Pacciana, Maria
Technical Consultancy for the Building Sector / INAIL - Italian Workers' Compensation Authority /Piazzale Giulio Pastore, 6/ 00144 Rome, Italy
+39 06 5487 2581 / m.pacciana@inail.it
ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT
Italy – like other European countries – records an high number of accidents and diseases related to work.
According to statistics by INAIL (the Italian Workers' Compensation Authority), in 2006, 928,000 accidents were recorded in Italy with an associated cost of 41 Billion Euros.
The development of the business model from Ford to Taylor and finally to the New Economy model, has increased flexibility of human resources. An organization can produce appropriate goods and services where and when they are needed, rather than reduce unitary production costs.
Our aim is to analyze different feature and types of flexible employment including the risks involved and their evaluation.
Flexible employment is constantly increasing within a number of sectors and is contributing to the increasing of level risks found within a work place.
Keywords
Keywords
Work flexibility, human resource, health, safety, economy models.
THE LABOUR FLEXIBILITY
The business model development from Ford to Taylor and finally to the New Economy model, has increased flexibility of human resources. An organization can produce appropriate goods and services where and when they are needed, rather than reduce unitary production costs.
The aim of this study is to describe and analyse how a new employment law (Biagi’s law) with the provision of flexible agreements between companies and workers has also introduced new health and safety implications.
The level of risk exposure (for the same task) that the employees undertakes varies in relation to the flexibility of the type of work, to the employee’s competence, the health and safety management procedure followed by the firm, and the type of employment contract.
To highlight the effects of the Biagi’s law it is worth noticing that there has been a constant increase of the temporary positions vs the permanent ones.
In 2006 Italy recorded an increased of temporary positions by 10,8%, meanwhile permanent employments have only increased by 5,3%. Among the temporary contracts the majority are represented by foreign workers.
In an ideal situation the temporary worker should be aware of the general risks associated to the sector of the company, the particular risks related to the company
and to the position he/she is covering.
Considering the above data it is necessary to examine the following: different features in contracts, protection provided, and the data on accidents occurring in each specific sector.
Our aim will be to consider economical and social aspects related to labour flexibility, to unify this result with INAIL’s data bank, in order to bring forward the necessary accident prevention implementations.
ECONOMICAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS INTO WORK FLEXIBILITY.
There are different types of work flexibility.
Economical flexibility is related to the employee’s salary. Its implementation changes according of market conditions.
Work-force flexibility depends on the working hours, the number of employments and dismissals. Work-force flexibility is also related to the different types of tasks done by the workers within the firm.
External numerical flexibility has a great spread amongst firms. It is represented by the employer’s capacity to adequate the human resources to the production level, as well as to technological changes within the company.
This type of flexibility involves different issues: the binding obligations orcontractual aspects related to employment and employee dismissal, the existing possibility for worker to be employed with fixed time or with no time limit contract, the employer’s decision to contract for phases or part of the production cycle with other firms, home workers, craftsmen or freelance professionals.
Numerical flexibility can determine an increase of the level of risk during the work activity. For example a worker may have started his employment with few or missing information about the existing risks found in the work place. Sometimes the amount of health and safety information that the worker should bear in mind is disproportionate to the length of the assignment.
As an external employee the worker is also responsible for his training, whichcould be inadequate, not updated and may not integrate appropriately with the work place.
Functional flexibility or organizational flexibility is the extent employeescan be transferred to different activities and tasks within the company. In this case the worker should be able to adapt quickly with the new given task, it is also very important that the company should provides a good training programme covering the company’s health and safety policy.
In recent years the proportion of flexible work-force has increased towards the permanent one, this work-force segmentation that was introduced as a temporary solution to crisis periods in a company has become the standard approach in the labour market.
Within the numerical flexibility there are different elements that could impact onthe level of health and safety risks:
- depending on the amount of employed staff
- the market segmentation
- the level of competence of workers
- the training provided in the employment contract.
Inside the firm the lack of one or more elements described below can determine the presence of a flexible work force:
- Subordination to only one employer
- Integration of the worker in only one company.
- Permanent employment
- Full time employment
- Legal term included in the employment contract to prevent dismissal.
It should be noted that the application of the different types of flexible employments may vary in relation to the market analysed, this has been confirmed by employers that associate a different types of flexible work to different phases of the production.
ITALY ACCIDENT DATA
Work flexibility has a great spread among foreign workers.
In the North regions of Italy the foreign workers account for 64 % percent of the total number of flexible workers and almost 40 % of foreign workers are employed in the industry sector.
Overall 61 % of the work-force within the industry sector in Italy is represented by foreigners.
In the Italian construction sector 2/3 of the work-force are foreigners. This sector involves heavy manual tasks refused by the Italian workers.
Workers from different countries have been specialized in different professions: East European workers are mainly employed in construction sector and agricultural sector, workers from Morocco mainly hawker, and the majority of domestic cleaners come from the Philippines.
The higher increase of accidents (+19,5%) in 2006 are recorded among flexible internal workers. The majority of these workers are mainly employed in manual work tasks in the manufacturing industry, as well as in construction and transport sectors. For these workers the level of risks is higher in relation of the colleagues within the same sector with full time employment.
The former data linked with the previous consideration oblige us finding prevention solutions and contract improvement.
REFERENCES
- 1. Successful health and safety management. HSE Books, ISBN 0717612767 (1997).
- 2. Ranieri. Sociologia del mercato del lavoro. Ed. Il Mulino.
- 3. M. Pacciana. INAIL DCSIT: Total Protection of the Emergency (TPE). A software to increase Health and safety management system performance. Conference proceeding, Sevilla (May 2006)
- 4. M. Pacciana, A. Maggi, P. Finelli. The costs of no safety in the building sector and
the benefits stemming from the adoption of the Quality/Safety integrated management systems. Conference proceeding, Barcelona ( 2002)
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