The United Nations Human Development Index and safety at work

The "casino-economy" of financial deregulation that led to so many crises, among which we can count those of Asia, Russia, and Latin America, and more recently the collapse of Argentina, nowadays not yet dominated, is the distinctive feature of the new world order, marked as it is by speculation. International trade, regulated by the WTO, is headed by the United States. It involves a system that benefits the richer, stronger countries at the expense of the poorer countries. This circumstance has a direct effect on labor relations and, consequently, on Safety at Work. This address intends to go more deeply into the UN's Human Development Index (HDI), the structure of labor relations in Brazil and their political associations, in order to seek solutions for improving the quality of workers' lives and their working conditions. First, we deal with the result set out in the 2004 Human Development Report-HDR. In this report, Brazil appears with an average Human Development Index, in this report the country was included in the medium HDI group. The change derives from the fact that as from 1999 "per capita income" was introduced into the calculation, and as we know, Brazil has very poor income distribution over the population as a whole. Therefore, the present address is timely and necessary given that the Ministry of Labor and Employment, through the Department of Safety and Health at Work, is focusing on changing the Safety in the Workplace Regulatory Standards, and others political decisions at Labor Relations Area and this cannot fail to present an analysis of the present circumstances, under pain of committing a serious procedural error leading to irreversible consequences.