Government approves strategy on health and safety at work

The Strategy on Health and Safety at Work aims to establish the general framework for occupational risk prevention, as well as health and safety measures at the workplace. Following a period of intense debate, the strategy was finally agreed between the government and the most representative social partners. The strategy aims to reduce the levels of industrial accidents and to improve workplace health and safety measures.

Objectives of strategy

The Spanish Strategy of Health and Safety at Work for the period 2007–2012 establishes the general framework for occupational risk prevention policies. The strategy, aiming to standardise measures related to health and safety at work, has two main objectives:

• to reduce the industrial accident rate by 25%;

• to achieve continual improvements in health and safety at work.

After an intense process of social dialogue, an agreement on the workplace health and safety strategy was reached between the government, the autonomous local communities, the trade unions and the employer organisations. The agreement contains 100 measures that will have an impact on education, training, research and development (R&D), health, awareness-raising and information activities, companies, workers, and health and safety services. It also provides for strong and clear institutional and economic support from public administration for the development of health and safety policies and practices.

The strategy aims to facilitate compliance with these regulations in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). It seeks to achieve quality and efficacy in risk prevention, and directly involves workers, employers, trade unions and employer organisations in conforming to the health and safety regulations.

Provisions for reaching objectives

The provisions of the health and safety strategy are divided under the following two subheadings.

Occupational risk prevention in companies

The strategy aims to promote risk prevention at the workplace by:

• achieving a better and more effective compliance rate with the health and safety regulations, particularly in SMEs. To achieve this, social contributions will be reduced for companies with low accident rates and specific programmes will be set up to control and monitor companies and activities with high accident rates;

• improving the efficiency and quality of the health and safety system, particularly with regard to organisations specialising in this field;

• reinforcing the role of the social partners and involving workers and employers in the improvement of health and safety at work. To achieve this, collective bargaining at sectoral level will allow the social partners to negotiate the creation of specific sectoral bodies comprising representatives of employers and workers, in order to develop programmes that will aim to raise awareness of occupational hazards in the sector. These programmes will target companies, with between six and 50 workers, that do not have employee representation.

Public policies to combat industrial accidents

In an effort to lower the number of workplace accidents, the strategy aims to:

• develop and consolidate the culture of risk prevention in Spanish society;

• foster training in occupational risk awareness and prevention;

• support those public institutions that are dedicated to occupational risk prevention;

• improve institutional coordination in occupational risk prevention.

Commentary

The Spanish Strategy of Health and Safety at Work 2007–2012 is the result of a long and intense process of dialogue between the government and the social partners. It was one of the objectives set out in the Declaration on Social Dialogue signed in July 2004 by the current government and the most representative trade unions and employer organisations (ES0408101F). A special commission was later set up to discuss the possibilities for the strategy.

Social dialogue has led to several agreements on this subject, one of which reforms the regulations on health and safety services, and one which defines a new list of occupational illnesses and the procedures for declaring these. Furthermore, an agreement has been reached on updating the social contribution rates for occupational accidents and illnesses. Moreover, as part of the national strategy for addressing accidents in the workplace, a law on subcontracting was recently approved in the construction sector (ES0705019I).

Emma Cerviño, CIREM Foundation