TU Concerns Over EU H&S 'Legislative Simplification'

The European Commission will unveil its new health and safety at work strategy for 2007-2012 in the coming months.

Europe’s trade unions mean to help inform the debate on it. Through their input to a document drawn up in the “Workers Group” of the Advisory Committee on Safety and Health at Work, they spelled out what unions expect from the future Community strategy. That document has just been published by the ETUI-REHS.

The 48-page brochure makes the union case against any “break from introducing new legislation”. They argue that Commission proposals for “legislative simplification” or “better regulation” may in fact mean unpicking the Community legal framework for health and safety at work. The trade unions cannot go on-board with misguided formulas that so-called bring EU institutions closer to the people but in fact undermine directives that grant all European workers entrenched rights to better protection for their health and safety.

The trade unions review the failings of the strategy pursued from 2002 to 2006 to recommend a new strategy built around practical initiatives and a definite timetable.

The Community agenda must put a central focus on two key risks: musculoskeletal disorders (MSD), the main cause of illness related to a pressurized work organisation, and chemicals, a major cause of work-related health problems, where the regulatory framework is in the midst of a far-reaching overhaul.

The trade unionists say that it is more than time a directive was adopted to address the last decade’s spiralling growth in MSD, which now affects more than one in three European workers. As far as chemicals go, the unions welcome the imminent adoption of REACH, but stress that it needs to be buttressed by means for giving workers direct information and to support the feedback of experience from the workface. The unions also want mutagens and reprotoxins to be brought within the scope of the Carcinogens Directive, currently undergoing revision.

The right of all workers to collective representation in health and safety is another focus of trade union demands. Many workers at present are denied this right, especially temporary workers and those employed in SMEs.

The measures needed to address the daunting challenges of EU enlargement also attract the unions’ attention. They want the Commission to promote the development of real workplace democracy in those countries which have little tradition of social dialogue. This is a prerequisite to close the working conditions gap between old and new Member States and avoid promoting “social dumping” across the Twenty Five.

The second part of the brochure gives a capsule view of the surveys done on the health impact of working conditions in the EU.

"New Scope for the Community Health and Safety at Work Strategy 2007-2012" can be ordered here

Source: European Trades Unions Institute

 
 
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