Health and safety inspections find lack of employee participation

Slovakian employers are obliged by law to ensure that employees participate in the management of occupational safety and health. Assessments by the National Labour Inspectorate in 2007 found a number of shortcomings in this area, including a lack of employee involvement and problems concerning the employees’ health and safety representatives. Overall, however, the inspections indicated a gradual increase in employee participation in this regard.

Regulatory framework

Employee involvement in occupational safety and health (OSH) is regulated in Slovakia by Act No. 311/2001 (the Labour Code) and Act No. 124/2006 on occupational safety and health. The legislation obliges employers to enable employees to participate in dealing with OSH issues, mainly through the:

• relevant trade union body;

• employees’ OSH representatives;

• OSH committee, which should be set up in companies with more than 100 employees.

Aims of inspections

One of the tasks of the National Labour Inspectorate (Národný inšpektorát práce, NIP) is to check employers’ OSH management systems; this includes assessing the extent to which they create the conditions for employees’ active participation in improving OSH and working conditions. Inspections include an assessment of employees’ participation in terms of:

• their involvement in control and monitoring activities at the workplace and in checks conducted by state inspection bodies;

• expressing views or submitting proposals on issues such as the improvement of working conditions, work organisation or preventing workplace accidents;

• the negotiation of basic OSH documents and rules, such as policies, risk assessment systems or systems providing for personal protective equipment;

• requiring the employer to deal with identified shortcomings and to provide relevant updated information.

The inspections also examine whether suitable forms of communication between the employer and employees are being used, along with ways of motivating employees in this area.

Findings from inspections

In 2007, OSH management inspections were conducted at 88 employers, covering about 24,000 employees, located in all regions and operating in all sectors of economic activity. Of the organisations inspected, 75 were private sector businesses, eight were cooperatives and five were state-owned organisations. NIP has also targeted individual sectors in relation to various OSH inspections, such as the construction sector (SK0702039I) and hotels and restaurants (SK0712019I).

With regard to employees’ participation in OSH affairs, the 2007 inspections found 130 shortcomings in the following areas.

• Basic procedures for employee participation in dealing with OSH issues – in the organisations concerned, either no defined procedure existed for employees’ participation or a procedure existed but was not used in practice and did not give the employees an opportunity to express their opinions about the employer’s treatment of OSH issues. A related problem was the failure by some employers to act on employees’ objections and demands.

• Employees’ OSH representatives – obstacles in this area included the employer’s failure to appoint OSH representatives; the appointment of an insufficient number of representatives; the appointment of representatives without their agreement; a lack of training for representatives in performing their duties; or failure to provide the basic conditions for representatives’ activities as laid down by the law.

• Enterprises’ OSH policy and programming documents – shortcomings in this respect included a lack of employee participation in drawing up policies and programmes; a failure to inform employees about the relevant documents, or to make them available to employees; and a lack of participation by employee representatives in regular evaluations of the fulfilment of set objectives.

• Risk management – problems in this area included the lack of opportunities for employees to express their opinions about the employer’s approach to the assessment of safety and health risks; the failure to make relevant documentation available to all employees; and the failure to provide this documentation in an understandable format.

• Provision of information, communication and motivation – shortcomings in this respect included the failure to draw up training curricula or to provide training; the limiting of training content to general requirements and not informing employees about the real risks; and an absence of motivation systems.

Commentary

The inspections of employee participation in OSH management in 2007 found no serious shortcomings that would directly endanger the health of employees. As a result, the inspectors did not apply any financial sanctions. Instead, to address the problems identified, they issued employers with regulations and instructions to take organisational measures to improve employees’ participation in OSH management.

Compared with similar inspections performed in 2006, the 2007 exercise found that the situation in most of the companies concerned had improved. Positive findings included the observation that awareness of the relevant legislation had increased among both employers and employees, and that OSH management systems were also being used in small organisations.

Hatina Teodor, Institute for Labour and Family Research