"Like a blueprint": the circumstances of accidents at work are repeated from year to year

Today MINSK will host a republican seminar-meeting on compliance with legislation in labor protection. it was organized by the Federation of Trade Unions of Belarus and the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection. What problems do trade unions see in the field of labor protection? Who is to blame for the fact that workers get injured and die on the job? And what kind of help can those who have suffered as a result of an accident at work expect? On the eve of the meeting, BelTA discussed all these issues with the chief technical labor inspector of the Federation of Trade Unions of Belarus Pavel Manko.

- Pavel Nikolaevich, unfortunately, in the news bulletins, reports of deaths at work appear quite often. And, of course, every time it causes a resonance in society. How relevant is the problem in general for our country today?

- Last year, 132 people died as a result of industrial injuries. Over 1,700 more were seriously injured. If we carry out purely arithmetic calculations, it turns out that on average every three days a person dies as a result of an accident at work. And every day five people get seriously injured. Of course, if we compare the situation with industrial injuries in the early 2000s, the number of injuries has decreased. Even compared to last year, they have become somewhat smaller. But our position here is unequivocal: this should not be grounds for complacency. Like, there is a positive trend and okay. And in the practice of our work, unfortunately, we sometimes see such approaches in the field. Last year alone, we revealed more than 50,000 violations of labor protection legislation by employers.

- Are there any typical violations that lead to the tragedy?

- Unfortunately, often people do not learn from the mistakes of others. And from year to year, the circumstances of many accidents are repeated as a blueprint. When, for example, people fall from a height because they work without insurance. Or when the same construction sites are not equipped with the necessary protective fences. Also, almost every year, accidents are recorded during sowing or harvesting campaigns in agriculture, when people fall under working equipment. It is also alarming that the number of workers who died or were injured at work while intoxicated increased over the past year .

- Eternal questions: who is to blame and what to do about it?

- In almost every accident at work, the notorious human factor played its role: when either the official responsible for labor protection, or the employee himself, ignored or formally reacted to safety issues. To date, the legislation provides for liability for non-compliance with labor protection requirements both for officials and for the employees themselves. But as practice shows, so far these measures do not give the desired result. So we need to look for new solutions. And there are two approaches here. This is an increase in responsibility for violations and an increase in the motivation of both the employer and the employee.

Today we see that a good result in the prevention of industrial injuries is where the employer is interested and motivates, including financially, employees to comply with labor protection requirements. For example, at some enterprises, under a collective agreement, additional payments are provided for all employees if there are no violations of labor protection legislation and there are no injuries. In this case, people not only try to do everything according to the rules themselves, but also see that their colleagues follow them. Or, for example, in some agricultural organizations, under a collective agreement, employees are charged a certain food package for each day worked. But if an employee of one of the structural divisions allows a violation of labor or production discipline, then the entire team of this structural unit is deprived of this product set. This is the so-called collective responsibility.

- And if an employee is still injured at work, what kind of help from the trade union can he count on?

- Representatives of the trade union are involved in the investigation of all fatal and severe cases of industrial injuries. And first of all, we make sure that when establishing the causes of the tragedy, the rights of the employee are not violated. If we do not agree with the conclusions of the investigation, then we state our dissenting opinion and seek a review of the case. For example, in January 2022, an employee died in one of the DEUs in the Grodno region. The technical labor inspector of the trade union did not agree with the conclusions of the special investigation and expressed a dissenting opinion. It was taken into account. As a result, the widow of the deceased was able to receive additional payments.

The second important factor is that we are seeking the inclusion in collective agreements of a norm that obliges the employer to pay additional material assistance in the event of an injury to an employee. This is in excess of the stipulated mandatory insurance payments. For example, if a person died at work, then the employer must pay at least 10 of the employee's average annual earnings to his family. In case of injury, the amount of payments varies depending on how much the person has lost his ability to work. And, of course, we control in practice that the employer fulfills these obligations. There are situations when employers, under various pretexts, refuse to pay this money to the victims. Then we go to COURT with the person and seek justice. For example, last year we insisted that