Three-way cooperation key to safety at work during pandemic — ILO

WORK SAFETY during the pandemic will require effective collaboration among the government, employers, and labor, the International Labour Organization (ILO) said.

“As the world continues to grapple with the impact of the COVID-19 crisis and the uneven recovery, occupational safety and health remains at the forefront of countries’ responses,” ILO Director-General Guy Ryder said in a statement on Thursday.

“The lessons learned from this crisis about the importance of social dialogue in strengthening safety and health at the national and workplace level need to be applied to other contexts,” he added. “This would help reduce the unacceptable level of occupational deaths and disease that occur every year.”

Citing a study it compiled, the ILO found that governments that prioritize active participation from employers’ and workers’ organizations developed and implemented effective emergency laws, policies and interventions against the pandemic.

“The collaboration between and among actors in the world of work has been essential in ensuring that the measures put in place were acceptable to and supported by employers and workers — and were, therefore, more likely to be effectively implemented in practice,” it said.

In the Philippines, the national tripartite structures dealing with OSH were involved in the drafting of guidelines ensuring the quality of ventilation in workplaces and public transport.

Authorities were also able to explain the benefits of mobilizing emergency volunteer workers to warn employees at high risk for infection of available social protection measures.

The ILO noted the need for further consultation at the regional or sectoral level to ensure that solutions are adapted to a specific context.

In Bloomberg’s COVID Resilience Ranking posted on Wednesday, the Philippines rose one place to 48th of 53 countries, with the top ranked countries judged to have had the least social and economic disruption. It drew on 11 indicators including virus containment, quality of healthcare, vaccination coverage, overall mortality and progress toward restarting international travel. —