The right to safety and health at work „as“ a fundamental standard of the International labour organization

Abstract

The division of workers' rights into fundamental and less fundamental is questionable from the very beginning, since the question arises as to what are the parameters that make one right more important than other rights. When it comes to the ILO, that is, the fundamental standards of this Organization, it is difficult to dispute that this kind of division is, unfortunately, primarily the product of the division of rights into those rights that cost, i.e., that affect the price of labor and the competitiveness in the market, and those who do not possess such a feature. This is therefore, at the same time, the only logical reason why the right to protection of health and safety at work, since the right to health at work is at the same time an integral part of the right to life, until recently was characterized as the workers’ right of a lower rank than, for example, the right to collective bargaining.

And precisely at the moment when the ILO had the opportunity to refute this thesis, when it recognized the status of a fundamental right to the right to “a safe and healthy working environment” in June 2022., it again managed to confirm it by limiting the scope that such a standard (as supposedly fundamental) has. In this way, not only does it seem that a certain kind of hierarchy has been introduced within the framework of basic, i.e., fundamental rights, that should be guaranteed to workers, but it also seems that further disrespect of the right to protection of health and safety at work is actually supported, and all this under a cloak of political and social responsibility of the ILO, i.e., the member states.