Occupational risks, routines that pollute and green jobs

Work centers are the place where “the green economy takes shape, and where workers and employers, in their respective capacities, can change production processes” to curb global warming “and achieve greener companies,” says the International Labor Organization (ILO).

The United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP27) is on the eve of an agreement in which rich countries are called to take responsibility for the pollution they have produced in nations with less developed economies. Meanwhile, the ILO has published the report Green Businesses: Transforming Workplaces and Processes.

To green the workplace, the agency explains in the report, there are several options, one of which is to promote sustainable commutingimplementing teleworking, recommends.

Only in the Valley of Mexico, the home office could prevent the issuance of 8,793 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), according to research by Vladimir Rodríguez, professor at the Center for Economic Research and Teaching (CIDE). Emissions of this gas are one of the main causes of global warming.

The Climate Watch platform considers Mexico as the 14th CO2 emitting country in the world, “with a total participation of 1.35%” of the total that is issued globally.

Another of the ILO recommendations is to “produce green goods and services”, such as solar panels. According to Climate Watch, until 2020 in Mexico more than 111,000 jobs had been created in the renewable energy sector. The largest share, more than 34,000 positions, were in the solar photovoltaic industry.

Another of the ILO recommendations is to “adopt less polluting production processes”. People demand more and more sustainable productsbetween 2016 and 2020 that demand increased 71%, according to Google search data cited in the report.

“The increase in demand is a stimulus factor for informal companies, especially those in the circular economy, which are dedicated to the purchase and sale of recycled materials and the maintenance and repair of various goods”, which can benefit at micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), says the agency. In Mexico, these businesses generate 70% of employment.

But the call is also at big corporations. In its latest report, the #BreakFreeFromplastic (BFFP) movement called on the 10 most polluting companies for plastics to “invest in waste reduction measures and zero waste systems in national climate action plans.”

According to its #BrandAudit2021, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Unilever, Nestlé and Procter & Gamble, are the five companies that most plastic waste generate. All of them operate in Mexico and employ more than 202,000 people.

Another of the BFFP’s demands on these transnationals is that they finance “a just transition model with solid social protection and decent income and benefits for workers, including recyclers who are engaged in recycling, reuse, and waste prevention.”

No risk of occupational disease

“Breathe polluted air causes about 7 million premature deaths a year” worldwide, according to the United Nations (UN).

The first year of the covid-19 pandemic, 2020, the containment measures reduced the pollutant emissions atmospheric conditions, according to the World Meteorological Organization. The restriction of gatherings, school closures and stay-at-home policies “led to an unprecedented decrease in polluting emissions.”

The “unprecedented reduction in certain human activities, such as vehicle transport and aviation, due to the economic recession associated with the pandemic” reduced the average concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) by up to 70% and PM2.5 particles by up to 40%.

However, it seems that we will return to the same pre-pandemic point. In Mexico, around 48,000 people die prematurely a year due to a condition associated with environmental contamination, according to the National Institute of Public Health (INSP).

Despite this, in 2018 the Judiciary issued a labor jurisprudence in which it established that: “The environmental contamination that prevails in Mexico City and the metropolitan area does not influence the qualification of a professional condition.”

The Sixth Collegiate Court on Labor Matters of the First Circuit analyzed an amparo requested by the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS) against a judgment of the Conciliation and Arbitration Board of Mexico City, which had recognized the existence of a professional illness in a worker as a result of contamination.

But magistrate Raúl Valerio Ramírez ruled that it was illegal to rely “solely on expert medical evidence, as well as on the descriptions obtained from Internet pages about the atmospheric pollution in Mexico City, since, legally, the professionalism of a disease must derive from an adverse work environment in the workplace and not from the polluting agents that are generated” in the town where he resides.

Therefore, “it is not attributable to the employer, since the control of environmental contamination is outside the prevention control parameters of the company in which the actor worked, so that only being a carrier of these conditions is insufficient. so that it is recognized partial disability purported, since it does not prove the causal link between them, the activities carried out and the adverse work environment in the workplace”.