World Day for Safe­ty and Health at Work on April 28th will fo­cus on pro­mot­ing healthy psy­choso­cial work­ing en­vi­ron­ments; pre­vent­ing oc­cu­pa­tion­al ac­ci­dents and work-re­lat­ed ill­ness­es/dis­eases. One of the prin­ci­ples pro­mot­ed by Ro­man philoso­pher Mar­cus Tul­lius Ci­cero is worth not­ing: “The safe­ty of the peo­ple shall be the high­est law.”

The In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ILO) right­ly states that: “All work­ers have the right to a safe and healthy work­ing en­vi­ron­ment, where both phys­i­cal and men­tal health and well-be­ing are pro­tect­ed and pro­mot­ed. Men­tal health at work has a huge im­pact on so­ci­ety and the world of work, with 12 bil­lion work­ing days lost every year due to de­pres­sion and anx­i­ety. Poor men­tal health can fur­ther in­flu­ence phys­i­cal health and can in­crease the risk of ac­ci­dents at work...

“Pro­tect­ing and pro­mot­ing men­tal health at work is about strength­en­ing ca­pac­i­ties, build­ing aware­ness and pro­vid­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties for recog­nis­ing, pre­vent­ing and act­ing ear­ly on men­tal health con­di­tions at work.”

Ac­cord­ing to the ILO, psy­choso­cial risks linked to un­safe work­ing en­vi­ron­ments “may be re­lat­ed to any as­pect of the de­sign or man­age­ment of work, in­clud­ing job de­mands and job con­trol, work­load and work pace, or­gan­i­sa­tion­al cul­ture, ca­reer de­vel­op­ment, job se­cu­ri­ty, in­ter­per­son­al re­la­tion­ships at work and home-work in­ter­face.”

The UN right­ly states that each of us is re­spon­si­ble for stop­ping deaths and in­juries on the job.

“Gov­ern­ments are re­spon­si­ble for pro­vid­ing the in­fra­struc­ture—laws and ser­vices. This in­cludes the de­vel­op­ment of a na­tion­al pol­i­cy and pro­gramme and a sys­tem of in­spec­tion to en­force com­pli­ance with oc­cu­pa­tion­al safe­ty and health leg­is­la­tion and pol­i­cy.”

Em­ploy­ers are “re­spon­si­ble for en­sur­ing that the work­ing en­vi­ron­ment is safe and healthy”.

Work­ers are “re­spon­si­ble to work safe­ly and to pro­tect our­selves and not to en­dan­ger oth­ers, to know our rights and to par­tic­i­pate in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of pre­ven­tive mea­sures.”

Or­gan­i­sa­tions should reg­u­lar­ly re­view/re­assess how they iden­ti­fy, man­age and mon­i­tor psy­choso­cial risks, for ex­am­ple, in re­la­tion to com­mu­ni­ca­tion; role clar­i­ty; the in­for­ma­tion, train­ing, in­struc­tion and su­per­vi­sion pro­vid­ed to work­ers; haz­ards which can af­fect “em­ploy­ee well-be­ing, or­gan­i­sa­tion­al re­silience, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and com­pli­ance”; the phys­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment and com­mon caus­es of se­ri­ous in­jury at work, such as slips and trips or work­ing at height; the health of work­ers, which can be caused by or made worse by spe­cif­ic work­ing en­vi­ron­ments - such as stress, burnout, work­place in­ter­ac­tions/be­hav­iours eg vi­o­lence, bul­ly­ing, racism, sex­ism, ha­rass­ment; how peo­ple feel at work; and the sup­port they re­ceive; the log­ging of breach­es of safe­ty pro­ce­dures; the names of in­di­vid­u­als/post-hold­ers who are re­spon­si­ble for cor­rec­tive ac­tion; the ef­fec­tive­ness of or­gan­i­sa­tion­al change man­age­ment in the or­gan­i­sa­tion; and work-fam­i­ly con­flict.

On April 28, the ILO will host a spe­cial event “to ex­plore how AI and dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion are re­shap­ing OSH sys­tems across sec­tors and coun­tries.”

The UN states: “AI and dig­i­tal tools are rev­o­lu­tion­is­ing oc­cu­pa­tion­al safe­ty and health. To­day, ro­bots are op­er­at­ing in haz­ardous en­vi­ron­ments, do­ing the heavy lift­ing, man­ag­ing tox­ic ma­te­ri­als and work­ing in ex­treme tem­per­a­tures. They take on repet­i­tive and mo­not­o­nous tasks, while dig­i­tal de­vices and sen­sors can de­tect haz­ards ear­ly on.

“At the same time, in the ab­sence of ad­e­quate OSH mea­sures, dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies can lead to ac­ci­dents, er­gonom­ic risks, work in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion, re­duced job con­trol and blurred bound­aries. The dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion of work has led to evolv­ing work arrange­ments, such as tele­work and dig­i­tal labour plat­form.”

The UN high­lights new and emerg­ing oc­cu­pa­tion­al risks that may be caused by tech­ni­cal in­no­va­tion or by so­cial or or­gan­i­sa­tion­al change. For ex­am­ple, “new work­ing con­di­tions, high­er work­loads, work in­ten­si­fi­ca­tion from down­siz­ing, poor con­di­tions as­so­ci­at­ed with mi­gra­tion for work, jobs in the in­for­mal econ­o­my.”

Pope Leo XI­II’s 1891 en­cycli­cal Re­rum No­varum, Rights and Du­ties of Cap­i­tal and Labour, is a foun­da­tion­al doc­u­ment in Catholic so­cial teach­ing. Two oth­er en­cycli­cals—La­borem Ex­ercens, On Hu­man Work, and Cen­tes­imus An­nus, The hun­dredth year, both writ­ten by St Pope John Paul II in 1981 and 1991 re­spec­tive­ly, out­line the church’s teach­ing on the rights and dig­ni­ty of work­ers—linked to the dig­ni­ty of the hu­man per­son, who is made in God’s im­age and like­ness.

These en­cycli­cals ad­dress is­sues such as the role of em­ploy­ers and work­ers, fair wages, de­cent work­ing con­di­tions, and work­ers’ rights to form and join unions. The church con­tin­ues to con­demn ex­ces­sive work­ing hours and un­safe or un­healthy work en­vi­ron­ments.

Work is sa­cred, an in­trin­sic good, and work­ers con­tribute to the com­mon good. They should be re­spect­ed and val­ued. Let’s raise aware­ness of what psy­choso­cial haz­ards and risks are, and how they can be pre­vent­ed/man­aged/elim­i­nat­ed.