretary Shoya Yoshida and IUF-AP regional secretary and work safety expert Hidayat Greenfield.
ITUC-AP produced a graphic summary of the meeting, which including action points. It concluded unions should: organise to fight psychosocial harm; demand accountability and transparency; use collective bargaining to shape workplace changes; and build bottom-up solutions and actions to protect workers.
It noted unions were: building the capacity of women occupational safety and health representatives, including measures to address psychosocial risks in collective bargaining agreements; ensuring women’s participation in collective bargaining; and connecting workers affected by similar psychosocial risks.
Unions in the region agreed it was necessary to: call on governments to recognise psychosocial harms as occupational injuries and illnesses; ratify the fundamental ILO occupational health and safety conventions C155 and C187; strengthen legal protections from psychosocial harm; and extend labour protections to platform workers and BPOs (business processing outsourcing – a service subcontracting practice commonly used by major companies to provide content moderation, call centre and other services).
“Psychosocial risks are not only occupational safety and health issues; they are also issues of dignity, equality, and fundamental rights,” ITUC-AP general secretary Shoya Yoshida said.
“What trade unions are showing is that psychosocial risks are not invisible. They are being named, organised around, and challenged. Through collective action, workers are turning these issues into demands and concrete solutions for safer, healthier, and more dignified work.”
