Bid to minimise hazards at work

Date: 27/06/1996

By Michael Mann

EUROPEAN Commission estimates suggest that up to 8,000 people die every year in the EU as a result of work-related accidents. Of the 130 million or so workers in the Union, over 10 million fall victim to accidents or occupational diseases every year. Quite apart from the obvious distress which this causes to those involved, the Commission put the cost to the EU's economy in 1991 at 26 billion ecu.

In an attempt to reduce the financial and human cost of work-related injuries, a specific legal base for health and safety measures was added to the treaty when the Single European Act (SEA) came into force on 1 July 1987.

Article 118a of the revamped treaty specified that health and safety legislation should be agreed by member states by qualified majority vote. Since then, about 30 separate health and safety directives have been adopted, while about ten more are still working their way through the legislative process.

For Social Affairs Commissioner Pádraig Flynn, the aim is simple. Workplace accidents and occupational diseases must be reduced, but the number of directives should be kept to a minimum.

The SEA committed member states to dismantle all the barriers to a free EU market in capital, labour, goods and services. Article 118a aims to complement the creation of the single market, as set out under the treaty's Article 100a, by allowing the Union to agree on minimum health and safety standards to prevent some EU governments from giving their industries an unfair advantage by setting significantly lower standards than others. The Commission insists that its four health and safety action programmes aim to do just this, and recognises that the “level playing-field” must be maintained.

But employers are not so sure. In its submission to the Molitor report on regulation in the Union, the European employers' federation UNICE expressed its support for the harmonisation of national legislation on health and safety, but warned that “the system in place is unwieldy, complex and fragmented, and imposes unnecessary restraints on small and medium-sized enterprises”.

UNICE urged legislators to concentrate their efforts on the areas of greatest risk, carry out economic evaluations of the costs of proposed measures, and set basic prescriptions while allowing companies to choose how to achieve them.

Industry believes there is often confusion between measures brought in under the guise of single market legislation and health and safety rules. UNICE points out that the directive on work equipment muddles up regulations on the use of machines with rules linked to their design, erecting expensive barriers to the competitiveness of European firms.

Most importantly of all, because health and safety legislation only covers minimum requirements which member states are free to upgrade, there is a severe risk that differing standards will undermine the single market.

Proposals on reducing the risks to workers from things such as noise and optical radiation would, the organisation believes, “impose a substantial workload and additional costs on employers for little real improvement in safety at work”.

Since the introduction of the basic framework directive in 1989, covering fundamental requirements for all workers except the self-employed, rules have been agreed on everything from conditions on board fishing boats to the use of display screen equipment.

Perhaps the most controversial measure of all is the directive on the organisation of working time which, among other things, sets a maximum working week of 48 hours and minimum annual leave of four weeks.

British unhappiness at seeing such measures agreed by majority vote led it to challenge the measure in the European Court of Justice. A final ruling has not yet been given, but earlier this year the advocate-general's opinion went against the UK government.

As to the future, the Commission has committed itself to continuing its role as initiator under the Fourth Action Programme, which runs until the turn of the century. By the end of this year, the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work should be up and running in its new home in Spain. Set up in June 1994, the agency's role is to promote the exchange of information, organise training courses and provide input to health and safety measures.

But business leaders insist the first priority is that they be given time to assimilate rules already in place. Meanwhile, trade union officials insist “we should not be having abstract discussions about subsidiarity and competitiveness, but should look to identify real problems and deal with them by both legislative and non-legislative means”.

Unions are generally happy with progress to date, but stress the importance of ensuring that measures are properly transposed by the national authorities.