Safe and Health Work: a Human Right

Abstract

Fatal workplace incidents or work related diseases are a major cause of death and disability worldwide, but especially in the developing nations. Although rights to health and safety on the job appear in all major human rights instruments such issues have not consistently been framed as human rights issues and have not attracted the same level of attention as other human rights issues. This paper explores the reasons for this including the theoretical issues that arise in relation to the question whether workers’ rights are human rights. It critiques the ILO’s decision to identify a narrow core of workplace rights (excluding workplace health and safety) in the 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and makes a case for the inclusion of a wider range of workplace rights, including rights to health and safety, to be included in this core. The paper concludes by considering the difficult questions of how such a right might be defined and what the role of the State, as duty holder, might be. It does so with particular reference to New Zealand’s statutory health and safety regime, and concludes that it is consistent with the State obligations set out in the Maastricht Guidelines on economic, social and cultural rights.