The situation resulting from the COVID-19 epidemic raises, with greater vehemence, the need for safety and health at work and the services in this field.
The moment we are living shows, more clearly, the importance of compliance with all the rules relating to hygiene, health and safety at work. If now it is imperative that workers can return to their workplaces and that measures to prevent contagion are actually implemented, it is also imperative to ensure that other measures to prevent various diseases, occupational diseases and accidents at work are implemented by employers, not only today but also in the future, including the necessary medical examinations foreseen in the legislation.
This has always been a concern for PCP.
Workers have a constitutional right to work under conditions of hygiene, safety, and health; the employers are responsible for taking the measures that guarantee this right; and the State, particularly the Authority for Working Conditions (ACT) is responsible for effectively monitoring compliance and exercising punitive action when there is non-compliance, and not be an instrument of the State's divestment from its duty to enforce the law.
This has always been a concern for PCP.
In our view, work accidents, occupational diseases, and issues of safety and health at work closely tied with the existing working conditions: job insecurity, the imposed work rhythms and intensification or deregulation of working hours. On all these issues, PCP has intervened and fought to restore rights and guarantee better working conditions.
The right to safety, hygiene and health at work is a social right of workers, which requires respect for the right to physical integrity, the prevention of accidents, occupational diseases, work-related diseases and the promotion of health in the workplace.
In 2017, there were 209,390 work accidents and 140 fatal accidents. These numbers clearly indicate there is still much to be done to end these painful realities for workers and their families.
While work accidents are already tragic, the problems for injured workers are accentuated by poor social protection and lack of effective follow-up measures when returning to work.
There are many occupational diseases that are not yet classified as such. There are many diseases that don't lead to sick leave, such as stress, depression and anguish, and it is a a tremendous injustice that workers – victims of terrible working conditions, brutal work rhythms, discrimination at work, psychological terrorism – be classified as absentees.
And all of the above, PCP has stood alongside the workers and their struggles, making concrete proposals:
- a National Programme for the Prevention of Work Accidents and Occupational Diseases;
- Fair compensation in the event of a work accident or an occupational disease for Public Administration employees;
- Improvement in the social protection of injured workers, reviewing the regime of compensations for work accidents and occupational diseases and recalculating the benefits for assistance to third-parties granted to workers affected by the accident;
- Recognise the work of the National Association of the Disabled Injured at Work, with injured workers;
- Promote worker participation in safety and health matters at work.
We will continue to insist on all these matters – because reality demonstrates that we need to find answers to the problems that workers continue to face, all the more sharply in the present period.
Work accidents and occupational diseases are not inevitable. Guaranteeing employment with adequate rights and working conditions, combating deregulation of working hours and adopting concrete measures to prevent and combat occupational diseases and work accidents is essential to eradicate these situations.
And workers can and should participate and intervene on these matters.
The right of workers to participate in matters of safety and health at work is one of the most important achievements in guaranteeing and affirming the principle of the human dignity at work.
Consulting with and providing information to workers is particularly important.
Workers, trade unions and other representative structures, including the representatives of workers for safety and health at work, can intervene in the definition, development and implementation of safety and health at work. This participation is an essential building block to realize the right to work enshrined in the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic and in the Labour Law on matters of safety and health.
PCP will strive to see these rights are not forgotten and that they are actually enforced.
