Friends,

We in the Federation of Free Workers are most glad and appreciative of the opportunity given us to participate in this 10th National Congress on Occupational Safety and Health.

The first axiom that many of us have learned from this Congress is that health and safety is non-negotiable.

On this statement, we both agree and disagree.

We agree that preservation of life and limb are not negotiable, even when social insurance and other social welfare schemes pay for death and loss of limb. The benefits one derive from social insurance and similar schemes are merely a sort of a payment or restitution to a victim for the negligence by whoever is responsible. That is why, in the first place, the premium for social insurance of all who work is shared by employers, workers and government.

We disagree with the first axiom that health and safety is non-negotiable, in so far as it places health and safety outside of the pale of collective bargaining. For indeed, we in the unions negotiate with our employers and with government for measures and schemes that will protect workers as well as prevent, cure and rehabilitate them from the debilitating results of occupational illness, risks and hazards. In finding more lasting solutions to common problems we face in the world of work, there is no better way than the process of negotiation.

The second axiom is that health and safety pays. Put differently, health and safety is beneficial to all.

You have heard many presentations by employers, workers’ organizations, government officials and professionals that occupational health and safety is not a cost to pay but an investment from which to reap future benefits.

Not only do all stakeholders derive savings from OSH programs; a safe and healthy environment of work and social life multiplies the dividends for enterprises, for workers and for society at large, in terms of longer, happier and healthier life spans, greater productivity of workers and better competitiveness of enterprises, and savings in the cost of running social protection institutions and other social welfare schemes.

The third axiom that we want to emphasize about health and safety, and this is usually overlooked by many, is that it is both a right AND a duty.

It is undeniable that health and safety in workplaces and wider society is a right. However, that it is a duty of each individual person, of each individual employer, and of the state is sometimes most conveniently overlooked. This is why the stakeholders in health and safety programs, maybe, are not that much concerned and conscious about keeping our physical and working environment as safe and healthy as it should be.

We believe that when people are concerned and conscious about health and safety as a duty, only then can a culture of OSH become more widespread. We therefore think, and we hope this Congress has come to the conclusion, that inculcating OSH as a duty by one and all is most important in our common quest for longer lasting responses toward realizing a safe and healthy working environment.

Good day to you all.

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Statement of Atty. Allan S. Motaño, National President of the FFW, to the 10th OSH Congress held at OSHC, Quezon City, October 27, 2006

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