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27/10/2005.
The ETUI-REHS Health and Safety Department, in association with the Swedish trade union LO, hosted a seminar on work equipment safety in Prague at the end of September.
“The TUTB researched work equipment standards development and legislation for over ten years. We thought it time to take stock of the outcomes, our projects, and initiatives to be taken forward with the Workers’ Group of the Luxembourg Advisory Committee on Safety and Health”, explained Stefano Boy, researcher with the ETUI-REHS Health and Safety Department (former TUTB).
Designed as a forum rather than chalk-and-talk lectures, the seminar was an opportunity for swapping information and knowledge, and above all giving a lead to framing a new strategy and a future agenda.
That the meeting was held in Prague was anything but chance. “It was sending a message to the ten new Member States, because we know full well that taking on board the direct implications of standardisation on workers' health and safety is anything but plain sailing”, said the researcher.
All ten new members were represented, which is a result in itself.
This is because the unions must be responsive if the ETUI-REHS is to build up a trade union network able to bring actual workplace experiences and difficulties to bear on machinery design – i.e., using national work-face realities to inform the work of European standards developers. A dedicated trade union network on technical standardisation had already been floated by Enrico Gibellieri of the Italian trade union confederation CGIL at a 1998 TUTB conference. The ETUI-REHS’ researchers mean to use the outcomes of the Prague meeting as a first building block of that ambitious plan.
A memorandum is being written which will be discussed by the Workers Group of the Luxembourg Advisory Committee, then by the ETUC, which will have to argue it to the European Commission and the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN). The ETUI-REHS is hoping for Commission support to launch pilot projects in selected Member States.
What makes this an all-the-more pressing need is that a long series of work equipment standards are set for revision in the coming years.
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