Labour Protection: Lack of Preventive Measures and Occupational Safety
The purpose of labour protection in general can be defined as protecting life and health at work in order to make the work more humane and to correspondingly improve the working environment. Labour protection should be applied to all industries such as mining, manufacturing, agriculture and public services, and also cover part-time and subcontracted work. It is the duty of employers to observe risk prevention principles, and the duty of employees to participate in work protection measures; employees should additionally have the right to refuse to work under hazardous circumstances. Work- related medical care should be supported by work safety professionals, and work safety agencies and statutory accident insurance should cooperate in monitoring tasks (see Universum Verlagsanstalt 1993:73).
Lack of work protection is reported by slightly over half of the accident victims who filled out hospital visit forms between 2003 and 2010 (table 6). Overall, 46.9 per cent of respondents stated that their enterprises provided labour protection equipment (50.9 per cent responded that labour protection equipment did not exist, and 2.2 per
cent answered “do not know”). A comparison over the years appears to show that the proportion of workers receiving safety equipment has gradually increased, but the progression is very unstable, beginning with 35.1 per cent in 2003, reaching 61.8 in
2006, then declining to 44.5 in 2007, and finally reaching around 50 per cent in 2010.