19 June, 2009
Every year more than two million people die from occupational accidents or work-related diseases. The safety of work varies enormously between countries, economic sectors and social groups. Deaths and injuries take a particularly heavy toll in developing nations. Downsizing, outsourcing, sub-contracting and temporary labour create bad working conditions. Although the physical workplace environment has improved considerably during the course of the last decades, millions of men and women around the world are still working in hazardous conditions. Therefore, based on the primacy of prevention, defending and promoting health and safety at work is a fundamental trade union task that all IMF affiliates should prioritise.
Alongside the difficulties to ban well-known hazards, such as asbestos, the introduction of new chemicals and new technologies, without sufficient research, constitutes new threats to the health and well-being of workers. The precautionary principle should also apply to nanomaterials, the hazardous nature of which has become more apparent in the light of many recent studies. Such precaution is all the more urgent because of the fact that these materials are used in many products, including clothes, cosmetics, composites, automobiles, spectacles, paint etc.
Occupational cancer is by far the most common work-related cause of death. It is a problem that does not ring alarm bells for corporate executives who only answer to shareholders at annual general meetings. Causes are covered up, bodies are buried, companies evade legal liabilities, and the killing continues as a result of preventable and predictable work-place exposures.
The IMF and affiliates must increase efforts to stop this from happening. It is essential to have effective health and safety committees in every workplace with knowledge of the workplace-specific hazards. Preventive actions must be based on research, evidence and strong health and safety laws that are properly promoted and enforced. Health and safety is a very important issue for trade unions. In general, organized workplaces are safer workplaces with better working conditions.
The international trade union movement must work in order to ensure that ILO conventions and codes of practice are incorporated into national legislation and collective bargaining agreements, and are respected in practice.
The IMF will encourage affiliates to develop organising strategies around safer and better workplaces. Such strategies can be linked to the campaign for decent work. The campaign for decent work should be extended to include the pursuit of fixed wages and permanent employment contracts, healthy and family-friendly working hours, protection against excessive demands on performance, the preservation of the workers' employability, preventive and participatory health and safety, and training and development.
The IMF will:
- Co-operate with ITUC, TUAC and GUFs to ensure that the ILO assists governments, employers and trade unions to improve knowledge and information about existing legislation on health and safety at work;
- Address occupational health and safety at regional, sectoral and company meetings;
- Continue to build the campaign for Zero Occupational Cancer;
- Keep campaigning for an international ban on the production, import, export and use of asbestos; and
- Continue to put pressure on national governments to implement transition programmes for workers displaced by the banning of asbestos, and to ensure that the treatment and compensation costs of workers suffering from asbestos-related diseases are borne by employers.
The IMF will assist the affiliates to:
- Inform and educate instructors on basic workplace health and safety, who will then teach and train stewards at plant level;
- Ensure that effective health and safety committees are set up in all workplaces;
- Use health and safety as a tool for organising workers and building strong unions; and
- Develop strategies around HIV/Aids and other new epidemics.