Experts say

occupational Safety and Health
Yesterday in Moscow at the All-Russian Exhibition Center the three-day international congress “Occupational Safety and Health”, which opened on November 13 and organized by the Ministry of Labor, continued its work. From the very beginning it became clear that we do not have any labor protection, because it is unprofitable.
The latest law “On the Fundamentals of Labor Safety in the Russian Federation” was adopted on July 17, 1999. According to this document, in enterprises employing more than 100 people, an occupational safety service must be created or the position of an occupational safety specialist must be introduced. If there are 100 employees or less, the employer has the right to limit itself to concluding an agreement with specialists or organizations providing services in the field of labor protection.
The congress brought together specialists from 46 federal subjects. According to Deputy Minister Konstantin Laikam, 150 thousand people were injured at work last year, 34 thousand of them were women. 7 thousand people fell ill with occupational diseases, and 6 thousand died. 20% of accidents are associated with faulty outdated equipment, and one in ten deaths is due to poor discipline. For 150 thousand victims, only 1.5 thousand criminal cases were opened, 150 people were convicted, and managers actually did not bear responsibility for the death of workers, because the State Labor Safety Inspectorate was completely confused in the regulations. The chief state labor safety inspector Igor Vorobyov told the audience about this. “For example, the acts regulating the processing of fish products are a book eight centimeters thick,” complained the chief inspector. But the most important thing is that all these acts do not say how much money per year the employer must, in accordance with the law, allocate for labor protection. And the employer, naturally, does not allocate at all.
Mr. Laikam said that with the adoption of the new Labor Code, the government now has “a lever of influence on employers, which will force them to modernize production and thereby increase labor safety.” We are talking about a mechanism of discounts and allowances, according to which an enterprise where there are no accidents receives certain benefits. However, as Sergei Ovsyannikov, chief occupational safety specialist at the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy, explained to a Kommersant correspondent, this mechanism does not work. By law, every enterprise is required to insure its employees with a state insurance company. And every year, pay money for them to the Social Insurance Fund. If no accidents occurred at the enterprise during the year, then the fund returns 40% of the money to it. But according to the law, this money can only be spent on medical care for workers, purchasing vouchers, certifying equipment and purchasing instruments for this certification.

SERGEY Kommersant-SYROV

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 207 dated November 15, 2002, p. 8

Working in Russia is dangerous