Business support organisations and workplace safety and health

The story published in this week’s issue of the Stabroek Business based on observations made by General Secretary of the Guyana Trades Union Congress Lincoln Lewis regarding what he believes is the obligation of the local Business Support Organisations (BSOs) to become more active in matters of workplace safety and health  is, in our view deserving of an editorial comment if only because, in a sense, it raises the issue of the extent of the role of those private sector bodies, that is to say where they responsibilities begin and where they end.

One imagines that there may well be a school of thought that says that issues of safety and health belong in  the purview of the Labour Department and the labour movement and as well in the ambit of the responsibilities of the Safety and Health Committees in workplaces, insofar as those exist. Much of what the BSOs do (Lewis specifically named the Private Sector Commission, the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Guyana Manufacturing & Services Association and the Consultative Association of Guyanese Industry) is related to advancing the business interests of their members. There is, however, a related position that contends, validly in our opinion, that there is an important nexus between workplace safety and health considerations and the profitability of private enterprises.

It is true that a great many of the safety and health issues that come to the attention of the Labour Department are related to the private sector, though that is not to say that that public sector  workplaces are not themselves guilty of such infractions, and serious ones at that. In some parts of the private sector, though, particularly the mining sector, we are confronted with safety and health challenges that have implications for life and limb. In that regard, we believe that the BSOs have a duty to engage the mining sector and to sound their voices in support of a more responsible safety and health regime.

There is an argument which suggests that some business owners miss the nexus between a safe, healthy work environment and the profitability of the businesses that they run. This, of course, is a risky posture since any business operation that ‘lives on the edge,’ so to speak, in terms of running a regime teeming with health and safety anomalies runs the risk of underperforming or even going under completely.

While Mr. Lewis does not appear to be suggesting that the private sector is altogether indifferent to considerations of safety and health at the workplace, he is certainly dropping a broad hint that in his opinion an enhanced level of advocacy on the part of the BSOs for safer, healthier workplaces would do the broader lobby a power of good.

Looking down the road, it is difficult not to see this issue in the context of the anticipated upsurge in private sector-driven activities that will arise out of increased oil and gas-related activities in Guyana. The emergence of new local business enterprises coupled with the movement of foreign enterprises here to take advantage of the opportunities that will derive from the country’s new economic and developmental directions, will pose new, more demanding  safety and health challenges, to which we will have to respond.

The basic point here is that in much the same way that the private sector will be seeking to maximise their returns from such opportunities as will arise, so, too, they must have a corresponding awareness of the importance of ensuring that their respective workforces are, as far as possible, protected from workplace-related injuries and other illnesses. One of the concerns of businesses as well as the BSOs ought to be factoring into budgetary considerations adequate funding for adequate levels of investment of safety and health infrastructure. A propensity to cut corners ought not to continue to be the norm, at least not as far as safety and health considerations are concerned. So that while there is an awareness of the fact that the majority of private sector labour forces are not unionised and are therefore not ‘covered’ by the safety and health protocols that are built into Collective Labour Agreements that protect unionised workers, Lewis’ argument signals that there is nothing wrong with BSOs meaningfully expanding their area of responsibility to embrace aspects of the welfare and wellbeing of their members’ employees.