Employees’ right to work safely

Employees’ Right to Work Safely SUMMARY All working people find it important to have the right to a safe work environment, which must be created and assured by the employer. The only way to avoid accidents at work and occupational diseases is to ensure that the employees can indeed take advantage of this right rather than just know about its existence. However, in reality, exercising of employees’ right to a safe work environment is often obstructed by various occupational safety and health violations committed by both employers and employees. In such cases of violation, civil (financial), disciplinary, administrative and criminal liability applies, and each of them has its own peculiarities and associated problems. No comprehensive analysis of the right to a safe work environment has been carried out in Lithuania. A big lack of systematic analysis of court practice and legal liability for breaches of the employees’ right to a safe work environment is also noticed. The goal of the study is to analyze the concept and content of worker’s right to a safe work environment as well as related problems. The results of the study showed that the workers’ right to a safe work environment is a set of legal, social, economic, technical, hygienic and organizational preventative measures intended to preserve employees’ health and lives. Each right that an employee or employer has in the field of occupational safety corresponds to a respective obligation and vice versa. Work safety control is performed internally on the company level and governmentally on the national level. All workplaces are subject to minimum general requirements and additional special requirements in case of high risk and work peculiarities. Employees are provided with collective protective equipment and, when necessary, additional personal protective equipment. Potentially harmful work equipment is supervised governmentally. Some of the preventive occupational safety and health measures include employee instructions, trainings and employer certification. Flexible system of causation is applied in cases of property damage, and employee negligence influences the size of caused damage. As of 2015, the regulation that the employer alone is civilly liable for any damage caused by the employee has been partially abolished. This helped the victims seeking reimbursement from bankrupt companies. The major criterion for determining non-pecuniary damage is the negative consequences caused. Adjudgment of higher non-pecuniary damage is seen as negative when both the employer and employee are at fault rather than when the victim is not at fault. Enforcement of disciplinary liability is the right of the employer. It is not an obligation, however, and therefore sometimes employers act irresponsibly and do not take any disciplinary actions for breaches of occupational safety and health regulations. The accusations recorded in the administrative violation reports tend to be classified inaccurately, and sometimes the administrative penalties enforced by the National Labor Relations Board are too severe. Criminal liability applies only when the victim is severely injured. However, the court practice reveals the mistakes when certain health consequences are deemed severe and criminal liability is applied without reasonable substantiation