Heavy Job Losses Causes Employment Crisis in the First Half of 2021 in Myanmar

Estimates released by the International Labour Organization (ILO) suggest that Myanmar is experiencing significant deterioration in its labor market conditions since the military took power in February this year. The economy is already weakened by the COVID-19 pandemic, with over 60,000 workers across the country losing their jobs due to factory shutdowns caused by canceled orders and the COVID-19 pandemic's disruption of raw material supplies.

The United Nations estimates that employment contracted 6% in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the fourth quarter of 2020, reflecting 1.2 million job losses. In the first half of 2021, an estimated 14% of working hours were lost, which is equivalent to the working time of at least 2.2 million full-time workers. In terms of both working-hour and employment losses, women are estimated to have been impacted more than men.

Many sectors have been hard hit following the military takeover. In the first half of 2021, employment in construction, garments, and tourism, and hospitality decreased by an estimated 35%, 31%, and 25%, respectively, with even higher relative losses in working hours. 

Tourism and hospitality, still impacted by the slowdown in 2020 caused by COVID-19, have been unable to recover and took a further hit since the military takeover. Most international flights and visa issues have remained suspended due to COVID-19 and security concerns, and domestic travel has largely ceased. 

Circumstances since February 2021 might have forced or incentivized a large number of workers to reduce their working hours, with associated income losses, adding to the adverse impacts on a labor market that had already come under severe strain as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Factors that might have played a role include curfews and other restrictions imposed by the military regime, fear of exposure to violence when going to and being at the workplace, electricity and internet cuts, greater security risks for businesses, a decrease in consumer demand, as well as large-scale worker strikes. 

OSHA Changes Focus of the COVID-19 National Emphasis Program (NEP)

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) recently made substantial changes to its National Emphasis Program (NEP) for COVID-19, including removing some industries from the list of targets for intensified inspection activities. 

OSHA also made a new name for the program, which will no longer be called the NEP but will be designated as the Interim Enforcement Response Plan (IERP). The original NEP and the new IERP will only apply in the states subject to federal OSHA enforcement and do not apply to the states with their own occupational safety and health agencies. 

Last March, the agency announced the creation of the NEP for COVID-19 enforcement action focusing on employers in higher hazard industries. The NEP mandates that 5% of each OSHA region’s total inspections must be related to COVID-19, resulting in a total of about 1,600 inspections. NEPs are temporary programs that focus OSHA's resources on particular hazards and high-hazard industries. Other NEPs adopted since 2008 have dealt with combustible dust, hazardous machinery, hexavalent chromium, lead, primary metal industries, process safety management, shipbreaking, crystalline silica, and trenching and excavation.

The creation of the NEP for COVID-19 initially targeted the healthcare industry, including hospitals, healthcare providers, assisted living facilities, and home healthcare services. In May of 2020, the NEP focused on targeting restaurants, including both full-service and limited-service establishments. 

Among the changes included in the IERP issued on July 7, the revised directive shrinks the number of targeted industries whose workers are identified as being most at risk for COVID-19 exposure. Those covered by the program still include healthcare, and some non-healthcare industry segments are considered a higher risk, such as meat and poultry processing and warehousing.

23 Million People in Latin America and the Caribbean Have Transitioned to Teleworking

During the pandemic, teleworking has allowed continuous businesses and job opportunities as a way to cope with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. While many sectors experienced a devastating drop in economic activity in employment, falling income, and business closures, teleworking allowed many to have jobs. 

Before the pandemic, less than 3% of wage earners worked from home, but after isolation measures went into effect, 20-30% had to transition to working remotely from home. Especially in less developed countries, teleworking helped cushion the negative impacts of the crisis on labor markets and contributed to the preservation of millions of jobs. Vinicius Pinheiro, the International Labour Organization (ILO) director for Latin America and the Caribbean, said that teleworking would continue to be an option and generate new opportunities in the future.

A report from the ILO advises that while it is too early to predict the extent of the effectiveness of teleworking, countries and societies must be prepared to assume that this modality is here to stay, either as a convenient solution for some people and companies or through the proliferation of hybrid forms that combine work at establishments with work from home.

The report also says that "informal workers, self-employed, young, with lower qualifications and with low earnings, who experienced the greatest job losses and hours worked, especially in the first half of 2020, had much less access to teleworking”. This could be because these countries are characterized by a labor structure with an overall low level of information and communication technology use and high technological gaps. 

The analysis by ILO highlights some relevant aspects that must be addressed to face the challenges of teleworking:

• Voluntariness and agreement between the parties

• Organization and working time

• Health and safety at work

• Equipment and work items

• Protection of the right to privacy of workers

• Gender dimension and telework

• The role of social actors

• Labor relationship and compliance with legislation

The International Labour Conference No. 109, held in June 2021, urges to utilize and adapt teleworking and other new work arrangements to retain jobs and expand decent work opportunities through regulation, social dialogue, collective bargaining, and workplace cooperation.

ILO’s Global Campaign for Ratification of Violence and Harassment

The International Labour Organization Convention 190 on violence and harassment in the world of work held a convention on June 25th, 2021. Many global unions will be launching a toolkit to support the Convention 190 (C190) and its Recommendation 206 (R206). This manual will provide many unions worldwide with tools to eradicate violence and harassment in the world of work. Millions of workers are affected by physical assault, bullying, sexual harassment, online abuse, economic violence, and abusive work practices globally. These are some of the most widespread forms of violence in the workforce. 

The COVID-19 pandemic deepened pre-existing inequalities and exposed vulnerabilities in social, political, and economic systems. A report by the UN shows that violence against women has intensified in the past year. Many women and girls felt economic impacts, and the global gender pay gap is stuck at 16%, with women paid up to 35% less than men in some countries. 

The toolkit will aim to provide unions with tools to develop workplace solutions that tackle violence and harassment with a special focus on gender-based violence and harassment and ensure that violence is not considered “part of the job.” 

Christy Hoffman, UNI Global Union General Secretary, said:

“Unions fought relentlessly to win this Convention. Now that it has come into force, we must make sure more countries ratify it and that it is properly implemented. There is still a long road ahead and this toolkit is another step for unions to gain the necessary knowhow that will enable them to put the ILO Convention 190 and Recommendation 206 into practice so that workers live in a world free from violence and harassment.”

The toolkit consists of a facilitators’ guide and an activities workbook. It aims to:

• Encourage discussion about violence and harassment and gender-based violence in the world of work.

• Raise awareness about Convention 190, its accompanying Recommendation R206, and its significance for workers – particularly women workers.

• Encourage unions across the world to campaign for the ratification of Convention 190 and its effective implementation in line with Recommendation 206.

• Encourage unions to use these instruments to integrate Convention 190 into the union bargaining agenda.

• Build stronger unions to enable workers to assert their rights to a world of work free from violence and harassment.

New Skills Are Needed to Tackle The Risks of The Future

The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the significance of how critical health, safety, and well-being are to operate businesses successfully. In the manufacturing industry, workers are required to be on-site, so businesses need to equip their employees with appropriate competencies. 

Many recent news reports of COVID-19 outbreaks in plants demonstrate the impact when safety and precaution measures are unsuccessful. Protecting workers’ physical and mental health could improve business productivity and employee retention. 

At the same time, manufacturers’ futures rely on how effectively they can address four significant challenges:

• The changing nature of manufacturing work

• An aging workforce driving an increase in the hiring of younger and less-experienced workers

• Technology changes in the plant

• The unpredictability of economic globalization.

These factors have a direct impact on the occupational health and safety (OH&S) risk to workers.

The pandemic has highlighted just how vital the OH&S practitioner is to supporting COVID-19 safety plans while overseeing the many other health and safety risks in the workplace. Today’s OH&S professionals need a range of skills to support changing environments, including occupational medicine, epidemiology, occupational hygiene, mental health, and human factors.

They also need interpersonal, management, industry-specific and technical skills to equip them for the work ahead.

Manufacturing Safety Alliance of BC has researched the impact of labor market issues in British Columbia’s manufacturing sector for the health and safety profession.

This research included broad participation with manufacturing and union leaders, OH&S professionals, and industry associations across Canada. It has highlighted the need to define a standard set of competencies for OH&S professionals within the manufacturing sector.

To have standardized accreditation and certification, education programs should align to set a standard of competencies to ensure that new practitioners have the skills to be effective. Manufacturing also requires additional specialized training due to the complexity of risk areas.