- Minister Díaz signs the agreement with the unions, after nearly two years of negotiation
- Labor closes risk prevention negotiation without CEOE and will approve changes without going through Congress
The Ministry of Labor, CCOO, and UGT signed this Tuesday the agreement that will serve as the basis for the bill with which the Government seeks to change the Risk Prevention Law after three decades. The CEOE has not endorsed the text, which introduces risks related to mental health, age, climate change, or remote work to update the regulations.
This rule, which will have to be backed by a Congress of Deputies where it is doubtful it can count on a majority, will introduce new obligations for companies and employers regarding occupational health. The negotiators’ focus has been on mental health, as it is the problem that has increased the most in recent years, especially among younger workers, as reflected by temporary disability data.
The expectation is that this law will be accompanied by several regulatory developments agreed upon with the unions, which the Ministry of Labor could roll out without passing through the Lower House. One of them could deal exclusively with psychosocial risks, in order to force companies to include this variable in their prevention plan. In this framework, companies would have to evaluate how the conditions of the job position affect workers or how work is performed, if for example remote work is done, or how the working hours are distributed.
The Ministry of Labor is assessing the possibility of promoting these decrees in parallel with the law, without waiting for the legal text to potentially be struck down in Congress, as it can use the current regulation as support. This has also been requested by the unions, who consider it urgent to strengthen company controls and protocols to prevent 700 people from continuing to die each year at work.
The Government and the unions have also agreed to include age and “generational diversity” as a factor to be taken into account to ensure that the job position is adapted to the capabilities workers have as they age. There is also a commitment to include a gender perspective, both to measure whether risks could affect each gender differently and to review the impact of risks in the most heavily feminized professions, where they believe they have been underestimated until now.
Other aspects of the agreement, however, will have to wait for the reform of the law, such as the specific reference to psychosocial risks in the regulation or the creation of the role of regional prevention agents. This role was designed to reinforce the monitoring of occupational risks in companies with fewer than 10 workers that do not have legal worker representation. The idea is for unions and employers’ associations to choose these individuals in each autonomous community, serving as a reinforcement for the Labor Inspectorate. This already exists in Asturias, Navarre, or La Rioja.
The Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, has assured that this will be the most important law she promotes in the six years she has been leading the department, as it deals directly with workers’ health. In this regard, the second vice-president maintained that burnout or anxiety generated by work cannot be normalized, and that the change in work dynamics with the digital environment must be addressed in a new regulation.
Source: elEconomista