With the sec­ond phase of the grad­ual re­open­ing of the T&T econ­o­my tak­ing place this week and the Min­istry of Health cel­e­brat­ing the fact that there are now no COVID-pos­i­tive pa­tients in the pub­lic health care sys­tem, this coun­try seems well on the way to im­ple­ment­ing phase three of the plan to ful­ly re­open.

In Phase Three the coun­try’s en­tire pub­lic ser­vice is sup­posed to re­turn to work.

Al­so dur­ing this phase, all pri­vate-sec­tor con­struc­tion is ear­marked to re­sume, along with pub­lic trans­porta­tion op­er­a­tions be­ing al­lowed to in­crease to 75 per cent ca­pac­i­ty.

The phase was orig­i­nal­ly sup­posed to start June 7.

But with the ear­ly re­open­ing of Phase Two, this timetable may be amend­ed.

And as more busi­ness­es pre­pare to re­open their doors the In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ILO) has stat­ed that re­turn to work poli­cies need to be in­formed by a hu­man-cen­tred ap­proach that puts peo­ples’ rights at the heart of eco­nom­ic, so­cial and en­vi­ron­men­tal poli­cies.

The Unit­ed Na­tions Eco­nom­ic Com­mis­sion for Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and the ILO is­sued a joint re­port stat­ing that it is crit­i­cal to en­sure that se­cu­ri­ty and health poli­cies are put in at work post-COVID-19.

ECLAC and the ILO stat­ed that hav­ing those poli­cies in place would re­quire the joint ad­min­is­tra­tion of work­place safe­ty and health, with the par­tic­i­pa­tion of em­ploy­ers and work­ers, as the foun­da­tion for poli­cies to re­turn to work.

“So­cial di­a­logue—bring­ing to­geth­er gov­ern­ments, work­ers’ and em­ploy­ers’ or­gan­i­sa­tions—will be crit­i­cal in cre­at­ing the ef­fec­tive poli­cies and trust need­ed for a safe re­turn to work,” the ILO guid­ance note stat­ed.

The note draws on spe­cial­ist ILO guid­ance doc­u­ments and In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Stan­dards, which pro­vide a nor­ma­tive frame­work for cre­at­ing a safe re­turn to work.

The doc­u­ment stress­es that pol­i­cy guid­ance should be em­bed­ded in­to na­tion­al Oc­cu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health (OSH) sys­tems, as these cre­ate the ba­sis for safe work­place en­vi­ron­ments.

The ILO said the guid­ance can con­tribute to a cul­ture of con­tin­u­ous, coun­try-lev­el im­prove­ment, in ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­sti­tu­tions, laws and reg­u­la­tions, labour in­spec­tions, in­for­ma­tion gath­er­ing, and oth­er ar­eas.

“Work­ers must feel safe at their work­places, both from risks di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to COVID-19, and in­di­rect risks, in­clud­ing psy­choso­cial is­sues and er­gonom­ic risks re­lat­ed to work­ing in awk­ward po­si­tions or with poor fa­cil­i­ties when work­ing from home,” the guide­lines stat­ed.

“They should have the right to re­move them­selves from any sit­u­a­tion ‘which they have rea­son­able jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to be­lieve presents an im­mi­nent and se­ri­ous dan­ger to their life or health’, and ‘shall be pro­tect­ed from any un­due con­se­quences,” it stat­ed.

The doc­u­ment pro­posed that each spe­cif­ic work set­ting, job or group of jobs should be as­sessed be­fore re­turn­ing to work and that pre­ven­tive mea­sures should be im­ple­ment­ed to en­sure the safe­ty and health of all work­ers ac­cord­ing to a hi­er­ar­chy of con­trols.

“For work­ers stay­ing at home, the risk of in­fec­tion in a work con­text can be elim­i­nat­ed; for all work­ers re­turn­ing to work­places, pri­or­i­ty should be giv­en to op­tions that sub­sti­tute haz­ardous sit­u­a­tions for less haz­ardous ones, such as or­gan­is­ing vir­tu­al in­stead of phys­i­cal meet­ings,” it stat­ed.

“When this is not pos­si­ble a mix of en­gi­neer­ing and or­gan­i­sa­tion­al con­trol mea­sures will usu­al­ly be re­quired to pre­vent con­ta­gion, the spe­cif­ic mea­sures to im­ple­ment are spe­cif­ic to each work­place, but may con­sist of in­stalling phys­i­cal bar­ri­ers such as clear plas­tic sneeze guards, im­prov­ing ven­ti­la­tion, or adopt­ing flex­i­ble work­ing hours, in ad­di­tion to clean­ing and hy­giene prac­tices.

“The guide­lines al­so re­call that the use of ap­pro­pri­ate per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment may be re­quired to com­ple­ment oth­er mea­sures, in par­tic­u­lar for the most haz­ardous oc­cu­pa­tions, and that this equip­ment should be pro­vid­ed with­out cost to work­ers,” the ILO stat­ed.

The ILO stat­ed that the needs of work­ers at high­er risk of se­vere ill­ness should be tak­en in­to ac­count; in­clud­ing old­er work­ers and preg­nant work­ers.

“Un­safe work prac­tices any­where are a threat to both health and sus­tain­able busi­ness, every­where. So, be­fore re­turn­ing to work, work­ers must be con­fi­dent that they will not be ex­posed to un­due risks,” said Deb­o­rah Green­field, ILO’s deputy di­rec­tor-gen­er­al for Pol­i­cy.

“And, to help en­ter­pris­es and economies get go­ing as soon as pos­si­ble, work­ers will need to co­op­er­ate with these new mea­sures. This means that so­cial di­a­logue will be par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant be­cause it is the most ef­fec­tive way to feed in­for­ma­tion and views in­to poli­cies and ac­tions, so cre­at­ing the best chance for a swift and bal­anced re­cov­ery,” she said.

The ILO’s di­rec­tor-gen­er­al, Guy Ry­der said with the war against COVID-19 still to be won, it “has be­come com­mon­place that what awaits us af­ter vic­to­ry is a ‘new nor­mal’ in the way so­ci­ety is or­gan­ised and the way we will work.”This is hard­ly re­as­sur­ing,” he said.

“Be­cause no­body seems able to say what the new nor­mal will be. Be­cause the mes­sage is that it will be dic­tat­ed by the con­straints im­posed by the pan­dem­ic rather than our choic­es and pref­er­ences. And be­cause we’ve heard it be­fore.

“The mantra which pro­vid­ed the mood mu­sic of the crash of 2008-2009 was that once the vac­cine to the virus of fi­nan­cial ex­cess had been de­vel­oped and ap­plied, the glob­al econ­o­my would be safer, fair­er, more sus­tain­able. But that didn’t hap­pen.

“The old nor­mal was re­stored with a vengeance and those on the low­er ech­e­lons of labour mar­kets found them­selves even fur­ther be­hind,” Ry­der said.

“Now is the time to look more close­ly at this new nor­mal, and start on the task of mak­ing it a bet­ter nor­mal, not so much for those who al­ready have much, but for those who so ob­vi­ous­ly have too lit­tle,” he said.

Ry­der said by May Day next year he hopes that the press­ing emer­gency of COVID-19 will be be­hind us.

“But we will have be­fore us the task of build­ing a fu­ture of work which tack­les the in­jus­tices that the pan­dem­ic has high­light­ed, to­geth­er with the per­ma­nent and no longer post­pon­able chal­lenges of cli­mate, dig­i­tal and de­mo­graph­ic tran­si­tion. This is what de­fines the bet­ter nor­mal that has to be the last­ing lega­cy of the glob­al health emer­gency of 2020,” he said.