Trade unions are asking the ILO Conference, which will be held in June 2021, to raise the OHS to the level of international labour standards, increase the responsibility of governments and employers and insist that more countries ratify key OHS Conventions.
This way the promises given in 2019 in the ILO Centenary Declaration, which was unanimously adopted by the governments, trade unions and employers, would be kept and workers’ health and safety would be protected. The highest independent international body of OHS experts, Collegium Ramazzini, calls on ILO to urgently implement the decisions made at the ILO Conference that took place in 2019. It would be ideal if it happened at the Conference in 2021.
„Hundreds of millions of workers around the world are injured at work. Milions have died. This massacre can be prevented but only if workers’ protection from injury at work is prioritized and OHS confirmed as fundamental human right. ”
Executive Director of the Society of Occupational Medicine, located in the Great Britain, Nick Pahl said: „Society of Occupational Medicine strongly supports the view that the protection of OHS is the fundamental right at work. We invite the ILO Administrative Body to urgently react and implement the decision taken at the ILO Centenary Conference (session 108), held in 2019, which puts the protection of OHS on the agenda of the ILO Conference which is to take place in 2021.”
ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow said: „Governments and employers are supposed to listen to leading experts. For quite some time workers’ protection from the injury and professional diseases has been undermined. There’s the impression that employers, even some governments, think that in business it is possible to trade in human lives. By providing OHS with the legal status, as it deserves one, historical mistake will be corrected and efforts to control the COVID-19 pandemic strengthened.’’
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