Philippines backs ILO’s call for safe and healthy working conditions

The Philippines is supporting the International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) call for safe and healthy working conditions in a revised international labour treaty. 

Labour representatives from the Philippines are participating in a 15-day discussion on world labour issues, organised by the ILO. 

The Philippine team, led by Labour Secretary Silvestre H. Bello III, includes members from groups like the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines, Federation of Free Workers and the Employers Confederation of the Philippines, among others. 

This comes amid a backdrop where work hours globally have fallen in Q1’2022 by 3.8%, as compared to Q4’2019, an equivalent of 112 million full-time jobs, noted ILO in an earlier report.

The figures are a deterioration from ILO’s projections for January 2022, where it expected a working-hour deficit equivalent to 52 million full-time jobs.

ILO attributed the decline in working hours worldwide to the pandemic, and other crises that have exacerbated inequalities among countries. 

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These include inflation, particularly in energy and food prices, financial turbulence, and global supply chain disruptions exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.