Occupational safety improves in Latin America, except among youth
RIO DE JANEIRO: Despite progress achieved in occupational safety in Latin America, the rates of workrelated accidents and diseases are still worrying, especially among young people, more vulnerable in a context of labour flexibility and unemployment.
In 1971, a young labourer, Mário Carlini, died when he fell from the scaffolding during the construction of a building in Rio de Janeiro.
“He tied some boards and when he was going up, the steel sling opened because he had not put it on right. It was not his job, he was fi lling in for another worker one Saturday,” his widow Laurinda Meneghini, who was left to raise their six children on her own, told IPS.
Almost half a century later in Latin America “there has been a significant improvement in the protection of the safety and health of workers,” especially during this century, according to Nilton Freitas, regional representative of the International Federation of Building and Wood Workers ( IFBWW).
Freitas, one of the authors of the book “The Dictionary on Workers’ Health and Safety,” attributes the improvement to better integration among the ministries concerned, such as Labour, Health and Social Security.
“This brought greater visibility to diseases and accidents and led to an increase in punishment for employers,” he told IPS from Panama City, where the Federation has its regional headquarters.
But the regional situation is still critical in terms of job security, according to Julio Fuentes, president of the Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of Public Sector Workers (CLATE) and deputy secretary general of the Argentine Association of State Workers (ATE).
In his country, according to official data on registered workers, there is one workrelated death every eight hours.
“The situation in Latin America in general is really tricky,” he said in an interview with IPS from Buenos Aires. “In the case of Argentina, there are no laws, regulations, or government agencies carrying out prevention efforts. There is no policy for that.”
“What there is, which is only partial and deficient,” according to Fuentes, are laws for reparations and compensation, a situation that is “aggravated” because the agency for workplace risk “is in the hands of private, mainly fi nancial, entities.”
“There is no prevention and the business is to earn as much as possible and pay as little as possible,” he said.
According to the International Labour Organisation ( ILO), 2.78 million workers die every year around the world due to occupational accidents and diseases. About 2.4 million of these deaths are due to occupational diseases, while just over 380,000 are due to workplace accidents.
Partial fi gures available indicate that in Latin America there are 11.1 fatal accidents per 100,000 workers in industry, 10.7 in agriculture, and 6.9 in the service sector. Some of the most important sectors for regional economies such as mining, construction, agriculture and fi shing are also among the most risky.
It is worse in the case of workers between 15 and 24 years of age, according to the ILO.
This year’s World Day for Safety and Health at Work had focused on “improving the safety and health of young workers.”
The 541 million workers between 15 and 24 years old (including 37 million children engaged in hazardous work), who represent more than 15 per cent of the world’s workforce, suffer up to 40 per cent more non-fatal occupational injuries than adults over 25, according to the ILO.
For Carmen Bueno, an expert from the ILO, that is due “in the fi rst place, to their physical, psychological and emotional development which is still incomplete, generally leading to a lower perception of the dangers and risks at work. And in second place, young workers have fewer professional skills and less work experience, and lack adequate training in safety and health.”