Conference Agenda

Occupational safety and health (OSH) has been one of the main concerns of labour law since its origins. Its core status to labour rights has recently been affirmed: on 10th June 2022, the International Labour Conference included a “safe and healthy working environment” among the fundamental rights and principles of the International Labour Organization (ILO). The ILO has also made occupational safety and health a central issue in its forthcoming World Employment and Social Outlook Report 2023 (WESO 2023), Valuing the essential for a more resilient world of work. The report provides an in-depth review of the experiences of key workers working during the COVID-19 pandemic, the health risks that they endured, both physical and mental, and their working conditions overall. It explores the regulatory environment shaping the working conditions of key workers (workers who maintained their face-to-face activities during the health crisis in sectors such as health, transport, urban cleaning and food supply), with an emphasis on OSH.

Considering the main challenges faced by key workers in relation to OSH – such as contagion by Covid-19, excessive working hours, lack of personal protective equipment, etc. – the session aims to discuss the following questions: (i) how did national OSH systems respond to the challenges posed by the pandemic for these workers? and (ii) what lessons, both in terms of good practices and shortcomings, have been learned that could be applied in future crises?

The discussion will draw on detailed country studies exploring OSH systems on the eve of the pandemic and the modifications made to them during the pandemic. The countries examined cover the regions of Africa; the Asia-Pacific; Europe; North America and South America. The systems in these regions were explored by reference to the dimensions of work health and safety regulation drawn from the ILO’s two new Fundamental ILO Conventions on occupational safety and health: Conventions No.155 and No.187.

The overall picture which emerges from the study is that the pandemic highlighted underlying deficiencies in OSH systems, such as deficiency concerned gaps in coverage (for example, of gig workers and self-employed), lack of regulatory guidance and oversight in relation to airborne diseases and mental health. On the other hand, despite the widespread evidence of deficiencies, some OSH systems proved to be robust and provided an underpinning framework which permitted a more effective response to Covid-19. The proposed session will point out the key features of these systems.

This presentation is based on a legal comparative study from national country studies from Africa (Rwanda); Asia (China, Japan, Republic of Korea and Australia); Europe (Italy, Spain, United Kingdom); North America (United States) and South America (Brazil and Colombia). The study was grounded in ILO Conventions Nos 155, 187 and 190. The presentation will focus on issues of OSH coverage, which varied greatly between jurisdictions. It will also examine the very different ways in which jurisdictions sought to achieve compliance with the Conventions. The presentation will include a proposed set of general recommendations for OSH systems and specific recommendations on OSH and COVID-19.

This presentation looks at how OSH unfolded in a complex jurisdiction where national laws interacted in different ways with often radically different sub-national approaches. The presentation provides an illustration of the broad range of possible OSH responses to the pandemic and evaluates their merits. It highlights the need for effective interaction between public health and OSH regulatory systems and the importance of worker voice and social dialogue to address a crisis in both public health and occupational health.

The country case studies prepared for the WESO 2023 report showed that the COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected the occupational safety and health of key workers on the frontlines: diseases due to COVID-19 contagion, mental health issues, lack of personal protective equipment, increased working hours, reduced rest breaks and, in many cases, reduced wages. The OSH impacts on the workforce were multiple, with different intensities and unequal responses, depending on the country, activity, (in)formality, robustness of the OSH system and regulatory responses. This presentation will discuss some data about COVID-10 impacts on the workforce and highlight the main bottlenecks and potential good practices mapped to promote better working conditions for key workers, considering the particularities of the analyzed countries. In the same tone of the report, the presentation will be dedicated to the key workers who continued to work in person and whose activities were not teleworkable.

While there is evidence of research exploring the impact of previous pandemics, including the impact on both the short- and long-term mental health of employees, legal studies focusing on the regulatory mental health and wellbeing provisions of essential workers throughout the pandemic are scarce.

This presentation will review the identified challenges and strategies for improving workplace mental health issues and the psychological distress of essential for frontline healthcare workers and other key workers based on an international comparative study that assessed health and safety policy and regulatory interventions in response to COVID-19. These findings will be of relevance in the actual context of connected crises to the public health pandemic and recovery, as key workers are likely to continue to experience increased workloads, longer working hours, reduced resting periods and shortages staffing, with employees reporting high levels of burnout and mental exhaustion as a result from the global recession and cost-of-living climate.