World Day for Safety and Health at Work

28 April, 2015

Today is the World Day for Safety and Health at Work and the Swedish Minister of Employment Ylva Johansson writes in a debate article that the government is developing a working environment strategy this year.

Today, the 28th of april, is the World Day for Safety and Health at Work. This is a day that have been observed by the ILO since 2003. This year's theme is Join "in building a culture of prevention on OSH (Occupational Safety and Health)". ILO has created an interactive website with information and tools to help create a safe and healthy work environment.

The Swedish Minister of Employment have written a debate article about an initiative from the goverment to develope a working environment strategy that includes goal such as the discontinuation of work-related deaths.

In the debate article the Minister writes that many work places in Sweden are implementing systematic preventions and measures agains various risks. This is for example done by the collaboration between employer, employees and safety representatives with operative tasks to improve the working environment.

Uppsala University has a couple of regulations to ensure a safe and healthy working environment. The university is built up by departments (for example the Department of Physics and Astronomy), every researcher and lecturer are as a rule employed at a department, and it's the Head of the department that is responsible for the working environment. This means that they are responsible to make sure that the courses the department offers have a good working environment. Every department also have a couple of safety representatives that are looking after the working environment.

We students have student safety representatives that are looking after the student's working environment. Every student section has at least one student safety representative and the Head of Student Welfare Affairs at the student union is head of student safety representative at the faculty and coordinate the other student safety representatives. So if you notice a problem with your working environment, contact the student safety representative at your student section (who usually is the same person that's head of welfare affairs in your section association)!