Statoquotidiano.it, 01 May 2024 – Cerignola. The Church also has the issue of safety in the workplace at heart.
Yesterday, in fact, an interesting conference entitled “Safety at work” was held in the Episcopal Curia – John Paul II hall – within the VII Diocesan Social Week, in preparation for the National Social Week which will take place in Trieste from 3 to July 7th next.
Attendees at the meeting, Nicola Gadaleta, CGIL provincial safety manager; Leonardo Piacquaddio, Provincial Secretary CISL Foggia.
To moderate, the lawyer Donatella Pernain a debate in whose conclusions the intervention of Don Pasquale Cotugno who highlighted the need for: “Cohesive actions between the various social subjects and between the trade unions in the area. At every level, local, regional, national. Because only in this way is it possible to find strategies together to create processes for carrying out good practices”.
In her introductory words, the moderator highlighted how the issue of work has been addressed by the Church since its first social encyclicals which, over time, it has produced for the definition of its own social doctrine.
“Social doctrine” so Donatella Perna “which constitutes itself as an essential and almost ontological part of the mission of the Church, of its existence and its mission.
Without social doctrine we probably wouldn’t have a Church that promotes itself as an instrument of salvation for Creation and for man.”
Donatella Perna then turned her attention to a whole series of initiatives and messages on the meaning and importance of workers deriving from the social doctrine of the Church, to the point of highlighting a sort of link and meeting points between the references on the topic coming from the Church itself and the legal norms formulated in this regard over the years by political and legal bodies.
Thus, while the Church was recognizing meaning in the social dignity of workers, the political world was defining from time to time rules to protect workers and good practices in carrying out the working day.
Main innovations brought by legal legislation on work over time highlighted by Donatella Perna: the importance of knowing the working environment by carrying out an analysis of the same and the need to formulate a risk assessment document within a working environment precisely with the aim of preventing accidents.
“The regulatory framework” the moderator then pointed out “It has progressed, yet it has failed to stop workplace deaths.”
It therefore remains important that the social policies of the various subjects involved and also of the church are still committed, as highlighted in his encyclical “Fratelli tutti” by Pope Francis, who, as Perna recalled in his presentation, “In such encyclical stated that the labor policies to be adopted at every level of administration must take into account that there is no worse poverty than that which is without work”.
It was then brought to the attention of the audience also the content of the last message published by the Italian bishops for this year’s Labor Day, entitled “Work for participation and democracy”, signed by the Episcopal Commission for social problems and work, justice and peace.
In this message, the lawyer Donatella Perna underlined: “The bishops tell us that workers’ organizations are called to be guarantors of workers’ conditions, and, furthermore, that workers themselves are also called to plan together with employers strategies and good practices that guarantee safety in the workplace”.
So here’s the call main point that emerged during the conference: It is necessary to invest in planning, training and innovation.
So what are the unions’ proposals in this regard? was the request that the moderator addressed to the trade union representatives who attended the Conference.
The CGIL manager brought attention to the reason for ensuring safety at work, highlighting how the lack of care for workers’ conditions often leads to too high social costs; but, above all, because we are still witnessing a very high trend in terms of reports of deaths at work.
“The problem” according to Gadaleta “is that there is still a lack of awareness of the risks. Those who go to work, on the other hand, always have to deal with risks”
The data set out by the CGIL manager in this regard are alarming: “In 2023 there were at least 15 deaths due to workplace accidents in the province of Foggia and around 4,000 accident reports with an average of 12 per day”.
It should therefore be remembered, according to Gadaleta, that, according to article 2087 of the Civil Code in force in Italy, the entrepreneur is obliged to protect his workers.
The trade unionist’s emphasis was therefore expressed in these terms: “We ask for a new pact for safety in the workplace which aims to define a real synergy between employers and employees”.
Lack of safety actually involves very high costs today, over 45 billion a year, as Gadaleta highlighted: “But” in his words “there is a system that needs to be changed. The repressive system doesn’t work. It must be done recover the dialogue between employers, workers and the social world. Work safety management systems are not yet sufficiently widespread”.
The requests of the CGIL manager were therefore the following: “the DURC-SSL (i.e. SINGLE DOCUMENT OF CONTRIBUTION REGULARITY for the safety of workers, ed.) it must become mandatory; the application of the CCNL in subcontracting must also be practiced for private individuals; we need to better regulate driving licenses based on points and not credit and extend the requirement for identification cards; never go to work without training. But we are against e-learning training. No to the risk assessment document made only by the employer. We must strengthen vigilance. Even the Local health authorities must be appropriately trained.
There are sanctions but even today they have no particular effects, that is, they are not fully applied.
No company should not have a worker safety manager. We ask that the competent doctor enjoy greater autonomy compared to the employer”.
Conclusion by Nicola Gadaleta: “We must think about the worker in a more complex way, about his all-round health, not only in relation to safety in the workplace, according to the perspective of total worker health”.
There are too many accidents at work also for Leonardo Piacquaddio: “There have been 670 accidents at work in the last six months. In 2021, a 20% increase in workplace injuries was recorded compared to 2020.”
Therefore necessary for the provincial secretary CISL: “introduce the culture of safety at work even in small situations of domestic use, by having systems brought up to standard”.
Furthermore, according to Piacquaddio, “A whole series of contributing factors act in work systems” to the detriment of worker safety: “for many you need to be quick, but you can remain on the market while taking care of safety. Sometimes the concept that we need to put the papers in order passes by, but in many cases it happened that the employees of the parent company had more in-depth documentation than the employees of third-party companies, as if to say that the risk was minimized for the latter, despite doing the same job, while perhaps for the former it was normalized”. Instead, workers’ safety managers should be established, required by law, and anomalies in the area should always be reported, underlined Piacquaddio who also highlighted how today “There is still a certain cultural poverty on the subject of safety. Instead, they must arise in our awareness of fixed points.
Too many companies do not send their workers to training.
We must raise everyone’s awareness of being bearers of a good work culture. And schools must also make a qualitative leap in defining PCTOs.”
7 therefore, the provincial secretary announced, the points established by the CISL on the topic of safety in the workplace: establish a qualification system for companies; define training obligations in the workplace; provide the same rules as in the public sector in the private sector; draw from the INAIL budget to train workers; strengthen the supervisory orders staff; guarantee the presence of a Worker Safety Manager in each company; support those who want to report wrongdoing at work; promote and intensify interventions of a negotia- tive and contractual nature (agreements, protocols, pacts, contracts…) as tools to decline prevention measures and procedures in a targeted and specific way.
At the conclusions of the conference, the lawyer Perna finally pointed out the urgency of putting in place “greater control, regardless of who operates and the duration of the activity, to avoid the creation of free zones of non-compliance with what are the rules and good practices for the safety and protection of workers”.
