Occupational safety and legal framework. The divorce?

Abstract

The debate turns around the following subject, the determination

criteria that must manage the organizational modalities of

prevention, covered by European Community legislation. More

accurately, if the famous Article 7 of the Framework Directive,

about labour risks prevention, imposes an order on hierarchical

organizational modalities for company’s employees’ designation.

This will materialize two positions:

• On the one hand, several European states defend that Prevention

Management should subcontract specialized outsource entities.

• On another hand, the European Commission maintains the position

that it is essential to integrate preventive management in the

companies’ activity; which means assuming prevention internally

and not "subcontracted."

• In this article we support the second position. Beyond the legal

considerations underlying this position, we think that it leads us to

a higher level of Prevention Management practices, and therefore

to better results for companies.

• Moreover, we intend to go deeper into the knowledge of the PM

practices and their relation with the integration of prevention in

the company’s activity. In any case it must be emphasized, as a

desirable element, in the controversy developed at European level

about how to undertake preventive management, that there

should be an analytic analysis reinforcing the positions held by the

European Commission.