Back pain.
The number one affliction for people in the workplace.
A small concern, maybe, but it’s just one of the many, tiny sacrifices workers make for the sake of business and the economy.
The hardship, the situation of workers are not a concern, not even highlighted in government reports, that is, until tragedy strikes.
Showing up to their jobs everyday, workers entrust their lives on the hands of the boss, the owner of the workplace.
The workplace – factory, office, plant, site, warehouse, shop, etc. – is where we go to earn our income.
In business, this is where profit is created. It is where we could also get sick, injured or even die.
The state protects workers in the workplace, by implementing laws and policies that are up to international standards. It should.
Occupational safety and health is a basic human right.
Employers, for their part, have the duty to ensure safety in the workplace, and to eliminate hazardous conditions that may inflict disease, physical harm or death on workers.
Yet there are many greedy capitalists who don’t even think twice about sacrificing the comfort and safety of their employees, just to cut expenses and maximize their profits.
Just to land a job, many people would put up with slave wages, abuses and hazardous working condition.
To be safe from hunger is the first priority.
In 2018, after the deaths of workers in factory fires in the past years, the OSH Law was passed.
Republic Act 11058, the Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) Law, provides for the rights of employees in the workplace in the private sector. Some of them are the following:
– To be informed of the hazards in their job and how to prevent them, specially those related to chemical, electrical, mechanical and ergonomics
– To be provided the appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE)
– To be assigned a task according to their capability
– To be given an orientation and training related to their task
The law also requires the assignment of an OSH officer, the formation of a OSH committee and OSH-related trainings for employees.
Under the OSH Law, an employee has the right to refuse a possibly dangerous task.
If injured, an employee has the right to compensation.
If only the OSH Law has teeth to punish violators.
Workers are still losing their lives in defective machines and other incidents due to negligence of capitalists.
The penalty? Not more than P100,000.
There is also not enough budget to enforce the law, thus the lack of government inspectors who are supposed to check for compliance.
The cry for justice is carried on by the cries of new victims of the bosses’ negligence.
It was during the pandemic that occupational safety and health was given the spotlight, when COVID-19 spread from the work clusters and into communities.
If the worker is not healthy and safe, neither will their family be.
A company in Southern Tagalog received an excellence award from government for implementing COVID protocols and looking after its employees’ safety and welfare.
The company provided its employees with:
– sanitation stations
– supply of face masks and shield
– board and lodging for the voluntary live-in workforce
– one month paid pandemic leave during the lockdown
But shouldn’t the workers be given credit too, for returning to work and operating the machines?
What about the staunch employees’ union which pressed the company to ensure their safety?
Without the union, do you think the company by its own volition would take good care of the workers?
Without unions, capitalist bosses would be unstoppable in amassing profits, breaking the backs of their workers who do the bulk of the work but are only paid scraps.
A genuine union is the strongest protection for workers in the workplace.
Through collective bargaining, the union asserts the workers’ basic rights: for job security, decent benefits, just wages, safe workplace.
By joining a genuine union, workers get to have a voice and representation in the company and in the industry. They also become part of a movement that plays a historic role in societal change: the labor movement.
What about those who are in the informal sector, those whose workplace is in public spaces?
Such as jeepney drivers, sidewalk vendors, delivery and TNVS riders, who are constantly exposed to pollution and hazards on the street?
What about their right to safety and health at work?
What about the farmers, who are at risk everyday to danger: toxic chemicals in pesticides, aerial spraying in plantations, bombings, militarization?
Indeed, we are all at risk as the planet gets warmer. That’s courtesy of the team-up of greedy capitalists in developed countries and corrupt bureaucrat capitalists in countries like ours. They don’t think twice about sacrificing people’s safety and the environment in exchange for profit and power.
They’re like a humongous, defective, monster pulverizers.
For them, others’ safety is a waste.
They don’t want to invest or spend on things that bring no profit: safety of workers, of the planet, of fellow humans.
What’s the difference between a garbage collector and the president? Or other top government officials? Both have potentially hazardous jobs, both do not need a college degree to qualify for it.
But one serves the people by collecting garbage, does hard work but gets paid low wages. The other is highly paid even if they do a crappy job o do nothing at all.
In a world where the greedy rules, we’re all treated like garbage. But we’re not garbage, we’re people.
House Bill 2126, which proposes to criminalize violations of the OSH Law, has been sitting in the House of Representatives since 2022. It proposes penalties of up to 12 years in prison, and up to P3 million in fines.
There should be no more victims.
We are not scraps that the boss can just feed in the firebox in the name of the economy, on the altar of profit.
Like how the union takes a stand in the workplace, we need unity and collective action to assert our rights and push for a truly safe, developed free world.
By DEE AYROSO
