What’s new in the field of occupational health and safety prevention
Speech by Alessandra Servidori, professor of labor policies, member of the Steering Council for programmatic activity in the field of economic policy coordination at the presidency of the Council
The amendments to law 215/2021 which brings substantial changes to TU 81/2008 in the field of health andsafety at work prevention – in particular due to the effects of a sentence of the Criminal Court of Cassation which oriented towards the novelty of a collaborative attitude in the community company – are particularly interesting in anticipation of a State Regions Agreement which must be published by 30 June 2022.
The law highlights the obligations of the basic triad of security guarantors: employer, managers, supervisors.
Unfortunately, the new rules do not deal with the SRP (Risk Protection Prevention Service) and the Rspp (Protection and Prevention Service Manager), limiting themselves to evoking that serious violation intended to impose the suspension of entrepreneurial activity pursuant to Article 14 and Legislative Decree 81/2008 for failure to establish the service and appointment of the relative manager. But the manager is also called upon to play a fundamental role in fulfilling the new regulation, especially in matters of supervision and training, and everything will be established by the Agreement.
Basically, the new regulation is ambiguous on the role and tasks of the Manager (Rspp) who has a consultative role, that is, a direct help function not to replace the employer in the training and information practices of employees. If a person who is part of the Sppr agrees to carry out an operational task as required by the new regulation 215/2021 or to identify the persons in charge, i.e. their training (unfortunately often used as a practice), then – if he has accepted – he will be called to respond both as an advisory and operational role. Basically, the managers and employees of the company prevention and protection services are often loaded with operational tasks in addition to the other tasks and this creates dysfunctions on the distortion of the SPRR so the rule must be corrected by adding a specific clarification. The appointment of a manager or employee of the prevention and protection service is incompatible with the exercise of operational functions within the company.
Everything is to see what the contents and methods of mandatory training of the employer will be outlined in the State Regions Agreement and we hope not to be faced with the possibility that he does not do training because it is the employer who must not delegate to the evaluation. of risks and therefore is also trained on the DVR (Risk Assessment Document) thus identifying the measures himself so that the maximum possible safety is achieved.
The Agreement must guarantee: the duration, the minimum contents and the modalities of the compulsory training to be paid by the employer; the methods of the final compulsory learning test for learners of all compulsory training and refresher courses in the field of health and safety at work and the methods of verification of the effectiveness of training during the performance of work.
It is therefore a sort of single text on safety training, in order to have an organic body of legislation on the subject. Compared to the current regulations, the mandatory final learning test for participants in all training and refresher courses should be noted as positive news (at the moment it is not foreseen for the training of workers, nor for refresher courses of workers, supervisors and managers), as well as a verification of the effectiveness of the training provided, which in my opinion could preferably be entrusted to joint bodies, for example by issuing a specific certificate / certification of the quality of the training carried out. Establishing the criteria with which to operate a timely follow-up of the training provided is not easy and requires specialized skills. The involvement of the joint bodies, expression of the parties – workers and companies – directly concerned, as already provided for the training of workers and Rls, is justified for the purpose of operating a constant monitoring of the training courses as well as of the providers, for the which specific accreditation would be needed.
As a consequence of the increased powers of the person in charge, more stringent provisions are finally dictated, however, immediately operational, for the training of this figure. The new paragraph 7-ter, of art. 37, of the d. lgs. n. 81/2008, in fact, establishes that "to ensure the adequacy and specificity of the training as well as the periodic updating of the persons in charge …., the related training activities must be carried out entirely in person and must be repeated at least every two years and in any case whenever it is necessary due to the evolution of risks or the emergence of new risks ". This means that – unlike the regulations in force up to now – the entire training module, of at least 8 hours, as well as the minimum update of 6 hours, for the person in charge, must be carried out in the presence (the last Agreement adopted at the State Conference – Regions, on 21 December 2011, on the other hand, provides that a large part of the contents of the training for those in charge as well as the entire refresher course can be provided in e-learning mode); on the other hand, the frequency of the periodic updating for the supervisors is reduced from 5 to 2 years (or even shorter periods if necessary due to the evolution of risks or the emergence of new risks).
The violation of the new training obligations for the supervisors is sanctioned by the employer and the managers with arrest from 2 to 4 months or with a fine from 1,474, 21 to 6,388.23 euros. In short, a real training for everyone and perhaps we will have much fewer white deaths at work.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/cosa-ce-di-nuovo-in-materia-di-prevenzione-salute-e-sicurezza-sul-lavoro/ on Fri, 20 May 2022 07:49:47 +0000.