New Aspects of European Integration: Corporate Social Responsibility, Social Dialogue and the Workin

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New Aspects of European Integration Corporate
Social Responsibility, Social Dialogue and the
Working Environment in the Baltic States An
Interdisciplinary Approach

• Seminar 3 The Working Environment

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Health and Safety in European law

• Article 118A of the Treaty of Rome (incorporated
  as Article 137 of the Amsterdam -Treaty- the
  Commission with the Member States will develop
  clearly defined policy on prevention of
  occupational accidents and diseases.
• An issue of quality of life, of efficiency and
  productivity and also the prevention of
  distortion of competition. Costs of accidents and
  ill-health arising from work estimated between
  2.8 and 3.6 of member states GDP.

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Key Directives and measures

• Key instrument Framework Directive 89/391/EEC
  which contains basic provisions regarding the
  organisation of health and safety at work and the
  responsibilities of employers and workers.
  Subsequent legislation protects workers form
  risks related to exposure to chemical, physical
  and biological agents at work with specific
  directives on harmful substances such as
  asbestos.
• Directive on the organisation of working time
  (93/104/EC), plus further Working conditions
  measures regarding protection of pregnant women,
  young people at work and the posting of workers.

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Fatalities at Work 2001-2002
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Workplace Fatal Accidents
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• Fatal and Heavy Injuries Lithuania,1997-2003

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Fatal Accidents, Latvia 1997-2001
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In Latvia in 2003, the highest number of
accidents at work by sector occurred in
wood-pulp, timber and cork production (16 of all
accidents), construction (10.9) and food and
beverage production (10).
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Fatal and All reported Injuries Estonia,1997-2002
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First Survey of Working Environment in the
Accession and Candidate Countries

• European Foundation for the Improvement of Living
  and Working Conditions (2002)

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Health affected by work Q31c1 No, it does not
affect my health
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Different ways health is affectedQ31c 2-7
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Different ways health is affectedQ31c 8-12
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Different ways health is affectedQ31c 13-17
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Different ways health is affectedQ31c 18-20
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European Foundation for the Improvement of Living
and Working Conditions Survey of Working
Conditions (2002)

• Workers more in Accession States more exposed to
  vibrations, noise, heat, air pollution, and, to a
  lesser degree, to working in painful or tiring
  positions, than in the EU
• Working hours are considerably longer than in the
  EU
• Atypical forms of work such as night work or
  shift work are more widespread.

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Working Conditions Survey

• Information/consultation less well developed in
  the acceding and candidate countries than in the
  EU, especially regarding organisational changes
• 40 report in ACC that their work negatively
  affects their health or safety (compared to 27
  in existing EU states)
• Estonia at 77.9, Lithuania at 76.0 and Latvia
  at 78.4 score highest when it comes to
  disagreeing with the statement that work does
  not affect my health, compared to a candidate
  country average of 69.0.

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Work Environment in the Baltic States

• Levels of reported fatigue are significant in all
  three Baltic countries. Lithuanian (45) and
  Estonian employees (46) report harmful fatigue
  levels roughly twice as high as the EU average
  (23).
• Work-related skin, vision, sleep and allergy
  problems, Estonia comes highest for the CEE
  countries, again followed by Lithuania.

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• Reported work-related anxiety, Estonia (19.4) is
  to of the score followed by Latvia (12.3) and
  Lithuania (12.2), (again roughly comparable to
  Bulgaria at 13.3) compared to the average
  reported level of 4.5 for the Candidate
  Countries as a whole.
• Reported trauma (emotional distress) resulting
  from workplace abuse, Baltic States register
  three to nearly five times average levels (2.2)
  for the Candidate Countries, with Estonia at
  6.6, Lithuania at 10.5 and Latvia at 9.3 of
  respondents (European Foundation, 2002).

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Source Working Life Barometer in the Baltic
Countries (Antilla and Ylostalo, 2003)
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Source Working Life Barometer in the Baltic
Countries (Antilla and Ylostalo, 2003)
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Findings

• In all the Baltic countries, a little under half
  the wage earners would like to agree on work
  safety and health issues within the workplace,
  together with co-workers.
• some degree of support for centralised,
  national-level union agreements
• workforce support for more active effort by the
  trade unions in this respect.

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Findings

• Work intensity is felt to be too high by a
  significant percentage of employees (33-43)
• Mental stress at work is increasing among
  employees (40-48)
• Physical stress at work is increasing among
  employees (37-40)
• Three quarters of employees felt safety had not
  improved
• Significant inter-country and inter-sectoral
  differences in of employees who felt they could
  complain about working conditions

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Social dialogue and Working Environment An
empirical study
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The Lithuania Enterprise Survey(Woolfson, Beck
and Sceponavicius 2001)

• Conducted in co-operation with the State Labour
  Inspectorate
• National survey of over 5000 employees
• 30 enterprises of which 20 were SMEs
• Key focus on employee attitudes towards
• - OHS issues in the enterprise
• - Safety committees and/or trade unions

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Most feared aspect of work
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Key Findings

• While safety committees exist in all enterprises
  of over 50 persons, more than three quarters of
  Lithuanian employees do not have any voice in
  safety and health at the workplace.
• Of those enterprises which do have safety
  committees no more than one third of workers know
  anything about what these committees actually do.
  

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Key Findings

• While foreign owned firms appeared to do
  significantly better on all areas of health and
  safety there appeared not to be a cascading of
  best practice from these companies to Lithuanian
  owned enterprises.
• Fear of unemployment is seen as the greatest
  threat by most Lithuanian workers (47-61.8 of
  those surveyed) while concerns over occupational
  illness were less regarded (17.1 - 20.9).

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Key Findings

• Attitudes to risk remain wedded to the past with
  workers strongly favouring extra pay for
  hazardous work (61.1-91.1). This is seen as
  making up for poor wages.
• Modern ideas of risk assessment and controlling
  risk at source need to be further developed as
  well as more support for the development of
  social dialogue in smaller and medium sized
  enterprises.

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Key Findings

• Trade unions could play a much bigger role in
  providing independent safety and health advice
  but they need support. Under 20 of workers get
  safety guidance from trade unions.
• However, there seems to be strong underlying
  support for trade unions to play a greater role
  in enterprises. Half to two thirds of workers
  felt that trade unions were too weak on the one
  hand but a necessary protection for employees
  in the workplace (50-63).

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Source Emor Work Environment Survey Estonia
(2000)

• In more than a half of the companies no working
  environment representative, trustee, working
  environment specialist or working environment
  council operates
• In 81 of companies with less than 10 employees
  there is no person/council who follows or
  analyzes working environment
• In 38 of companies with 10-49 employees no
  person
• In 19 of companies with 50-149 employees no
  person
• Only 3 of companies with more than 150 employees
  do not have corresponding specialist or council.

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To whom employees turn with their problems
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Source Working Environment Study Estonia (Emor,
2000)
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IDENTIFIED RISK FACTORS IN ESTONIA

• primary sector employees' assessments physical
  load (49), noise (27), vibration and
  temperature (23) - in total, on average 2,12
  different health endangering factors were
  mentioned by every working person
• industrial-'/power engineering' employees noise
  (53), dust (49) and imperfect ventilation
  (35) in total, on average were mentioned 3,16
  factors
• construction companies dust (57), noise (47)
  and physical load (39) - in total, 2,96 factors
  
• transportation-warehousing-communication field
  physical load (39), mental stress (38), noise
  (37) and vibration (37) - in total 3,03
  factors.
• trade companies mental stress (39), temperature
  (33), imperfect ventilation (18) - in total 1,9
  risk factors
• business- and personal service field mental
  stress (42), imperfect ventilation (21), forced
  position-monotonous (18) - in total 1,54 risk
  factors
• education, health-, culture institutions and
  state and local authorities mental stress (58),
  lightening, temperature, dust and forced position
  problems (all 17) - in total, on average 1,96
  risk factors per every respondent, who works in
  that field.

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Social dialogue and health and safety in the new
member states

• Employers have focused on profitability
• Workers have prioritized employment security and
  wages over health and safety.
• Even where safety representatives exist - low
  level of workforce awareness of their functions
  and powers
• No real degree of workforce involvement,
  particularly in small and medium sized
  establishments
• Trade unions very weak in health and safety
  issues and unable to meet employers on equal
  terms in real dialogue

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Employee voice

• Key importance of safety auditing from below
• Workers have everyday practical knowledge of risk
  
• we need to capture this knowledge in the process
  of risk assessment
• Suppression of worker voice creates conditions
  for unsafe working environment

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The business case for safety and health Good
health and safety good business?

• An unproven and inapplicable theorem in the
  context of new member states
• Marginal costs of substitution (recruitment,
  training and discipline costs of new workforce)
  outweigh the benefits for the individual
  enterprise (low costs of replacement of injured
  or ill workers)
• Enterprises able to externalise costs of worker
  ill-health and injury to national social
  insurance systems (no realistic charges for
  rehabilitation services by national health
  systems)
• Enterprises able to externalise costs of worker
  ill-health and injury to individual workers and
  their families (no developed system of personal
  injury litigation)
• Insurance premiums not related to company record
  on safety and health, and implementation of
  advanced occupational health and safety
  management programmes
• Financial sanctions for safety and health
  regulation violations are insufficiently large to
  impact of enterprise profitability
• Low reputational costs for business - no naming
  and shaming of offenders, transparency through
  social and environmental auditing (CSR), ongoing
  scrutiny by civil society actors (eg trade
  unions, health and safety campaign organisations,
  environmental NGOs)
• No criminalisation of corporate body and/or
  possible custodial sentencing of individual
  company officers under corporate killing
  legislation

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Barriers to improving working environment in the
new member states

• Regulatory authorities in new member states may
  be subject to post-accession regulatory fatigue
  and depletion of capacities
• Support among new member state business and
  political elites for European labour protection
  regulation, especially in the area of OHS, is
  limited (absence of reform fit)

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• External agencies (IMF) appear to favour
  deregulation and differentiated standards of OHS
• Washington-based Cato Institute
• over-regulation of conditions of employment
  will diminish the comparative advantage that CEE
  workers enjoy over their more highly paid western
  counterparts

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• EU criticized because it rejects the
  possibility of different levels of safety and
  health protection of labour within the Union
• EU criticized because it advocates the need to
  harmonize health and safety standards
  irrespective of the different needs of the member
  states (Cato Institute, 2003)

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Estonian Employers Confederation (2004)

• EU labour law is in some parts overregulated and
  that the minimum standards have been set too
  high.
• Without underestimating the necessity for the
  regulation of occupational health and safety, the
  Employers' Confederation regards that the
  compulsory expenses of the employer related to
  occupational health and safety are
  disproportionately large in small businesses
  compared to large businesses
• The Employers' Confederation will make a
  proposition to the Government for reviewing the
  composition of obligations set for micro and
  small businesses in relation to the work
  environment with a view of maintaining only the
  most essential ones and ensuring their
  competitive ability.

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• EUs post-Lisbon retreat from securing employee
  rights, in favour of promoting growth and
  competitiveness, and a consequent downplaying of
  the social dimension
• Adoption by EU of many neo-liberal assumptions
  about regulation and the burden it imposes on
  business
• European Commission programme of updating and
  simplifying the acquis
• Health and safety legislation subjected to a
  detailed scrutiny

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• Traditional EU Directives replaced by more
  efficient, flexible and proportionate instruments
  (for example, framework directives, new approach
  directives or softer (self-)regulatory
  alternatives)
• This confers rule making-powers to
  stakeholders employers and trade unions - who
  voluntarily agree to frameworks of rules in a
  process of self-regulation eg sectoral agreements
  on safety and health

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Soft law in action The Open Method of
Co-ordination (OMC)

• Open Method of Co-ordination endorsed (Lisbon
  Council, 2000) as-
• an important tool of EU governance in achieving
  social and employment policy goals includes
  health and safety at work
• Notions of benchmarking and best practice -
  securing a flexible and decentralised approach to
  policy creation and implementation

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Soft Law on the move
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New policy instruments
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Corporate Social Responsibility

• Appeals to companies' sense of corporate social
  responsibility regarding best practices, on
  such matters as
• work organisation
• equal opportunities
• social inclusion
• safety and health

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Policy implications for health and safety in an
enlarged Europe

• In the CEE new member accession states many
  employers do not see good health and safety
  necessarily as good business
• Limited interest in good practice voluntary
  initiatives and corporate social responsibility
  outside of larger firms

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• Scope for regulatory experimentation
  (self-regulation - soft law and the OMC) very
  limited at a domestic level in the new member CEE
  states.
• CEE new member accession states in danger of
  providing a reservoir of cheap labour and an
  inferior high hazard work environment.

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• Introduction of soft law and self-regulation
  (corporate social responsibility, best practice
  models, partnership strategies) inappropriate
  in the short to medium term (5-10 years, and
  possibly longer)
• Emergence of regulatory regime competition and
  a race to the bottom between new and older
  member states a two track Europe?