Paths for Alternatives and a Just Transition for Chemical Workers | Geneva Toxic Free Talks

About this Event

Practices involving chemical, toxics and polluting substances must be based on the best available science, starting with those that substitute toxic substances with safe alternatives. Alternative techniques are often available, and more numerous than often thought. This is of primary importance for consumers and users in the industry. For the latter, workers must benefit of a just transition toward a toxic free working environment.

Every year, Union Federations raise awareness on a particular occupational health and safety issue. Workers are indeed at the frontline of exposure from mining to extraction, manufacturing, and use to disposal. Exposures are greater, longer and continued in communities downwind and downstream. As such, workers pay a high price: the International Labor Organization estimates the death of 1 million workers each year as a result of exposure to hazardous chemicals, which is one death every 30 seconds. Hundreds of millions more lose their health.

In 2022, the recognition that occupational health and safety was secured as a fundamental principle and right at work, meaning that all ILO’s 187-member states have to abide by basic legal baseline principles. Various documents and instruments address chemicals exposure at work. These are then complemented by ILO fundamental rights as the freedom of Association and collective bargaining, freedom from child and forced labor, and freedom from discrimination, which underpin what we’re doing in the workplace around chemicals and other issues.

Taking place ahead of the 5th session of the International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM5), the discussion will highlight why it is difficult to advance these alternative techniques, which could considerably improve the protection of human rights, and ensure a just transition to secure sustainable, safe and healthy environment, workplaces and society.

About the Geneva Toxic Free Talks

The Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights reports every fall to the Council and to the UN General Assembly on issues related to his mandate. The Geneva Toxic Free Talks aim to harness the opportunity of this moment of the year to reflect on the challenges posed by the production, use, and dissemination of toxics and on how Geneva contributes to bringing together the actors working in reversing the toxic tide.

On the sidelines of HRC54, this year’s Toxic Free Talks will take place from 20 to 22 September — three days of conferences and discussions, highlighting the work of the Special Rapporteur and of organizations in the struggle for the right to live in a toxic-free environment.

Speakers

Highlights

Summary

Welcome

Marcos ORELLANA | UN Special Rapporteur on toxics and human rights

• The workers are often in the first line of exposure to hazardous substances and waste.
• The recognition of the right to a healthy environment by the General Assembly last year and the recognition by the ILO, the right to work in a healthy environment and safe working conditions as a fundamental right and principle of the International Labor Organization needs to be underlined because they provide the basis upon which the protections of workers about toxic can be taken forward.
• Work has been done by the previous mandate holder in implementing a rights-based approach to chemicals and wastes and preparing, after excessive consultations, a set of Principles on the protection of workers from exposure to toxic substances, and indeed these principles have been taken note of.
• They have been embraced to some extent by the Human Rights Council: they contain important elements, such as the right to know for issues of protections. In a country visit to Australia, there was the chance to receive information, for example, on workers exposed to perfluorinated alkylated substances (PFAS) production or with respect to highly hazardous products.
• The last point is on just transition: it is a cross-cutting issue for human rights. It is not absent from the toxics debates. It was born in the climate space but it has implications for every industry. In order to transition to environmental sustainability, the workers need retraining or will be displaced by the phase-out of what could be considered dirty industries — this is a key point in order for these transitions to be legitimate and effective.

Safe and Healthy Working Environment: A Fundamental Principle and Right

Liz HARRIMAN | Deputy Director, Toxics Use Reduction Institute (TURI), University of Massachusetts Lowell

Context

• TURI works with businesses and communities in helping them reduce their use of toxic chemicals.
• The Toxic Use Reduction Act (TURA) passed as law in 1989 in Massachusetts in the United States, which talked about just transition a lot. One of the basic objectives of the law is that there is a right to a safe and healthy work environment. There is a right to know what chemicals you’re using in your facility, in your workplace, and in your community.
• TURA requires businesses that use over a certain level of list to toxic chemicals to report their use to the State annually, and that information is publicly available on the website. It also requires them to pay a fee, which goes to support the agencies that help them to find safer alternatives and reduce their use.
• It also forces them every other year to complete a toxic use reduction plan. This plan does not require them to make any changes, but it does require them to assemble a team, including line workers, and to then evaluate what their opportunities and options could be for reducing their use, including the substitution of safer alternatives.
• Massachusetts has mostly chemical users and processors but not many basic chemical feedstock manufacturers. The just transition looks a little bit different depending on the profile of the kinds of companies.
• The users would love to find safer alternatives wherever they can, in general. In terms of the progress in Massachusetts, we have started measuring just since 2007. Since then, we have had around 62% reduction in chemical use, so we are still making progress even after all this time. It is a lot of low-hanging fruit early on but there are still definitely gains to be made.

Challenges and Barriers

• Speaking about challenges and barriers to adopting safer alternatives, some of the drivers and incentives that we see are important government restrictions and regulations, as they play a huge part. The European Union has done a good job at providing many of those drivers for our companies in Massachusetts. Government restrictions also provide a level playing field for all manufacturers, and that is important when it comes to workers and just transition. If you have one facility or company doing it and another not, that creates issues.
• There are all sorts of other drivers and incentives. Having evidence from a trusted source is something that TURI tries hard to provide and tries to get to our companies who have success to take that success, and spread the word, as companies trust other companies. Communication is key to have adoption.
• Some of the challenges and barriers include financial ones. There is a huge established technology and investment in what they already use and what they know. They often have limited capital, especially smaller firms. We provide grants to companies in Massachusetts to try to get them over the hump, if they are trying out something new that has not necessarily been proven.
• We have also recently discovered that standards and specifications which are built around certain specific chemistries provide a real barrier.
  • That has been true when it comes to PFAS and for military specs when it comes to halogenated solvents. Those specs are built around those chemistries, and it is difficult to get those things changed.
  • Specifications change in a very slow pace, and we are certainly dealing with that now in terms of hexavalent chromium, halogenated solvents and PFAS.
• It is hard to get their priority to pay attention to the toxic chemicals. They have a lot on their plate: most workers now have many jobs all at once, and there is not one person who is just dealing with this. We found that having a champion in the facility – workers, environmental health and safety person, or management – somebody really needs to champion this effort, as chances of success are far greater.
• One other issue is that sometimes, it is hard to tell whether a new alternative is safer. We try hard to avoid regrettable substitutes, but it is a concern when there is no information about new alternative chemistries. We certainly do not want to be leading them in a direction where they have adopted something and find that they have to go back and refigure the whole thing again.

Supporting the Adoption of Safer Alternatives to Protect the Rights of Workers

Halshka GRACZYK | Technical Specialist, Occupational Safety and Health, International Labour Organization

Context

• The International Labour Organization was created in 1919 with the idea to create normative instruments to protect workers from hazardous chemicals. The very first instrument was created in 1921 on white lead to protect workers during a time of rapid industrialization.
• We know that workers face the brunt of chemical exposure. One billion workers are exposed in their workplace, and more than one million die from these exposures. Others suffer lifelong disabilities. Workers don’t just die from chemical accidents, they die from diseases.
• Majority of the deaths are caused by diseases inflicted by chemicals, and they have been around for decades: asbestos, silica, heavy metals, PFAS, endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs), a whole host of new chemicals that we need to pay attention to.

Workers and Just Transition

• Hazardous chemicals not only threaten the health of workers, but they also threaten our broader aims of decent work and social justice for all. This is why particular attention must be paid to chemicals management. When we talk about just transition and what this means for chemical workers, there is an importance to promote toxics elimination and substitution using the ILO’s proven approaches hierarchy of controls and enhanced risk assessments (ILO-OSH 2001/10.1.1).
• There is a huge opportunity to replace hazardous chemicals with greener processes but what we do not talk about very often is the greater risk that some changes in the way that we move towards a just transition can harm workers in moving to more carbon-neutral societies.
  • There are new processes, new work materials, new work tasks that come about and that we do not always have the proper risk assessment. Key examples can be found in the life cycle of solar panels: how many heavy metals are included in solar panels and how workers are exposed at every step from extraction to assembly to the big issue of e-waste to disposal.
  • We are talking about the whole cycle of chemical use in the just transition, so we are moving towards greener processes, but workers need to be protected at every step of the way. That is a crucial part of this discussion that we do not always talk about.
• ILO for these situations has enhanced an integrated risk assessment at all levels both at the national policy level but also at the workplace level. What we are seeing often is this drive to move greener substances and greener work processes to the consumer, so we move from laboratory to the consumer not always realizing that the people that are producing these new products are being exposed and we do not always have that risk assessment at the policy level, and at the workplace level to properly protect workers.
• We can move towards sound chemical management globally but within a just transition, with our aim being (1) to protect workers from chemical substances, and (2) making sure that we green the economy in a way that is the most inclusive way possible, creating decent work opportunities but also making sure that we have social justice for all.

International Labour Standards

• International labor standards are also very important, because they have a strong supervisory mechanism so this is really the teeth of the ILO.
• There is also a new paradigm of having a safe and healthy working environment as a fundamental principle right at work. This relates to Convention 155 and Convention 187. All member states now have an obligation to ensure that workplaces are safe and healthy. These conventions, as well as our other broader conventions on chemicals, provide important provisions that can be used to protect workers exposed to chemicals in the just transition, such as the Principle of Prevention using the hierarchy of controls risk assessment, having an established framework for the rights and responsibilities of different constituent groups, whether they are governments, employers or workers.
• It is also very important to leverage the existing labor standards we have on Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) and chemicals, and they are often left out of these discussions but they really offer that normative approach.
  • We need to highlight the Convention 170 , our all-inclusive convention on all chemicals existing and the new ones, Convention 174 on major industrial accidents, and our numerous sectoral conventions that have looked at specific sectors and chemical use, such as within agriculture huge sector for pesticide exposures, the mining sector and the construction sector.
  • We have conventions specifically looking at carcinogenic chemicals, carcinogenic exposures at the workplace, and a specific convention on asbestos which we know is the leading killer of workers when it comes to chemical exposures.
• These normative standards are important tools moving forward in our just transition.
• We are entering in a very exciting time, we will soon be looking at developing a new standard to complement Convention 170 to tie in the new emerging trends in the world of work, whether that is climate change, just transition or new chemical mixtures. We are looking forward to that process and look forward to work with stakeholders all around the world to support us in this process.

To close, it is important to highlight the point that we are really moving towards social justice, and eventually, that is where we want to go.

We are talking about the health and safety of workers. We are talking about greening the economy but our goal in fact is social justice for all decent work opportunities, ensuring that we have everlasting systems in place to guarantee that social justice. Facing this multi-crisis from chemicals to climate change, this is really the moment where ILO can offer the strong spirit we have of social dialogue and bringing in governments, workers, and employers on an equal footing in order to discuss and to develop the most important standards for the future.

Repon CHOWDHURY | Secretary General, Bangladesh Free Trade Union Congress (BFTUC)

• Chemicals are part of our daily lives. Some chemicals are manufactured for specific use, while others are unwanted products of various process and of natural origins. Harmful exposures may occur through breathing, drinking, eating or contract.
• Hazardous chemicals can be found at the workplace in water or in the soil and can cause a large variety of diseases and many diseases such as mental behavior, neurological disorders, deserves pregnancy, outcomes contracts or asthma could prevent it by reducing chemical exposure.
• ILO estimates about 2.3 million women and men around the world succumbed to work related accidents or diseases every year. This corresponds to over six thousand deaths per day. According to the new ILO 2021 report, every year one billion workers are exposed to hazardous substances including pollutant, dust, vapors in the working environment. Many of these workers lose their lives following such exposures and disease related to work.
• Among these, exposures to hazardous substances cause an estimate of more than half million deaths per year, so we must also consider the additional burden that workers and their families face from and non-lethal injuries resulting in disability, deliberating chronic diseases, and other health-related effects.
• Unfortunately, many cases remain invisible. All deaths are preventable, and we must ensure a safe and healthy workplace for all. Workers in the chemical sector in particular needs to strategically engage in various areas to minimize the adverse effects of chemicals. Workers have a right to information about the chemicals they use at work. It is also essential to prevent or reduce incidents of chemically-induced illness. In industries, evidence-based systems for sound management of chemical needs to be implemented at both national and workplace level as a matter of urgency.
• Workers need to have better access to training information to better understand chemical use in their workplace and find opportunities for using safer chemicals engage with their employers through the process of identifying, evaluating, and transitioning to safe alternative.
• Just transition is essential to move towards sustainable production and sustainable developments. The three dimensions – economic, social, and environmental – must be addressed together. Addressing a just transition to sustainable production is critical to safeguard against unintended impacts of workers’ communities, health, and livelihoods.
• Therefore, this priority is recognized in three agreed-upon texts:
  • COP27 work program or just transition under the Sharm El Sheikh implementation plan in November 2022 on energy. These implementation plans recognize that unprecedented global energy crisis underline the urgency to rapidly transform energy systems to be more secure, reliable and included by accelerating clean and just transition to renewable energy during this critical decades of actions.
  • We also see that other aggregate language and just transition can be found in the ILO guidelines for just transition towards environmentally sustainable economic societies for all in 2050 and the role of social dialogue and regulatory framework enable sustainable enterprise development and decent work for all.
• The right to safe and healthy work is a fundamental human right and essential to decent work, and an existing UN priority recognized in as SDG8. In December 2022, ILO Member States, representative organizations of employers and trade unions, agreed by consensus to include right to a safe and healthy working environment in the ILO declaration. This means that 187 states of the ILO have now committed to promoting health, safety, and safe workplace as fundamental rights.
• There is also another need at the moment: a discussion is ongoing in the fifth meeting of the International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM5). This new binding commitment to improve conditions must be recognized in the SAICM, and its normative measures to prevent the chemical and waste.

Discussion

Marcos Orellana | Halsha Graczyck brought up an interesting point about negotiations of a new standard in relation to climate. This in a way mirrors and relates very closely to the report presented to the Council on the need for integration between decarbonization and detoxification strategies. Can you elaborate on this process, and on what you think is the organization trying to achieve?

Halska Graczyck | The new standard on C170 is on chemicals management. The idea is that our standard review mechanism which is part of our strong supervisory system reviewed all of our chemical instruments because we have so many.

• • In fact, dating back from 1921, a decision was made to consolidate new areas of work when it comes to chemicals management since 1990 which is when Convention 170 came about, with the idea of creating something complementary to Convention 170 in the form of an instrument.
• That instrument has not been decided yet by our governing body and by our constituents, but it will be shortly. We are looking forward to that.
• When we mentioned just transition – we can imagine that because of the changing world of work trends, with climate change being a top concern of all of our constituents – just transition will have to figure a way into this new instrument.
• How this will be is up to our constituent discussions, but we must be aware of what has changed in the last decades when it comes to chemicals management, when it comes to how chemicals interact with different environmental concerns. We really look forward to have those discussions and seeing how to integrate just transition into that instrument.

Yves Lador | How is the ILO preparing with the upcoming ICCM5?

Halsha Graczcky | We know that chemical exposures are not at all limited to one sector. We know that environmental health is public health and also occupational health: they all overlap, and we need to work together with our different stakeholders.

• ILO plays a very critical role at the ICCM5. The ILO has engaged our labor sector constituents. That means we are bringing our Ministries of Labor that are directly responsible for developing OSH management systems at the national level and making sure that they trickle down to the workplace level. This makes sure that our employers and workers representatives are there and that are aware of this new framework coming out.
• We are very pleased that we will have our tripartite structure not only here in Geneva when we have our governing bodies in our labor conference, but we will be bringing them to Bonn, and we will be really having this broad discussion from our stakeholders.

Yves Lador | Just transition was mentioned in COP27, what is ILO’s perspective? We are going to have again a new COP28 in Dubai at the end of the year, how does the ILO see the articulation between these different conferences and how do we avoid the silos there?

Halshka Graczyck | Human health is at the center of all of this. We need environmental health considerations of course, we are talking about just transition, greening economy but at the end of the day it is whether we will be able to survive on this planet or not and whether workers will be safe, whether the most vulnerable populations will be safe, and so the heart of the matter is really the human rights approach that we see.

• We are very grateful to be able to link up the idea of a safe and healthy working environment to that human rights approach to say that workers’ rights are human rights and that the heart of this issue whether we are in Bonn or we are going to COP28, that we are talking about the health of human beings which is central to all and the underpinning really of all of the discussions.

Q: How do you use these elements in the work that you are doing in Bangladesh at the national level? What could be done to help you more in the work you are doing at the national level?

Repon Chowdury | In the case of Bangladesh, we are advocating at the national level to exact the message in the Preamble of the Paris Agreement showing the importance of just translations for the workers and decent jobs as part of climate action.

• We are advocating to address those issues in the National Determined Contributions (NDCs) document and the National Adaptation Policy. The programs for Bangladesh have to address just transition, which means that we are asking for the effective participation of the workers, international dialogues, effective social protections, effective training, among others.
• A strong dialogue is essential, and we are advocating and fighting for the inclusion of just translation in the national policy frameworks and a program for action. Many countries’ trade unions in Asian countries are now trying to duplicate so that we can have a better just transition in all the aspects of climate actions that cover workers and vulnerable communities.

Q: How do you see the work that you’re doing as a Special Rapporteur and the work that we are trying to do in the field of chemicals here at the UN system in precisely trying to redesign the chemical system?

Marcos Orellana | One of the guiding principles in the work of the mandate is the issue of the prevention of exposure to hazardous substances — whether it is chemicals or wastes, whether it is intentional or not. The focus on prevention in carrying it forward is precisely to go in the upstream and the design of systems that are then enabled for practices to be designed in a way that do not resolve in exposure.

• Then, come the individual facilities and sectors, and then the bigger picture: the issues of the global toxification of the planet. This is one approach: having an understanding of the relationship between exposure to hazardous substances and the adverse effects of internationally protected rights.
• A second approach certainly is based on science. Science can be contested, and as such is not monolithic. But it is certainly an objective measure of knowledge that should not be discarded. It is not the only source of human knowledge, but it is certainly a key to bridge the big distance between regulatory measures.
• On the work of the mandate, there are various issues that are directly related to this question of just transition and prevention. If we look at a couple examples, last year a report was presented to the Human Rights Council on small-scale mining and mercury, and one of the key points there is precisely the transition towards mercury-free technologies. Some of that may include different chemistries – which in that sense is a question of redesign — but others may be technological and mechanical.
• Production systems form a raw complex set of issues. There may even be a continuum. As we know small scale mining is the largest source of mercury releases and emissions to the environment, and they are not adequately addressed by the Minamata Convention on Mercury.
• Just transition in this sector is key because if the miners themselves do not see alternatives and they are not supported in this transition, the problem simply will not get resolved with the government passing a decree. The problem gets resolved when the people that work in the mines have the opportunities to transition to mercury-free technologies.
• Another example is the visit to the International Maritime Organization. The Hong Kong Convention on ship recycling is going to enter into force after many years. It is a negotiation, and one of the points there is that this instrument brings in standards for the certification of recycling facilities, among various other measures.
• Several of these can be quite positive but the instrument does not eliminate the practice of beaching which is running the ship towards the beach in high tide. Then at low tide, workers come with their torches to dismantle the ship almost as a cottage industry. A recent case in the courts of England held that it is not a question of whether workers will be harmed or die, but an issue of probability, of accounting numbers. That is an unfortunate situation for the mostly migrant workers in the shipyards in Bangladesh and India where the beaching practices take place.

Related: Bangladesh shipbreakers win right to sue UK owners in landmark ruling | The Guardian | 11 March 2021

In the first ruling of its kind by any higher court anywhere in the world, the court of appeal of England and Wales has held that a shipping company in London selling a vessel in south Asia could owe a legal “duty of care” to shipbreaking workers in Bangladesh even where there are multiple third parties involved in the transaction.

• The transition here is often regarded as a loss of comparative advantage because why these yards are attractive in many ways to the shipping industry at the end of the life cycle of the vessels is precisely because the costs of adequate shipbreaking are externalized on the workers and on the environment. The transition towards having appropriate technologies needs investment.
• This is when international cooperation comes in. It may be that cooperation for shipbreaking can be channeled through the Hong Kong Convention on ship recycling.
• It is a big question, but the issue of cooperation is much broader: just transition in every country requires support. It does not happen otherwise just because it is a good idea, and that support may come from industry associations or from the government. In many instances, it needs to come from international assistance and cooperation.
• International cooperation and just transition within are imperative in the road to realizing what has been referred to several times as the fundamental right at work for safe and healthy working conditions.

Q: What do you think about the shipbreaking history and industry?

Repon Chowdury | This is reality and every year, a large number of shipbreaking workers die in the workplace due to unsafe working conditions. We have seen how the local community and the workers have been compromised because of the unsafe management of the chemicals in the ship dismantling process. That has indulged the industry to have more unsecured working conditions to continue and consciously continue damaging the local environment and risking the life of the workers due to lack of enforcement of the labor law and environmental law in the workplace.

• In this context the government’s commitment is very crucial. The implementation of fundamental principles of rights at work will never established if there is no solid commitment from the government’s side to enforce and implement those.
• In the case of Bangladesh, shipbreaking work is one of the examples where we can see a big a vulnerability and loss of lives due to the industry’s constantly engagement in unsafe working conditions.
• It is very important to have the new international regulations in line that can be well enforced and mandatory, so that it can be translated in the national actions and that national governments can comply with the international instruments to follow in the future.
• Our pathway needs to be in the direction to secure the life and livelihood of the workers in industries like shipbreaking and other hazardous industries, realities of those in Bangladesh and other countries in the South Asian region.

Q: What can people and organizations do to push forward these important issues?

Marcos Orellana | To continue doing what you’re doing – to operationalize more general discussions and making the connections that make these concepts a reality.

Yves Lador | The type of work that one does in a certain region or sector will be differ from the profile of the work in another. These elements need to be taken into consideration in the way we formulate our own elements, recommendations, and guidelines. There’s still room for improvement.

Comment from Rory O’Neal

• You cannot have safety just in one country. We have to ensure high standards that are supported globally.
• We currently have exports of hazardous chemicals, including a double standard where rich nations manufacture and export chemicals banned in their home nation, which is one of the issues on which the Special Rapporteur had been very active and continues to be very active. That could be also one of the outcomes of ICCM5.
• There is an excellent example, wherein after pressure from unions, Australia has an Asbestos Safety and Eradication Agency and law, and a tighter silica occupational exposure limits.

Concluding Remarks

Marcos Orellana | On occupational health and safety, we have various conventions under the International Labor Organization that talk about the right to a safe and healthy conditions. But it is one thing to have standards and another to have a rights-based approach. Management standards do not necessarily need coincide and exhaust a rights-based approach.

• The example in Australia shows this: Australia has managed, as a result of the organized work of labor unions, to have a protective standard on silica dust. Obviously, this is a very serious disease, wherein exposure to silica dust PM 2.5 is a hazardous occupational exposure health and safety. But there are many infringements still because reality does not change by decree. Reality is broader than governmental decrees, as we well know.
• In various states in Australia, it is only the regulator that can pursue breaches of the non-compliance with the occupational standard. It is neither the labor union nor the individual employer.
• We see the difference between a standard and management occupational health and safety. With a rights-based approach, it would afford access to remedies to the individual victim that suffers as a result of non-compliance with a management standard. That is still the road that needs to be traversed.
• There is still a long way to make a rights-based approach a reality. With regard to ILO conventions, that underlies the fundamental importance of what has been achieved at the ILO recognition of a healthy and safe environment: it is not just as management and conventions — which are of course important and critical — but as a fundamental right and principle of work.

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Links

• Presentations made during the event
• Environment @ 54th Session of the UN Human Rights Council
• Geneva Toxic Free Talks
•  ILO Toolkit on Chemicals and Wastes