Sunday 28 April is the International Labour Organization World Day for Safety and Health at Work, the day workers around the world commemorate the victims of work accidents and occupational disease and urge all governments to take action.
This year’s focus is the prevention of occupational diseases, which is why CLB has chosen to bring out our latest report on China’s most prevalent occupational disease, pneumoconiosis, at this time.
But we also want to highlight the work other groups who are helping to combat an epidemic in China that has already affected an estimated six million workers across the country. One such group is Fair Stone, a German fair trade organization set up in 2007, which is working with both buyers in Europe and suppliers in China to ensure that Chinese stone products are produced in a sustainable and safe working environment.
In particular, Fair Stone is working with the local governments and public authorities in Europe that a have huge purchasing power, equivalent to about 17 percent of the European Union’s gross domestic product. When these institutions purchase stone products for infrastructure and building work, they really do have the ability to make a difference.
Fair Stone plays an important role in educating influential European consumers about the importance of not out-sourcing environmental problems and workplace hazards to Asian countries in an attempt to cut costs. Many European consumers, and especially public authorities, like to think of themselves as ethical buyers but all too often the need to purchase goods at the most competitive price means that ethics go out the window. It is crucial that European buyers, and those in all developed countries, accept that if they want clean products they simply have to pay more.
Moreover, there is now an opportunity and a need for European health and safety experts and trade unionists, who have decades of experience striving to create a safe working environment at home, to use that experience to improve work safety in the countries that produce Europe’s imports. They could offer their services to groups like Fair Stone or provide concrete help to Chinese trade unions to help improve safety in mines, quarries, stone factories and construction sites across China.
As we point out in our report; it can often seem today that no one is responsible for safety in the Chinese workplace. Much needs to be done, and there is a clear and pressing need to create a workplace culture in China in which everyone, the workers, management, the trade union, civil society and the government, is responsible for work safety.
安全生产，人人有责