BOHS claims worker health protection is international human rights issue26 January 2015

BOHS, the Chartered Society for Worker Health Protection, has welcomed a new Corporate Human Rights Benchmark that will assess and rank the human rights performance of international companies, and urged employers to recognise worker health protection as a fundamental human rights issue in assessing their global supply chains.

The benchmark (click here) is the first wide-scale project to rank companies on their human rights performance. A total of 500 of the top global companies from four sectors – agriculture, ICT, apparel, and extractives – will initially be researched and ranked.

Mike Slater (pictured), president of BOHS, said: "Worker health protection is an international human rights issue and the statistics prove that this new project is greatly needed. Every 15 seconds, a worker somewhere in the world dies from a work-related accident or disease. This means that every day, more than 6,000 people die due to occupational accidents or work-related diseases – over 2.3 million deaths per year around the world – costing 4% of global gross domestic product each year."

He added: "Yet the vast majority of this burden – a massive 86% – is the result of work-related diseases, with 14% due to workplace accidents. We therefore urge British employers to look at worker health and safety in assessing their international supply chains."

Ian Vallely

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Related Companies
BOHS

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