Introduction to Health and Safety at Work

Table 18.1
Numbers of Global Work-Related adverse 
events
Figure 18.2
Local authority building site, Turkey.
Figure 18.3
Poor standard of scaffold not to EU stand-
ards in Poland.
Figure 18.4
Moving coal, Berlin waterway.

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Introduction to Health and Safety at Work
404
The size of the health and safety ‘problem’ in terms 
of numbers of work-related fatalities and injuries and 
incidence of ill-health will vary from country to country. 
However, these fi gures should be available from the 
statistics branch of the national regulator as they are 
available in the United Kingdom from the annual report 
on health and safety statistics from the HSC.
18.2 
The role and function of the 
International Labour 
Organization (ILO)
The International Labour Organization (ILO) is a special-
ized agency of the United Nations that seeks to promote 
social just 
ice through establishing and safeguarding 
internationally recognized human and labour rights. It 
was founded in 1919 by the Treaty of Versailles at the 
end of the First World War.
The motivation behind the creation of such an organ -
ization was primarily humanitarian. Working conditions 
at the time were becoming unacceptable to a civilized 
society. Long hours, unsafe, unhygienic and danger-
ous conditions were common in low paid manufacturing 
careers. Indeed, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, 
there was concern that such working conditions could 
lead to social unrest and even other revolutions. The ILO 
was created as a tripartite organization with governments, 
employers and workers represented on its governing 
organs.
The ILO formulates international labour standards and 
attempts to establish minimum rights including freedom 
of association, the right to organize, collective bargain-
ing, abolition of forced labour, equality of opportunity and 
treatment and other standards that regulate conditions 
across all work related activities.
Representatives of all ILO member States meet 
annually in Geneva for the International Labour Conference 
that acts as a forum where social and labour questions 
of importance to the entire world are discussed. At this 
conference, labour standards are adopted and decisions 
made on policy and future programmes of work.
The ILO has 178 member States but if a country is 
not a member, the ILO still has infl uence as a source of 
guidance when social problems occur.
The main principles on which the ILO is based are:
1. labour is not a commodity
2. freedom of expression and of association are 
essential to sustained progress
3. poverty anywhere constitutes a danger to prosperity 
everywhere
4. the war against want requires to be carried on 
with unrelenting vigour within each nation, and by 
continu ous and concerted international effort in 
which the representatives of workers and employ-
ers, enjoying equal status with those of govern-
ments, join with them in free discussion and demo-
cratic decision with a view to the promotion of the 
common welfare.
A recent campaign launched by the ILO has been to seek 
to eliminate child labour throughout the world. In particu-
lar, the ILO is concerned about children who work in haz-
ardous working conditions, bonded child labourers, and 
extremely young working children. It is trying to create a 
worldwide movement to combat the problem by:
➤
implementing measures which will prevent child 
labour
➤
withdrawing children from dangerous working 
conditions
➤
providing alternatives, and
➤
improving working conditions as a transitional meas-
ure towards the elimination of child labour.