‘Shaping Destiny,’ ASSE Signs MOU with ILO

SAN ANTONIO, TX – The American Society of Safety Engineers signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the International Labour Organization at the Safety 2009 Professional Development Conference and Exposition in San Antonio June 30, agreeing to work together to prevent workplace injuries and illnesses.          

A Geneva, Switzerland based agency of the United Nations, the ILO works to bring together governments, employers and workers of its member states to promote decent work throughout the world.

The MOU states that ASSE and the ILO will work together towards the common objective of preventing illness and injuries in the workplace across all industry sectors through advocacy, promoting awareness, knowledge development, information dissemination and the application of relevant standards and industry best practices in the community and workplace.

“As there are no global marketplace boundaries today, and with a large number of our 32,000 occupational safety, health and environmental professional members continuing to work in countries and on projects around the world, this agreement will help us move forward in preventing injuries and illnesses worldwide,” said ASSE President Warren K. Brown, CSP, ARM, CSHM. “This agreement also reflects the value of the SH&E profession and ASSE’s growth.”

The MOU is an example of ASSE’s goal of expanding its outreach to other safety, health and environmental organizations, said Dennis Hudson, ASSE’s director of Professional Affairs.

“Sound occupational safety and health programs that implement best strategies are the grease for the machinery of powerful economic engines,” said Ilise L. Feitshans, JD, ScM, who is coordinating the 5^th edition of the ILO Encyclopedia of Occupational Safety and Health. “Without the information we provide through these workplace safety and health programs, no employer can survive because accidents and disease are not simply expensive, but wasteful.”

Feitshans said the agreement will help workers and employers by providing a network of experts that fosters knowledge sharing. “This sharing will include information on international standards, national legislation, technical guidance, methodologies, accident and disease statistics, best practices, educational and training tools, research and hazard and risk assessment data.”

A 90-year-old organization formed at the Treaty of Versailles, the ILO does the same work as ASSE, said Feitshans, “exporting safety and health information that could save many lives.”

“Occupational health and safety management systems with time-tested prevention strategies and conscientious implementation do much more for the economy than merely reduce the costs of accidents and the overall burden of disease to society. Applying the best practices and well understood methods of reducing risks through a clear occupational health management program prevents needless waste, saves money, and, therefore, is a lifeline that keeps marginal employers afloat in turbulent economic times.”

The ILO Encyclopedia of Occupational Health and Safety is available in hard copy in 12 languages, and the goal of the 5^th edition is to “create a living document that is true to the heritage of the first edition of the encyclopedia that was put together by truly great people like Dr. Alice Hamilton, the mother of industrial medicine who invented the Right to Know,” said Feitshans. “The challenge is to do it in a time of information overload; to serve as a filter to help people who have data to determine if that data is good, shaping destiny in a paradigm appropriate the 21^st Century.”