Workplace safety and health in these COVID-19 times
Isalute Congress and President Rodrigo Duterte for the very timely passage of RA 11058 (An Act Strengthening Compliance with Occupational Safety and Health Standards or the OSH Act) which the President signed on August 17, 2018.
In Congress, I laud the efforts of Sen. Joel Villanueva, the OSH Act’s principal author. The same appreciation should be given to DOLE Secretary Silvestre Bello for the Implementing Rules that soon followed.
I say “timely” despite the lapse of almost two years since the OSH Act became law; it came just in time for the COVID-19 pandemic that confronts us today, and in time to help the workplace parties – the employers and workers – who are now commonly burdened by this scourge.
Out of our total population of approximately 110 million, we have a workforce of 43,313,000, of whom 41,030,000 were employed as of January, 2020. All of them are now at risk, especially at their workplaces where they are gathered, exposed to infection by their mere proximity to one another, unless appropriate safety and health measures are taken.
Moreover, COVID-19 is not only a grave health issue; it affects our economy as well, with serious impact on the nation and on all of us individually. For the workplace parties, the precautionary quarantine and social distancing affect the employer’s capacity to provide work and the workers’ opportunity to work and earn. These combined effects highlight the importance of all remedies and responses available against COVID-19, the OSH Act among them.
The Labor Code, as originally drafted, contained skeletal provisions on safety and health. The muscles and sinews of safety and health have all along been intended to be provided through the Code’s implementing rules, regulations and safety and health standards, all of them to be issued by the secretary of labor. All these were continually issued through the years.
An added strengthening of occupational safety and health came in 1987 when President Corazon Aquino created the National Occupational Safety and Health Center (OSHC). The center focuses — and acts as the government’s focal point — on occupational safety and health research, policy formulation, and training. Since its creation, it has kept the DOLE, the public, and the international community (through the ILO) updated on Philippine workplace safety and health concerns and has given these concerns very high public visibility.
In 1991, collaborative inter-agency efforts began to be the favored approach when the President issued EO 489 establishing the Inter-Agency Committee on Environmental Health. The Department of Health was the designated lead agency while the DOLE served as a member in its role as the regulator of the workplace, the situs of some of the environmental and health issues to be addressed.
The collaborative effort was followed in 2014 by EO 168 which created the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases. The task force was created in light of the previous spread of SARS, Avian Flu, Ebola, and the MERS-Cov infections, and the “recurrent threats of other diseases, such as Meningococcemia, Leptospirosis, Antimicrobial Resistance of Tuberculosis, and other bacterial, viral, and parasitic diseases that contribute to the high incidence of infectious diseases in the country.”
On workplace safety and health, the DOH, the DOLE and the Civil Service Commission – again on a collaborative approach – agreed in 2017 to adopt a National Occupational Health and Safety Policy Framework. This approach combined occupational health and safety with disease prevention to generate a more responsive and concerted action in protecting and promoting workers’ health.
Despite these approaches and the DOLE’s own solo initiatives, the safety and health community still appeared unhappy. They must have felt that EO 168 and DOH-DOLE-CSC Policy Framework of 2017 did not specikcally address their workplace concerns. They yearned perhaps for the way American workers have been protected by their Occupational Safety and Health Act (or OSHA) since 1970 and Canadian workers similarly shielded by their Occupational Health and Safety Act (or OHSA) since 1978.
With our own OSH Act now in place and in tandem with DOH-led approaches against diseases, the whole employment community has every reason now to be happy. They are now doubly protected and have the benekt of a krmer legal structure of their own – not merely rules, regulations and standards – to fall back on in addressing their specikc safety and health concerns.
Last March 9, 2020, the multiagency task force against COVID-19 – called the COVID-19 Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) – issued its krst workplace related directive (Resolution No. 10) encouraging “employers in the private sector and the
Civil Service Commission… to implement alternative working arrangements”… and social distancing between and among employees.”
This resolution translated into the work-from-home arrangement now in place in all workplaces under quarantine. How many would have been infected or could have died without this workplace restriction is not difkcult to appreciate given our current levels of deaths and infections even with restricted workplace access.
To be sure, the OSH Act – as a krst effort – can still be improved. But as it is, it merits distinct appreciation for the extra layers of protection it provides.
It covers all establishments, sites, projects, even PEZA establishments, where work as an economic activity is undertaken. Only the public sector is excepted since they will be covered by their own Civil Service Rules.
Employees are given two critical rights whose existence were not very clear before the OSH Act came. The krst is the right to know and the second is the right to refuse work in imminent danger situations, both under a dekned structure that accords workers a good measure of participation.
Employers, on the other hand, must “inform the workers of the hazards associated with their work, the health risks to which they are exposed to, preventive measures to minimize their risks, and steps to be taken on emergency cases.” They are jointly and solidarily liable for OSH Act violations, together with “project owners, general contractor or sub contractor if any, and any person who manages, controls, or supervises any work to be done.”
The kner details of all these are speciked in the OSH Act’s Implementing Rules and Regulations (DO 198-18). Among these are the specikcs of the rights and duties of employers and workers; the structure of protection in the workplace in terms of the required safety ofkcers, occupational health personnel and facilities, and OSH committees; the required OSH trainings; and the prohibited acts as well as the corresponding penalties.
Space limitation prevents me from further discussions until next week. I close with the observation that the OSH Act’s above features are perfect measures in combatting COVID-19 in the workplace.
Till then, take care and work safe everyone!