“I don’t mind working, but I do mind dying.” This slogan comes from the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, whose members protested, among other things, against the dangers of working on the assembly lines of America’s automobile industry in the late 1960s.
Their saying perfectly illustrates just how important health and safety policies are for workers and unions. For too many and for too long, the role played by employee representatives in fostering safe and healthy workplaces was largely invisible. Covid-19 has changed that. Coping with the pandemic has put the protection of workers’ health and safety at the centre of public attention. For essential workers who continued to work while the coronavirus swept across the world, and for those workers returning to work under heightened protection measures, health and safety representatives, works councils and trade unions are playing a pivotal role in creating and maintaining healthy workplaces.
Why? Because employees and their representatives have more direct knowledge about the daily risks at work than management does. Their tacit knowledge of what the ‘real work’ involves can contribute to sound decision-making when it comes to protecting workers from hazards. Involving employees also means they will better understand and support the measures taken. Workers’ representatives ensure that the adherence to rules and procedures can be better monitored and management held accountable for their responsibilities towards the workforce.
For all these reasons, European legislation requires employee involvement in almost all aspects related to occupational health and safety (OSH). It has long been recognised that workers’ participation must play a key role in the development and implementation of health and safety policies.
Since the 1970s, workers in the European Union have held wide-ranging rights to information and consultation on health and safety issues, and with good reason. The positive impact of worker participation, employee involvement or democracy at work through better health and safety policies is reflected in data of the Third European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks (ESENER 3) published by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work in 2020.
First of all, those companies that have a form of employee representation and those companies that have an OSH representative (and moreover one who is selected by the employees) are more likely to have regular risk assessments done in their workplace. According to the 2019 ESENER survey, about 70 per cent of companies without employee representation carry out regular risk assessments, compared to over 85 per cent of companies with a representative structure.
Better risk assessments and prevention policies
The same pattern is visible when it comes to the presence of an OSH representative. Of those companies that have no such representative, about 63 per cent conduct regular risk assessments. Where there is a management-selected OSH representative, the proportion is 83 per cent, and where there is an employee-selected representative it is almost 90 per cent.
Not only is the assessment of risks better in companies with employee representation and/or employee-elected health and safety representatives, but prevention policies are also better developed. Regarding health risks, the 2019 ESENER survey asked respondents whether or not the following measures were taken: provision of equipment to help with moving heavy loads, rotating tasks to reduce repetitive work, encouraging breaks, provision of ergonomic equipment, and reduction of working time for people with health problems.
On average, companies with employee representation take more of these preventive measures than do companies without such structures (about three measures versus fewer than 2.5). The same pattern is visible with regards to the presence of a health and safety representative who is elected by the workforce.
With respect to psycho-social risks, the survey also asked whether or not the following preventive measures were taken: reorganisation of work to reduce job demands, provision of confidential counselling for employees, provision of training on conflict resolution, intervention where there are excessively long or irregular working hours, and more autonomy given to employees to make decisions about their own jobs. Companies with an employee representation structure tend to introduce more of such preventive measures (an average of 2.5) compared to those without employee representation (about two).
Similarly, companies with no OSH representative tend to introduce fewer than two of such preventive measures compared to just under 2.5 on average for companies with employee- or management-selected OSH representatives.
Obviously, part of the difference could be related to other factors such as company size. Larger companies might be more likely to have a representation structure and also better-developed health and safety policies. However, even in multivariate logit models controlled for other variables such as country of origin, company size and sector of the company, the differences remain significant.
We can thus conclude that the survey data shows that there is indeed a positive correlation between democracy at work, having effective health and safety policies in workplaces, companies that both identify and prevent or mitigate risks, and the involvement of workers.
Covid-19 evidently posed new risks to workers’ health, on top of the risks already known and addressed. The Global Trade Union Federations rightfully called for Covid-19 to be recognised as an occupational disease and the European Trade Union Confederation managed to push for it to be included as such in an existing piece of legislation.
Apart from legislation, democracy at work is key. The presence of employee representation serves as a booster for professional and high-quality health and safety polices, much needed in these pandemic times. Democracy at work for more pandemic-resilient workplaces.
