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Wednesday, February 8, 2017
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THE GOVERNMENT’S seeming hands-off policy on workplace safety and other labor standards has made workplaces more dangerous and deadly for workers. Its continuous adherence with voluntary compliance, instead of mandatory labor inspection – as a framework on Occupational Safety and Health or OSH – is one of the reasons for deaths and injuries in workplaces across the country.
Less than two years after the Kentex fire tragedy which claimed the lives of more than 72 workers, a bigger workplace fire occurred in a Cavite special economic zone which affected thousands of workers. This fire left more than a hundred workers injured and one worker dead as of this writing.
Government policies supposedly mandating voluntary compliance with OSH and other labor standards as well as the jurisdiction of the Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) over ecozones including occupational safety are key policies that cause workplace tragedies. The Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) brags about supposedly “tripartite” means in upholding voluntary compliance – where the government through the DOLE, the workers and the employers are involved. Such a policy will amount to nothing, especially in the country’s ecozones where the right to unionize and collectively bargain are being violated with impunity. In the first place, the majority of workers there are contractuals whose right to regular employment is being violated. Whatever “joint assessment” is conducted is surely between the PEZA-DOLE and the employer.
A deadly fire inside a special economic zone where tens of thousands of workers are employed forces us not only to question these policies but to point to them as crucial in putting the workers’ lives in constant danger. Is there compliance to health, medical, occupational and safety standards of the buildings, structures and electro-mechanical equipment and machineries, as well as on the general condition and maintenance of the plant?
Voluntary compliance as a framework for adherence to OSH and other labor standards and PEZA’s autonomous zone violate the workers’ right to health and safety in the workplace. These two policies only serve the interests of employers in the ecozones, allowing them to freely disregard and therefore violate OSH standards.
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