How is the financial and economic crisis affecting occupational health and safety standards?
Excellent question! I recently came across excellent article about financial global crisis http://planetaryproject.com/culture/sintez/ , I find it rather useful and informative, may be will be helpful for someone. Economic crisis is an important condition for the reloading of world economics, I think.
First of all, let’s remember that even before the current crisis, globalization had already brought about major changes to workplaces worldwide. Privatization, industrial restructuring, new forms of work organization, the break-up of larger state enterprises and the proliferation of small enterprises – to name just a few of these changes – directly affected employment, industrial relations and, consequently, occupational safety and health (OSH) standards. Now the global financial crisis has become a factor of concern for the health and safety of workers around the world. On the one hand, workers have to deal with the fear and stress of losing their jobs. At the same time, downsizing production, changing working-time patterns and/or increasing job demands simply to stay in business may have a negative impact. In some cases, we might expect a reduction in resources allocated to safety and health. Enforcement agencies, labour inspectorates and occupational safety and health services may a
