Support Kit for Developing Occupational Safety and Health Legislation

The Support Kit for Developing OSH Legislation aims to provide guidance to ILO constituents in the establishment or reform of OSH laws by systematically articulating and analysing the key principles and components of a sound, prevention-centred framework OSH law that follows a state-of-the-art regulatory approach. To this end, it identifies the essential elements of national OSH normative frameworks stemming from international labour standards, ILO codes of practice and guidelines and cutting-edge national OSH laws. It captures and discusses to the extent possible various policy and design choices and showcases examples of legislative elements from countries with different legal traditions to enrich and broaden the users’ perspective.

This tool has a two-fold objective: support law makers in identifying gaps in legal frameworks relative to international labour standards and assist them to explore various policy and legal design options that may serve to address the specific needs and circumstances of the country. It does so by helping law makers to understand why certain legislative provisions are important, to become aware of the different policy and design choices that underlie these provisions and to learn how other countries have regulated those elements in their OSH legislation.

The Support Kit is structured around 12 sections that provide an example of a logical flow of a framework OSH law:
1. Evolution of OSH legislation: From early OSH laws to modern legislative OSH frameworks
2. Scope and coverage of overarching OSH laws
3. Duties of institutions in relation to national OSH systems and OSH governance instruments
4. OSH duties and rights
5. Workers’ representatives on OSH
6. Provisions protecting workers in specific conditions of vulnerability
7. Occupational health services
8. OSH professionals
9. Data collection systems: Recording, notification and statistics
10. Enforcement of OSH legislation
11. OSH-related violations and penalties
12. Legislative drafting techniques

Each Section is accompanied by an editable checklist in PDF format.

This Support Kit has been developed under the ILO Flagship Programme Safety + Health for All that aims at improving the safety and health of workers worldwide by building a culture of prevention. To this end, this global Programme seeks, among other key components, to create conducive national legislative and policy OSH frameworks as these are the bedrock of safe and healthy working environments.