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The European Trade Union Technical Bureau for Health and Safety (TUTB), set up by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) in 1989 to help raise health and safety at work standards in Europe, ceased to exist on 1 April this year. The TUTB has now merged with two other ETUC centres of expertise - the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) and the European Trade Union College (ETUCO) - to become the European Trade Union Institute for Research, Education and Health and Safety (ETUI-REHS). The three separate ETUC institutes have now become a single entity made up of three departments and 60 staff.
Commenting on the launch of the new institute, ETUC General Secretary John Monks hoped that it would "become the single best and most respected European knowledge and competence centre in relation to the world of labour".
"The new institute will provide the kind of research, expertise and support needed by decision-makers to maintain the impetus for Social Europe", said former TUTB Director Marc Sapir, who now heads the new centre. The ETUI-REHS director said he believed that the new ETUC institute "will promote international solidarity, justice and well-being by giving protection to workers both in the EU Member States and the countries preparing to join".
The new centre will bring together professional economic and social research expertise, engineering and ergonomic knowledge, and training activities that can make the new international not-for-profit organization a real asset for the European Union as a whole. "There are many overlaps between these areas of knowledge which, when united in one organization, will bring a real value-added to the work of our movement", said John Monks.
The TUTB may have gone, but the vast field of health and safety at work, which is key to workers' rights, has not been abandoned. The staff of the late TUTB, including its research officers and director, will carry on its studies and publishing activities in the new institute's health and safety department, and will continue providing expertise to support the trade union members of the European institutions involved in these areas, and ETUC member organizations.
Over the fifteen years of its existence, the TUTB was involved in a wide range of areas, from the safety of machinery to cancer prevention, from ergonomics to the working of preventive services, from policy debates in the European Parliament to support for trade union reps in works councils. At all times, the TUTB's staff consistently argued that workplace health problems were not just the secondary technical matters that some claimed, but actually supremely political issues that reflects how we see society. At a time when challenging European debates, like the reform of European chemicals legislation, are moving into their critical phase, the new European Trade Union Institute's health and safety department means to continue its fight as part of a body with more clout, for a Community health at work policy that is more aware of workers' and citizen's rights.
More information:
Head of Information, ETUI-REHS Health and Safety Department
Tel.: + 32 2 224 05 52
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