PERC OSH network meeting for SEE and NIS unions

OSH experts from trade union in SEE and NIS countries gathered in Sarajevo (BiH) on 4-5 of December to discuss and define their approach to key developments in the OSH field in 2025: the biohazards standard discussion and platform economy standard setting process.

The meeting is continuation of work of OHS experts network as part of Union to Union project with support by ILO-ACTRAV.

Luiz Lumbreras Rocha, Senior specialist on Labour Inspection and Occupational Safety and Health, ILO-Budapest office offered an overview of international framework for OHS as fundamental standards. He named some challenges in the region, which were later debated buy participants in a Q&A and roundtable discussion. These included need for stronger social dialogue on OHS, proper risk assessment, effective system to detect and report occupational diseases (and not only accidents), effective labour inspection, involvement of underrepresented workers (e.g. platform workers), OHS issues related to the climate change, lack of gender-sensitive data. Participants voiced concerns that despite OHS-related standards are fundamental, still a lot of efforts had to be put for them to be implemented properly on national and grass root levels.

Rory O’Neill, Occupational health and labour standards adviser in ITUC, offered his inputs in each session. In organizing around workplace safety he outlined the key methods and technique by which unions could expose workplace issues with safety and health and possible union actions.

In session on protection against biological hazards in the working environment, Rory presented the timeline of running up to ILC2025 as well as potential strong and weak points in the coming negotiations. Participants commented on where their unions stand with the national government on this issue. The situation in the countries from the two sub-regions proved to be quite diverse.

Another key discussion at ILC2025 will be setting the standard on platform economy. The PERC work and position which was formulated throughout the year and was adopted by the PERC Executive Committee as a statement was presented to the participants. Rory O’Neill tressed the OHS aspects of this potential standard, mentioning the EU Directive that was recently adopted. The OHS experts from the region agreed that this “not traditional” sector for the unions will require new approaches and efforts also in terms of ensuring workplace safety for platform workers.

Cvetan Kovac, an expert from NHS (Croatia) presented the Croatian national case of transposition of EU Directive on platform work into legislation and the ways of protection of platform workers in the country.

In the closing session on future plans and action participants welcomed the plan of ITUC to set up a global network of occupational health and safety experts, as well as networking distribution lists.