The Business Confederation of the Valencian Community, CEV, has presented the study “Future of work and digitalization: challenges for the prevention of occupational hazards in the Valencian Community”, which analyzes how technological development impacts the business fabric of the Community and the role played by the Administration and collective bargaining in adapting the prevention of occupational hazards to the new challenges of the digital economy.
The regional secretary of Employment and general director of Labora, Enric Nomdedéu, has opened the presentation with Carmen Pleite, president of the Labor Relations Commission of the CEV, promoter of the study, which has insisted on the need to be “constant in the bet for investing in innovation and prevention of occupational hazards ”. “Our challenge is to implement and develop an entrepreneurial culture in digital and ambitious in the use of talent and technology through capacity building and the development of investments in the productive fabric while consolidating the preventive culture in companies at all levels and for all activity, ”he added.
The study offers a diagnosis of the current status of the legal and conventional framework in the Valencian Community in relation strictly to the prevention of occupational hazards, a matter especially affected by the technological and digital revolution whose relevance requires, as Pleite pointed out, “of the maximum efforts of all businessmen and their organizations and the complicity of the Administration in order to help all companies, especially SMEs, in their delicate transformation towards the digitalized company ”.
Recommendations and proposals
The preventive side of this phenomenon has been able to talk throughout the morning with Daniel Miñana, lawyer of Navarro & Associates and in charge of presenting the study, and with Arturo Cerveró, director of Labor Relations of the CEV, who has proposed a whole battery of measures, included in the report, to improve the regulatory framework and public policies, and which has highlighted the potential of collective agreements to design specific policies and measures in the field of occupational risk prevention capable of adapting to the speed of implementation of New technologies in companies.
Among the proposals to the Public Administrations are:
▪ Correct the existing regulatory dispersion in terms of occupational risk prevention and occupational health and safety. Avoid complex normative connections.
▪ Develop strategies and policies for early detection of new risks for occupational safety and health.
▪ Plan public aid to support investment in occupational risk prevention for SMEs.
▪ Establish training measures. Training in preventive culture, continuous learning and professional recycling, equality between men and women and dismantling of gender roles.
To the negotiating agents of collective agreements:
▪ Submit strategies and criteria for modulating the role of collective bargaining in occupational risk prevention to internal debate and reflection of employers' and trade union organizations.
▪ Improve the training and training of the representatives at the negotiating tables of the employers' and trade union organizations in the field of occupational risk prevention.
▪ Develop instruments for analysis, monitoring and evaluation of the incorporation of clauses regarding the prevention of occupational risks related to digitalization in collective bargaining.
▪ Adapt the validity of collective agreements to the speed of introduction and renewal of new technologies in the productive processes of each sector of activity. Management of the ultraactivity of collective agreements.
To employers and workers:
▪ Promote agreements of all the groups involved in order to generate a business awareness about prevention.
▪ Integrate the preventive culture as a strategic element in the company.
▪ Strengthen the information and training of workers, through the simplification of the contents in terms of occupational risk prevention.
▪ Apply technology to the assessment of the risks that workers face. Implementation of protocols that guarantee digital disconnection.
▪ Carry out a design, application and interpretation of occupational risk prevention systems with a gender perspective, as well as regulations on the subject.
▪ Adopt preventive measures to neutralize or eliminate the risks derived from the implementation of new technologies in business production processes.
▪ Adopt preventive measures to guarantee the prolongation of the working life of the elderly in safe conditions and maintaining high productivity standards.
Finally, Vicente Sanz, CONSUM staff development executive; Antonio Moreno, responsible for PRL of the FULTON Group, and César Taboas, responsible for R&D of the ROYO Group, have explained how they have adapted and implemented new technologies in the production processes of their companies and the impact they have had on the prevention of occupational hazards.
