Eine heutiges Rundschreiben von “Personal und Arbeitsrecht aktuell” hat den Betreff “Gefährdungsbeurteilung: Beziehen Sie jetzt auch psychische Belastungen mit ein”. Jetzt?? Die haben immer noch nicht begriffen, dass keine neuen Bestimmungen zur Berücksichtigung psychischer Belastungen in das Arbeitsschutzgesetz hineingeschrieben wurden, sondern dass sogar in der Begründung der Gesetzesänderung nachgelesen werden kann, dass hier bisher schon geltendes Recht nur klarer formuliert wurde.
Die Plicht zur Beurteilung psychischer Belastungen im Arbeitsschutz besteht seit 1996.
Zu Recht wird in der Email die Firma SICK AG gelobt. Die SICK AG ist ihrem Betriebsrat dafür sicherlich dankbar. Der Betriebsrat des Unternehmens griff das Thema der psychischen Belastungen bereits um die Jahrhundertwende herum auf und trieb es dann mit großen Einsatz voran. Andere Betriebsräte konnten davon lernen.
How will a consensus be reached for ISO 45001? The 1st CD had been rejected because it failed to get two thirds of the required votes. The representatives of the employee side and the business side probably would not allow to let such a surprise happen again. It seems that the promoters of ISO 45001 are quite sure that they get their way and meet the planned deadlines. Are they confident because as many voters could be added as required to get two thirds of the vote? I fear that the employer side has significantly more resources to secure a majority for their position compared to the resources which are available to the employee side.
“This International Standard specifies requirements for an occupational health and safety (OH&S) management system, with guidance for its use, to enable an organization to provide safe and healthy working conditions for the prevention of injury and ill-health and to proactively improve its OH&S performance.” is not enough. OHSAS 18001:2007 makes clear, that the prevention of fatalities is part of the standard. And in the definition of “ill health”, also mental health is mentioned.
Remedy
This International Standard specifies requirements for an occupational health and safety (OH&S) management system, with guidance for its use, to enable an organization to provide safe and healthy working conditions for the prevention of
physical and mental ill-health,
injury and
fatality
as well as to proactively improve the OH&S performance of the organization.
Second ISO 45001 draft emphasises worker consultation. [...] key change is an increased emphasis on the importance of worker consultation. The lack of reference to communication with workers in the first draft was a major concern for the International Labour Organisation, the United Nation’s agency that promotes labour rights. [...]
This is a cheap trick. Don’t compare CD2 to CD1. Compare CD2 to OHSAS 18001:2007 and to ILO-OSH.
Connecting the Dots: ISO 45001, the Supply Chain and Risk
On March 26, voting began on ISO 45001, which sets requirements for occupational health and safety management systems. Kathy Seabrook, former president of the American Society of Safety Engineers, shared her thoughts on ISO 45001 at a recent event.
[...]
According to Seabrook, there are two drivers impacting change by some organizations to be more accountable for their supply chain: the market economy and sustainability reporting, and they are closely tied, she noted. “The investment community and organizational stakeholders are driving market demand for more transparency from the organizations they invest in,” said Seabrook.
[...]
According to Seabrook, ISO 45001 can inform and play a role in creating solutions that cross borders. While the scope of ISO 45001 is not intended to include supply chain workers, “an organization can choose to leverage the ISO 45001 management systems approach as a solution to identify, control and continually improve opportunities to reduce or eliminate worker safety and health risk to workers in the supply chain,” she noted.
[...]
This is an unsurprisingly American business minded approach: The concerns on the side of employee organizations are no issue to the author of this article. And the author probably has not even has an idea, why this should be an issue.
By the way: If voting already begun, than BSI’s invitation to the public could be just an alibi. Is ISO 45001 already a farce before it is pushed through?
This is about Employee Participation: ISO 45001 vs. OHSAS 18001
ISO 45001 weakens the worker’s options compared to what has been achieved in OHSAS 18001:2007, paragraph 4.4.3.2 “Participation and consultation”.
Remedy
Here the employee representatives in the committee probably will have to propose significant changes in order to come to a standard which is acceptable in Europe. My proposal is to at least maintain what has been achieved with OHSAS 18001:2007.
I hope that employee representatives thoroughly compare to the 2nd CD of ISO 45001 what is written about employee participation in OHSAS 18001:2007. Additionally, the differences between OHSAS 18001:1999 and OHSAS 18001:2007 show what had been achieved for the workers thanks to the beneficial competition with the ILO standard. (There also was resistance on the employers’ side against this improvement. I know of a case where a large European company had been certified since 2009 for OHSAS 18001:2007 although they only switched to from :1999 to :2007 in 2013 after complaints by employees to the accreditation authority.) Was OHSAS 18001 too tough on employers? Seemingly the development of ISO 45001 is used by them as a means to revert these achievements.
Unions should check with labour councils how much resistance they met when trying to put 4.4.3.2 of OHSAS 18001:2007 into practise. Support to workers councils by certification auditors may have been negligable too. Employers may want to use the chance provided by a new AMS standard (ISO 45001) to get rid of requirements which gave workes a say in occupational health&safety practises.
There is too much “as applicable” in the draft, e.g. “Effective participation of workers (and, as applicable, their representatives)”. The workers’ representatives need sufficcient competence and clout.
Remedy
The standard should make it an requirement to establish elected workers representations for OH&S matters where no works councils exist yet. Without such representatives you simply can forget about an effective workers participation. One special requirement should be to let the workers’ representatives participate in certification audits and internal audits. These workes should be able to obtain the required qualifications.
From the viewpoint of employees, the term “incident” has a much better definition in OHSAS 18001:2007 than in ISO 45001. Here the employers seemingly were successful in watering down the standard. I posted this comment in drafts.bsigroup.com:
“Incident” and “ill health” according to OHSAS 18001:
Incident: Work-related event(s) in which
an injury
or ill health (regardless of severity)
or fatality
occurred, or could have occurred.
Ill health: Identifiable, adverse physical or mental condition arising from and/or made worse by a work activity and/or work-related situation.
“Occurrence(s) arising out of or in the course of work that could or does result in injury or ill-health” as proposed here for ISO 45001 is much less ambitious. Strangely, “fatality” has been dropped completely in the ISO 45001 draft. And “(regardless of severity)” made sure that employers cannot “evaluate” the severity of ill health before it enters the evaluation process defined in the standard.
Use terms from OHSAS 18001:2007. Make sure that incidents are not filtered away before the enter the official process of evaluation of ill health and its severity.
In the comments to the 1st CD it already has been criticized, that one of the most important terms in ISO 45001 has not been defined. Strangely, a definition of the term “ill health” is missing again in the 2nd CD. Thus, OHSAS 18001 still does a much better job: “Ill health: Identifiable, adverse physical or mental condition arising from and/or made worse by a work activity and/or work-related situation.”
In contrary to ISO 45001, the BS OHSAS 18001:2007 explicitely mentions physical and mental health. This is important: Search for “Health Impact of The Psychosocial Hazards of Work: An Overview” in the pages of the WHO.
A standard which does not acknowledge the importance to protect mental health is unacceptable in the 21st century. Sadly, ISO 45001 seems to be on the way back to the last century.
Remedy
In order not to fall behind OHSAS 18001:2007, include the definition “Ill health: Identifiable, adverse physical or mental condition arising from and/or made worse by a work activity and/or work-related situation” into 3 “Terms and definitions” of ISO 45001.
Comment on the latest draft
of occupational health and safety standard ISO 45001
31 March 2015
A new international standard on occupational health and safety management is currently under development with publication expected in October 2016. The second committee draft of ISO 45001 – Occupational health and safety management standard systems – requirements with guidance for use is now open, with UK comments requested by 1 May 2015. This follows the re-drafting of the standard to reflect comments received from the September 2014 public consultation.
BSI, the UK’s National Standards Body, has worked with experts from around the world to develop the second draft and now invites interested parties to register their comments online: https://drafts.bsigroup.com/Home/Details/54548. All comments submitted will then be considered by a panel of UK experts before BSI submits the national position to the international committee.
Occupational health and safety continues to be a priority across the world. Despite extensive regulation, existing standards and guidelines, work-related disease still kills millions globally each year, with hundreds of thousands more fatalities caused by workplace accidents. The international committee developing ISO 45001 includes experts from over 55 countries, 14 observer countries and around 20 liaison bodies, all with knowledge and practical experience of occupational health and safety issues and the challenges faced. The new standard is designed to replace the widely-used OHSAS 18001 whilst also taking into account other key documents and discussion points from around the world. Ultimately it intends to provide a single, clear framework for organizations of all types and sizes who wish to improve their OH&S performance and protect those working on their behalf or who may be affected by the organization’s activities.
ISO 45001 is being developed using a collaborative, consensus-based approach taking into account the views of large and small organizations, government bodies, trades unions and worker representative organizations. To ensure the widest possible input is received from stakeholders BSI has taken the unusual step of making drafts available to the public at every stage of development. Usually, this would only happen once, half way through the process.
ISO 45001 has been written to a core structure and common text defined by ISO for use by all management system standards. The core structure will ensure that the new standard is broadly aligned to the forthcoming revisions of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 – thus helping those who are implementing multiple management systems.
Anne Hayes, Head of Market Development for Governance & Risk at BSI, said: “Occupational health and safety is a matter of importance for all businesses worldwide, regardless of their size or sector. It is not an issue that can be ignored especially when it can literally mean life and death for many.”
To read and comment on ISO CD2 45001 please visit BSI’s draft review site: