New rules on health and safety consultation

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New regulations came into force in Poland in 2004 obliging employers to consult with employees or their representatives on all action relating to health and safety at work.

New rules introduced in early 2004 oblige employers to consult with employees or their representatives on all action connected with health and safety undertaken within the enterprise. Connected with this consultation, workers have the rights to:

• present the employer with a demand for the elimination or restriction of occupational hazards;

• in cases of life- or health-threatening working conditions, ask labour inspectors to conduct an audit and apply legal measures provided by the National Labour Inspectorate (Państwowa Inspekcja Pracy, PIP) regulations;

• remuneration for time off work due to involvement in consultations; and

• protection against any disadvantage arising from involvement in the consultation process.

All employers are obliged to consult on health and safety issues, irrespective of workforce size or type of operations. Employers with more than 250 workers have health and safety committees and the required consultations can be conducted within these bodies.

The scope of the required health and safety consultations is very wide and includes such matters as:

• changes in work organisation and workplace equipment, and introduction of new technologies;

• the assessment of occupational hazards and information to workers about these risks;

• the establishment of a health and safety service or the external commissioning of such a service, and appointing employees responsible for first aid; and

• employee training with respect to health and safety.

The legislation aims to ensure that employees are directly engaged in health and safety consultations. Where employee representatives are involved. they are appointed by the workplace trade unions or, if there are no unions, elected by employees. The mode of consultation is not formalised, and should be defined autonomously by the parties. An employer can conduct consultations with every employee individually or during collective staff meetings .

The consultations with employees do not deprive an employer of the possibility to take the final decisions on health and safety. Nevertheless, some employers consider this obligation as a restriction, representing an additional and unnecessary burden.

PIP surveys show that the number of accidents at work has been more or less the same for several years, with a very slight downward tendency (PL0210101N). However, around two-thirds of accidents at work result from insufficient knowledge and experience among both employers and employees, and experts thus believe that top priority should be given to the creation of systematic solutions with respect to health and safety.

In the opinion of experts, there are two basic threats to the observance of health and safety rules in Poland. One is the context of high unemployment, which encourages workers to accept disadvantageous working conditions in order to preserve their jobs. The other is changes occurring on the labour market, and most of all the increase in 'atypical' forms of employment (part-time employment, self-employment and temporary jobs) and changes with respect to the organisation of work, especially as regards the outsourcing of dangerous tasks to external companies or workers, and difficulties in giving proper training to those performing such work. There is an increasing number of small and medium-sized enterprises, in which the working conditions are inadequate in terms of health and safety rules. PIP surveys show that there is a low level of health and safety in small enterprises. In many inspected companies, workers have not been informed of the risks they could face during the work they perform.