I. Introduction

The preparation of the Commission’s new programme concerning health and safety at work must bring this programme within the framework of the general employment strategy, as defined in Luxembourg, Lisbon, Nice and Stockholm, for more and better jobs, with the emphasis on the quality of employment and the modernisation of the organisation of work. In this integrated strategy the responsibilities of the different actors and levels of actions must be clearly established; this means emphasising the central role of the public authorities in the area of standardisation and co-ordination and the need for the social partners to more closely involved in the management of the changes. The ETUC supports a strong European programme for health and safety at work focused on efficient legislation implemented at the work place and progress through evaluation and control, the use of open co-ordination based on benchmarks, indicators and objectives to be achieved, the strengthening of the role of the social partners, the attainment by the public authorities of the highest health and security standards for their own employees, the improvement of worker representation, the development of the information, consultation and participation of workers and their representatives concerning decisions in the area of health and safety and the organisation of work. The workers group of the Luxembourg Consultative Committee has worked with the TUTB and the ETUC Secretariat to finalise a document on Community strategy in the field of health and safety (see annex). This resolution summarises the key points of that document, the ETUC commitment to ensuring the successful implementation of that strategy and the priorities in terms of action.

II. The context

a. The realities The statistics concerning accidents at work show over a long period a clear improvement in the situation, but at the same time there is a worrying trend in certain sectors and forms of employment and there has been a deterioration in working conditions and an increase in occupational ill-health (including devastating increases in death resulting from exposure to asbestos). This apparent contradiction demonstrates the inappropriateness of the evaluation instruments. The risks and categories concerned have changed and are not or only partly reflected in the studies and statistics established. The deterioration in working conditions is focused on certain categories of workers, companies and new symptoms. There are five main reasons for this situation:
  the fragmentation of work and the increasing lack of job security;
  work is more intense;
  the out-sourcing of certain risks;
  the development of new technologies and new products;
  new means of organisation of work.

b. The political context The Lisbon employment summit in March 2000 established the objective of full employment through a strategy aimed at developing both the quantity and quality of employment. The Nice Council in December 2000 adopted a Social Agenda establishing the Community social policy for the next 5 years and which is an integral part of that strategy. The Stockholm employment summit in March 2001 consolidated that strategy, in particular in the area of lifelong learning. The forthcoming Belgian Presidency will place the emphasis on the quality of employment. It is therefore necessary that the Community strategy in the field of health and safety should be closely co-ordinated and integrated with this global strategy, by leaving the national and European public authorities ample room for maneouvre as regards initiatives, control and evaluation procedures, and by increasing the involvement of the social partners.

II. Six action goals

a. Promoting a better work environment Beyond the framework-directive, the Community policy in the field of health and safety has until now mainly been aimed at the removal of risks or hazards at the work place. The new programme should highlight the improvement of the work environment in order to better prevent risks such as stress or bullying or mobbing. The European Court judgement on the working time Directive created opportunities to establish new legislative and contractual requirements not only for better jobs but for jobs of better quality.

b. Evaluating, adapting and supplementing Community legislation Ten years after the transposition and application of the framework directive it is, in our view, important to review the progress achieved in implementing this directive and those which have been adopted subsequently in this area not just into national legislation but in practice at the work place level. This evaluation should focus on identifying the difficulties encountered in their implementation, checking whether an adaptation or additional legislation is necessary and examining how the social partners have been involved in the transposition process. This exercise should also allow identification of the necessary improvements to the directives, particularly concerning their aims on prevention and all workers being covered by information and consultation rights. But such an evaluation should not be any reason not to press ahead with new legislation or amendments. The CCHS should be a driving force in this evaluation process.

c. Reinforcing the involvement of the social partners to promote the quality of employment, improving the organisation of work and reducing social inequalities in the field of health Health and safety are key elements in the quality of employment, but they are also a way, through a good organisation of work and jobs, of improving access to employment and protecting jobs held by women, older workers, disabled people, etc. In particular, the ETUC believes that health and safety legislation and practices should be gender sensitive, rather than gender neutral. It is necessary to establish best practice benchmarks to be used to define convergence targets with an evaluation procedure. A health and safety policy should never be an exclusion policy but must, in the contrary, be a policy of adaptation, readaptation and rehabilitation leading to the development of disabled people employment. It is necessary to continue, by way of negotiations or legislation to regulate new forms of work, for example, the social partners played a key role in regulating part-time work and fixed-term contracts and the European Union must take the lead with regard to temporary work. It is primordial for the quality of the employment and health/safety of these workers to ensure equal treatment and good conditions preventing the abusive use of such contracts. As the two framework agreements signed assert “fixed-term contracts are and will continue to be the general form of work relations ... and contribute to the quality of life of the workers concerned and to an improvement in their level of performance”. The Community strategy in the area of health and safety must be co-ordinated with the Commission’s communication on the modernisation of the organisation of work. The role of the social partners is therefore fundamental in order to create the best possible working environment over and above their involvement in health and safety policy. In this context, the role of the social partners should be enhanced at European, national, industry and work place level. Union representation over health and safety should be extended to cover all workers, especially those in small firms. In recent years, we have noticed an increase in the social inequalities in the field of health, namely in terms of life expectation. A health and safety policy must contribute to the reduction of these inequalities.

d. Creating the right conditions for the accession of candidate countries in the field of Community “acquis” The Community “acquis” in the field of health and safety is important and requires providing specific means to the accession candidate countries and the active involvment of the social partners in those countries. The ETUC has long advocated that observers from the social partners in the candidate countries should be associated in the work of the CCHS. This must be made effective with the new programme. The Bratislava conference on the social dialogue in the accession candidate countries, organised by the ETUC, UNICE and the CEEP on 16 and 17 March 2001, emphasised the importance of supporting and consolidating the role of the social partners in the integration process.

e. Developing, harmonising and co-ordinating the means of action and evaluation and establishing new ways to promote and measure success It is necessary to achieve greater synergies and complementarity at national, European and international level. In particular at European level, the work of the Dublin Foundation and the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work in Bilbao must be co-ordinated and complementary, taking into account their specific missions. This should not substitute for the central role over policy of the CCHS and the Commission itself in matter of initiative and elaboration of the Community healh and safety policy.

f. Ensuring the complementarity and links between the responsibilities of the public authorities as regards standards, open co-ordination and the area of the social dialogue The role of the public authorities must remain at the heart of health and safety policy in order to ensure the effectiveness of the standards introduced and their consistency with other public health, environmental and internal market policies. The open co-ordination process in concertation with the social partners can help to achieve convergence between working conditions and protection situations and precise quantitative and qualitative objectives established on the basis of common indicators. The social dialogue must provide a way of ensuring the right conditions for employment. The trade unions must be provided with the necessary ressources to be able to participate more actively in European technical standardisation, according to subjects of interest to be determined by them.

III. Twelve priority proposals

a. Evaluating the results of the application of the directives, especially the framework directive. This evaluation must be completed in the first year of the implementation of the programme and discussed at a conference to be organised by the CCHS.

b. Adopting, before the end of 2002, a support programme for SMEs and the social partners of the SMEs on the implementation of the Community regulations, with the contribution of the European social partners and the interested groups of the CCHS, particularly by extending, on a multi-annual basis, the SME programme adopted by the European Parliament on the 2001 budget. Developing a pragmatic approach at sectoral and territorial levels.

c. Ensuring the adoption of legislative proposals already submitted to the European Council, revising and supplementing the regulatory provisions and ensuring their co-ordination with the Internal Market directives (maternity, noise, asbestos, musculo-skeletal disorders, physical risks, chemical and cancer-producing risks, stress, etc.).

d. Extending, before 2004, the scope of legislation in the field of the health and safety to self-employed people and to domestic workers.

e. Reinforcing immediately the participation of trade union experts in the process of fixing technical standards, according to the interest of workers.

f. Setting up in 2003 an minimal harmonization of the systems for the recognition of occupational illnesses.

g. Establishing a system to monitor on an ongoing basis working conditions and risks through closer co-operation and harmonisation between national and European institutions.

h. Establishing in 2002 common guidelines with concrete objectives, in accordance with the open co-ordination method, for the development of prevention services in order to improve employee protection to the level of the 3 best countries.

i. Developing a social dialogue at all levels on the organisation of work, by establishing guidelines at European, sectoral and cross-industry levels.

j. Setting up a four-year programme to provide support for accession candidate countries and the social partners in those countries on the integration of the Community “acquis” in the field of health and safety and the organisation of work.

k. Ratification by the Member states of the European Union of the ILO conventions 155 and 161 and their recognition in international trade agreements.

l. Reinforcing the role of the CCHS in accordance with the proposals put forward by the social partners in October and increasing the means of the Commission’s internal services.

The Executive Committee asks the Secretariat to prepare a European awareness Campaign on a theme of Trade Union action with the support of the TUTB and the ACHS Workers group.