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April 28, 2012: A Day of Mourning

27 April, 2012As we remember those that have died, been injured or suffered ill health as a result of work, we must also commit to making occupational health and safety one of the highest priorities for IndustriALL Global Union.

GLOBAL: Every year, on April 28, the World Day on Safety and Health at Work, workers take a moment to reflect on the devastating toll taken by workplace fatalities, injuries, and occupational diseases.

IndustriALL Global Union will soon be created, a new organization speaking for some 50 million workers represented by its affiliates. Here are some statistics that should give us all pause. Of IndustriALL's 50 million affiliated workers:

  • An estimated 16,400 will die in 2012 as a result of their work. That's about 45 fatalities per day.
  • About 5,000 IndustriALL members will die this year of cancer, alone.
  • 1,570,000 will be diagnosed with a non-fatal occupational disease.
  • An enormous number, millions, impossible to estimate with any accuracy, will be injured on the job.

These numbers, shocking as they are, are certainly gross underestimates.

Drawn from International Labour Organization's Bureau of Labour Statistics and estimates of occupational fatalities and diseases produced in 2008, they rely on nationally accepted statistics reported to the ILO by member countries. In most cases, these are taken from the country's workers' compensation systems, immediately omitting workers whose disease or death was not accepted as "occupational" in origin, or who were not covered by the workers' compensation system. Occupational diseases are chronically under-diagnosed, and occupational injuries are subject to various strategies to suppress reporting or fraudulently misrepresent them.

In addition, these estimates simply divide world totals by IndustriALL's fraction of the global labour force. In reality, IndustriALL will represent workers in industries with many more hazards than most. It is worth remembering that even in traditionally dangerous workplaces such as coal mines, an estimated five times as many workers die of occupational diseases, than of sudden accidental causes such as fires, explosions, falls, or encounters with machinery.

IndustriALL clearly has to make occupational health and safety one of its highest priorities.

There are a large number of global standard-setting agencies and agencies that engage in different aspects of occupational health and safety. The alphabet soup of their acronyms includes ILO, WHO, OHSAS, ISO, GRI, UNEP, GHS, REACH, SAICM. IndustriALL must watch all of these closely and pressure them to do a better job of protecting workers.

IndustriALL will inherit a substantial number of Global Framework Agreements with trend-setting multinational companies. Occupational health and safety provisions must become more prominent in most of these.

Global campaigns on specific issues, such as the ongoing campaign to raise the number of ratifications of ILO Convention 176 on Safety and Health in Mines, must continue.

Occupational health and safety is a complex problem. Interconnected systems must be created to identify and control workplace hazards, and protect workers from them. Central to that effort must be the full participation of workers through their representatives, and on Joint Health and Safety Committees.

There is no simple, magic solution that can be quickly implemented. Instead, occupational health and safety requires hard work and determined campaigning by union activists. Despite the global race for profits, our health is not for sale."