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Meeting of the Council for Work Safety in Construction
On 26 May 2009, yet another meeting of the Chief Labour
Inspector’s Council for Work Safety in Construction was held at the
seat of “Budowlani” Trade Union in Warsaw. Its major objective was
to develop framework rules of activity aimed at limiting and
eventually altogether eliminating fatal accidents on construction
sites.
The meeting was hosted by the chairman of “Budowlani” Trade Union
Zbigniew Janowski and chaired by Professor Michał Bołtryk.
It was attended by the Chief Labour Inspector Tadeusz Jan Zając,
Teresa Cabała – Director of Supervision and Inspection
Department, Krzysztof Kowalik – Director of Prevention and
Promotion Department, Janusz Niedziółka – District Labour
Inspector in Warsaw, as well as Józef Skorłutowski – member
of the Labour Protection Council. The meeting gathered a great many
representatives of employers and trade unionists, including chairmen
of district structures of “Budowlani” Trade Union throughout Poland
and presidents of large construction companies.
Zbigniew Janowski informed all that the Speaker of Polish Parliament
supports the initiative to hold a parliamentary debate on working
conditions and work safety in Poland still this year. Construction
entrepreneurs should become actively involved in preparing such a
debate. The chairman of “Budowlani” Trade Union and at the same time
the deputy chairman of the Council for Work Safety in Construction
also suggested separating a commission within the Council’s
structure – such a commission would periodically discuss particular
fatal accidents on construction sites.
– I would like to ask you to consider the possibility to analyse
causes of fatal and some serious accidents occurring in construction
– said Zbigniew Janowski – but from the perspective of prevention
and procedures to eliminate causes of such events. Such an approach
may bring us closer to the Community objective which assumes that
the number of accidents in construction will decrease.
Chief Labour Inspector Tadeusz Jan Zając positively referred to the
proposal of a parliamentary debate. He emphasised that a debate in
the Lower Chamber of Parliament is indispensable because without a
signal from the Parliament to the general public about the
significance of labour protection issues, especially in construction,
organizations dealing with improvement of working conditions in our
country would find it much more difficult to operate. A special
problem is to change employers’ and employees’ approach to issues of
work safety and health. The labour inspectorate seeks such ways of
activity which would be effective and meet the expectations of all
partners.
Teresa Cabała, Director of Supervision and Inspection Department at
the Chief Labour Inspectorate informed the participants about the
scale of the problem caused by accidents in construction. The data
is alarming: since 2006 a gradual increase in the number of persons
injured in work accidents in construction has been registered. In
the period 2007 -2008 the rate of growth in the overall number of
accidents in that branch was 12 percent and it was twice as high as
in the whole of economy.
A particularly disturbing phenomenon was the growth in the number of
fatal accident victims – from 92 persons in 2007 to 122 persons in
2008. At the same time the number of seriously injured fell by 42
individuals when compared to 2007.
On the basis of NLI’s observations and information provided by
employers it has been determined that the above-said situation is
connected with a huge outflow of workers from the Polish labour
market – those who were better trained and had developed habits of
safe behaviour at work. They have emigrated abroad to look for
better paid jobs.
Employers, bound by contracts and deadlines for completing
construction work, and therefore threatened with contractual fines,
were not prepared for such a situation. A lot of them engaged
unqualified workers or persons trained for other jobs than in
construction, e.g. bakers, graduates from gastronomic schools; this
resulted in performing work in a way creating hazard to health and
life of workers, and finally in increased accident rates. Although
they knew about it, some employers did not take effective actions in
order to increase supervision over unqualified workers.
“Proposal of solutions aimed at improving the effectiveness in
eliminating sources of accident hazards in construction”, prepared
by members of the Council and “Budowlani” Trade Union was presented
during the meeting. The written document was put to discussion. Its
participants agreed that they need time to refer to all suggestions
included in the “Proposal”. Therefore they will come back to this
subject at the next meeting of the Chief Labour Inspector’s Council
for Work Safety in Construction.
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