The
International Labour Organization has set important standards in the field of
occupational health and safety, notably the Occupational Safety and Health
Convention, 1981 (No. 155) and Occupational Health Services Convention, 1985
(No. 161), but it has yet to provide practical guidance on the management of
occupational health and safety in the workplace. In the absence of a standard
under public international law for the management of occupational health and
safety in the workplace, the International Standards Organisation, a private
independent, non-governmental membership organization composed of the national
standards bodies of 163 countries has stepped into the breach. ISO is not an
inter-governmental organ, nor part of the UN system, but has general
consultative status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council
(ECOSOC). On its website, ISO states:
ISO International
Standards ensure that products and services are safe, reliable and of good
quality. For business, they are strategic tools that reduce costs by minimizing
waste and errors and increasing productivity. They help companies to access new
markets, level the playing field for developing countries and facilitate free
and fair global trade.
They add
that “[ISO standards] are instrumental in facilitating international trade.”
ISO proposed
a standard for the management of occupational health and safety to the
International Labour Organization a decade ago, and was rebuffed. But in 2013,
after a second attempt, the ILO signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with
the ISO in 2013 to collaborate on an occupational health and safety management
system (OHS-MS) on condition that no ISO standard should conflict with
international labour standards and that the ILO should be an effective
participant in the process. Set up on a pilot basis, the MOU was renewed in
2014 for a year, and is up for renewal for a further year. An earlier
collaboration on social responsibility set up in 2005 along these lines had an
outcome that had satisfied the ILO conditions.
No such
compliance with international labour standards, nor willingness to make ILO an
effective partner, has been seen this time on a standard entitled “Occupational
health and safety management systems - Requirements with guidance for use”.
Perhaps the climate has changed since 2005, and the pressure of neo-liberal
interests to promote private enterprise and free trade has emboldened the
private standard setting process itself. Whatever the reasons, ILO is being
challenged by the ISO processes and purposes, and despite its evident good
faith and methodical defence of labour standards, is being ridden rough-shod by
the preparatory committee, especially in regard to the definition of workers’
representatives and their free election by workers, which grievously undermines
the participation of workers at all levels of occupational health and safety
management. ILO’s Workers' Representatives Convention, 1971 (No. 135) is
flouted. In addition, ILO resources for an ILO delegation to the committee
meetings, even including trade union representatives, are spread thinly
relative to the ISO committee members, given that they work in multiple
concurrent task groups. Furthermore, language may be changed in its gist by ISO
internal editing that is not transparent. The odds are not good for an
effective partnership.
At issue now
is whether ILO continues in the process, which can lead to an outcome that ILO
will not be able to live with, or pulls out of the MOU on a question of
principle, which is essentially non-respect of its terms. The Governing
Body will need to make a decision at its deliberations on 27 March. The
Governing Body can either extend the pilot implementation or not, and can
decide, if it is renewed, to review it as early as March 2016.
Successive
drafts of ISO standards are voted on by the preparatory committee (Committee
Drafts) before an international draft is voted by the membership at
large. For those who were opposed to the creation of a private standard
to oversee occupational health and safety (it should be said that control of
the management system of occupational health and safety, especially given the
subsequent addition of a “guidance annex”, is tantamount to controlling the
content and nature of occupational health and safety itself), the failure of
the committee draft to pass the first vote of the preparatory committee on 18
October 2014 was seen as a good sign that there was a flaw in the entire
undertaking. Following a successful campaign led by the ITUC - The ISO is failing the standard test - 17* of 47 national
standards bodies voted against the draft, a further 18 agreed, but with
comments, and only 11 voted unreservedly in favour of the draft. Even if
that did not stop the process, it certainly signalled that there was
substantial reticence on the part of the standards bodies.
Should the
draft proceed to a standard, it may have content that compromises the
ILO. In any case, the standard is non-binding and does not have the force
of public international law. No oversight equivalent to that of the ILO
standards can be actioned. Essentially, compliance will only be voluntary.
Workers will have no recourse to a robust standard, and their representatives
and unions will have no standard to depend on to defend the health and safety
of workers. Beyond soft law, any such standard cannot withstand the heavy
global demands of purging sources of risk in production, eradicating hazardous
work and eliminating dangerous workplaces.
The ISO
standard does not in fact obviate the need for a standard under public
international law if the world of work is to be serious about protecting the
health and lives of workers in the workplace. Yet this appears to be so: the
G20 Labour and Employment Ministerial Declaration of 2014 (Melbourne, 10-11
September) stated:
Improving workplace
safety and health is an urgent priority that protects workers and contributes
to increased productivity and growth. We agree to take further steps to reduce
the substantial human and economic costs associated with unsafe workplaces and
work-related illnesses. We endorse the attached G20 Statement on Safer and
Healthier Workplaces (Annex C), and we commit, as appropriate, to implement its
recommendations in collaboration with governments, international organisations
and social partners.
The G20
state in their Annex C that: “…we underscore the need for appropriate and
robust legal frameworks for OSH as well as effective systems for enforcement
and compliance, safety and health management, and data collection”( https://g20.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/2014%20LEMM%20Declaration.pdf).
Should the
ILO not renew the MOU pilot for another year, the ISO standard will be left in
the lurch. It may proceed to completion, but be tainted by the ILO
pull-out. No other lines of collaboration between the ILO and ISO are
likely to be affected, given that the current ISO stance towards the ILO is not
already interfering with those other lines of collaboration.
But workers
globally still need a quality standard for occupational health and safety
management. It is then up to the ILO, supported by social partners and
strong tripartism, to return to the drawing board, with newly reallocated
resources, to meet its international mandate to provide that standard.
PSI believes
that occupational health and safety is a public health issue and as such cannot
be delegated to a private entity which has already proved, during the first
period of the implementation of the MOU, that it cannot to live up to the
social relevance of the issue. Occupational health and safety is a matter for
social partners to agree on and for governments to regulate and enforce.
OHS is a matter of workers’ rights and social security, even more important
given that thousands of workers continue to die every year. PSI believes that
the issue can be properly addressed only within the ILO tripartite dialogue
system. Should the ILO delegate the definition of OHS standards to ISO, PSI
would consider this as an abdication from legally protecting workers’ health
thereby weakening the role and image of the ILO.
____________
* IRAM
(Argentina), SA (Australia), NBN (Belgium), SCC (Canada), ICONTEC (Colombia),
AFNOR (France), DIN (Germany), BIS (India), JISC (Japan), SN (Norway),
PKN (Poland), GOST R (Russian Federation), RBS (Rwanda), SPRING SG (Singapore),
AENOR (Spain), SIS (Sweden), and ANSI (United States).