#03 Occupational Health and Safety and Waste Pickers

Informal Economy Podcast: Social Protection

On April 7th is celebrated the World Health Day. In order to mark this date, this episode will discuss a very important issue: occupational, health and safety. Health and safety measures at work play an important role on workers quality of life, and their capacity of having a steady and sustainable livelihood. And this is even more crucial for informal workers, often left out of regulations that assure them a safe work environment. It was thinking about this questions that the Cuidar Project came about. Seeking to understand the challenges waste pickers face in Brazil, Sonia Dias and Ana Carolina Ogando undertook an empirical qualitative research-action project for two years at waste-pickers cooperatives. Sonia dias is a sociologist by training and holds a PhD in political science at the federal university of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and is currently Wiego’s Waste Specialist. Ana Carolina is Wiego’s Research Associate and also holds a PhD in political science at the same university. *Cuidar Project Page http://www.wiego.org/cuidar-project *Cuidar Project: Summary Report http://www.wiego.org/sites/default/files/resources/files/Dias-Ogando-Project-Cuidar-Health-Mapping.pdf *WIEGO’s page on Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) https://www.wiego.org/ohs *WIEGO’s page on Waste-pickers http://www.wiego.org/informal-economy/occupational-groups/waste-pickers *Joint ILO/WIEGO report Cooperatives Meeting Informal Economy Workers’ Child Care Needs (2018) https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/cooperatives/publications/WCMS_626682/lang--en/index.htm *WIEGO’s page on cooperatives http://www.wiego.org/wiego/wiegos-work-cooperatives Our theme music is Focus, from A. A. Aalto (Creative Commons)