The Gazette 1981

GAZETTE

JANUARY/FEBRUARY 1981

Safety in Industry Act, 1980 A Commentary

by

Maurice Cashell Secretary, Commission on Safety, Health and Welfare at Work

Preface The Act was passed by both Houses of the Oireachtas on 28 May 1980 and was signed by the President on 9 June 1980. The bulk of it should come into operation on various dates in the near future to be fixed by orders of the Minister for Labour, following on discussions with the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) and the Feder- ated Union of Employers (FUE) on the timetable which have taken place over the past several months. The Department of Labour will publish shortly simple intro- ductions to what is involved. It is expected that Part III of the Act (dealing with Safety and comprising Sections 35 to 39) will be brought into operation from 1 April 1981. This article concentrates primarily on Part III of the Act and on those aspects of the Act which are entirely new. Introduction The Act does not mark a radical departure in our approach to occupational safety and health: the need and the extent of change in the overall system inside and outside industry will be examined by a Working Party which has recently been set up (see p. 12). About 70% of the provisions are designed to up-date various aspects of the Factories Act, 195 5, by changing those parts - mainly technical details — which practical experience has shown to be necessary or desirable. The rest is new: these are the ideas in Sections 9-1 1, 13, 15, 27, 29, 35-39, 49, 50 and 54-55. In other words, those parts of the Factories Act which are not amended together with the new Act and the hundred or more regulations made under the Factories Act constitute the safety and health code for Irish industry. The Factories Act, 1955, and the new Act will together now (by the new Act, Section 4) be described as the Safety in Industry Acts 1955 and 1980. Scope The new Act brings a few additional types of premises within the scope of the safety and health code. Premises at the pre- and post-construction stages, viz. when plant is being installed or dismantled, are now regarded as factories and are subject to the law. Protection under the law also extends to workers in all places where cattle, sheep, poultry and other animals are killed in the course of a business. Also covered for the first time are premises where fruit and vegetables are cleaned, graded or packed. During the debates in the Dáil and Seanad many speakers advocated the extension of protective legislation to all places of work, including agriculture. It is reasonable to expect that this will be one of the most important topics

examined by the Working Party. One feature of the Act is that not all the provisions are applicable in every work situation. I will be returning to this later when dealing with safety committees, etc. Significant new Elements Particularly significant are the provisions which under- write "greater co-operation, including acceptance and exercise of appropriate responsibilities by management and by workers". This is a theme which the Minister for Labour has stressed to the National Industrial Safety Organisation (NISO) on a number of occasions. These provisions are in Sections 35-39, dealing with safety representatives, safety committees, safety delegates and safety statements (see Table 1 below). Despite efforts, including a campaign by NISO, the voluntary system of safety committees which were a feature of the Factories Act, 1955, resulted in the establishment of only 274 safety committees by the end of 1978 - a disappointing result. Table 1 Size and composition of Safety Committee having regard to the number of Workers Number Size ot Worker Employer of Workers Committee Nominees Nominees 2 - 60 3 2

1 1

6 1 - 80 8 1 - 1 00 101-120 121-140 141-160 161-180

4 5 6 7 8 9

3 3 4 5 6 6

2 2 2 2 3 3

181-

10

7

The new proposals for safety committees etc. are consistent with the principles on which they are based: they owe their present content to joint proposals from ICTU and FUE. By comparison with the voluntary system set up by the 1955 Act the system now being introduced is better because: —the emphasis is on joint safety committees; —a stimulus to their activities is the safety statement which management must draw up and discuss with them;

9