How to determine whether an employee works at heights? The regulation of the Minister of Labour and Social Policy of 26 September 1997 on the general regulations on occupational health and safety (Dz.U. 2003, No. 169, item 704, as amended) sets out the activities qualifying as work at heights and those that should be deemed particularly dangerous. Work at height is every work during the performance of which an employee’s feet are a minimum of 1 m above the last level on which he or she can fall. There is an exception to that rule set out in section 105(2)(1) of the regulation. It states that work at heights do not include working e.g. in a basket crane covered up to 1.5m with walls or walls with glass windows and equipped with other fixed structures or devices protecting the worker against falling down. Another provision of the regulation at issue, i.e. section 105(2)(2), can also raise certain doubts. Is work done on the verge of a tall structure secured with railings sufficiently secured or not? For lack of specific provisions determining the efficacy of such protective structures, one ought to refer to the occupational risk assessment documentation. Regulations specify unambiguously that while performing a number of simple activities on unenclosed plains, platforms, simple or extendible ladders, moving up and down vertical transport routes (such as ladders and foot rests) in excess of 2m above the level on which an employee can fall, workers must definitely be secured with adequate equipment protecting them against falling.
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Accident and occupational disease registers and the GDPR Both an accident log and occupational disease register contain personal data and sensitive data (e.g. information concerning health). How should they be filed and removed, if necessary, from the register? Data contained in the above mentioned registers are subject to the General Data Protection Regulation, i.e. the Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC. Therefore, the work accident log is treated as post-accident documentation and as such must be filed for 10 years. Under Polish employment regulations, documentation concerning occupational diseases must only be kept by public-sector employers for the period of 10 years (under the Regulation of the President of the Council of Ministers on the recordkeeping guidelines, uniform subject-related file registers and guidelines for the organisation and scope of operations of in-house archives of 18 January 2011; Dz. U., item 67). In the event of entities other than those in the public sector, the Polish employment law regulations neither specify the term for which occupational disease register should be kept, nor how such period should be calculated.
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Waste law amendment to prevent fires The causes of the recent fires occurring at several waste keeping and storage sites around the country are still being investigated. However, it can be presumed that at illegal waste storage sites the fires might have been purposefully set. The government has drawn up proposals of legislative changes that are to prevent such situations from occurring in the future. The key elements of the draft include:
Introduction of financial guarantees from entities that collect, store and process waste (approx. 15,000 entities) valid until the end of waste management operations.
Obligatory video surveillance of the site.
Detailed requirements from the waste stored.
Reduction of the maximum period of waste storage from 3 years to 1 year.
Additional conditions for denial to grant permissions for waste management to both individuals and businesses.
Requirement of legal title to the real estate in the form of ownership title.
New criteria for imposition of administrative penalties for illegally collecting, storing or processing waste.
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Increased penalties for ‘recurring offenders’, i.e. those entities at which fires have occurred repeatedly.
Total ban on importing waste for neutralisation, and importing to Poland communal waste or waste generated by communal waste processing.
How to cope with aggression at work? In real life, and so also at work, given the various characters of co-workers, one encounters nearly every day various forms of verbal aggression. One can be its target, but also, often at the impulse of the moment, its author. At work we experience various degrees of verbal aggression as targets: from mere jibes, through snide comments to vulgar rudeness we are exposed to 'tyrants'. The authors may include bosses, colleagues or customers. There are various reasons for aggression, such as: injustice – e.g. when we feel we are treated unequally; frustration – where we are not capable of completing a task; offence – where we feel attacked, offended or somebody is hurting us; loss of control - where we think we have lost self-control or control over the situation. The basic principles of response to verbal aggression include:
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1. Never play the victim. 2. Be consistent. 3. Use proassertive sentences: “I have a right to care for my dignity.”; “I have a right to defend against aggression.”; “I have a right to stand up against rudeness or brutality.”
How to survive the heat at a construction site? Employer’s obligations Construction works are deemed particularly dangerous jobs. Working in extreme temperatures is a factor that contributes to increasing the risk involved in such works. It is the employer’s obligation to minimise/reduce their impact. The Regulation of the Council of Ministers on prophylactic refreshments of 28 May 1996 (Dz. U. No. 60, item 279) sets out the obligations of employers to ensure drinks e.g. at workstations where the temperature caused by atmospheric conditions exceeds 28oC. Under such circumstances the person responsible for the workplace has an obligation to provide drinkable water to the staff. Apart from drinkable water (without having to boil it), the employer must also ensure adequate drinks.
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These are: cold drinks enriched with proper minerals and vitamins. They should be provided in an amount that will satisfy the workers' needs during the entire shift. Failure to fulfil this obligation may result in being held liable for a misdemeanour under Article 283(1) Labour Code punishable with up to PLN 30,000.
Fire safety manual Every owner, administrator or user of public utility sites, multi-residential, production, warehousing or livestock buildings is required to draw up and implement a fire safety manual. What should such manual include? Section 6 of the Regulation of the Minster of Internal Affairs and Administration on the fire protection of buildings, other building structures and areas of 7 June 2010 (Dz.U.2010.109.719) sets out the elements of such manual. These are: fire safety conditions; specification of required fire safety equipment and distinguishers; modes of conduct in case of fire or other emergency; manners of securing dangerous works for fire safety, if such works occur; the conditions and organisation of evacuation of individuals and practical methods of testing the same;
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procedures for communicating the site users and staff with fire safety regulations and the manual; tasks and obligations of permanent users in respect of fire safety; site plans, including the situation of the site and the neighbouring area and with graphical parameters; names of the persons or entities who drew up the manual.
4th OHS Staff Championships are over Nearly 800 contestants took part in the OHS awareness competition. A majority, i.e. 60% of the participants were men. Yet this year’s OHS Staff Champion title was awarded to a woman, Paulina Sołtys, a student at SWPS. The next places on the box were taken by Wioleta Witosz of IBSS Biomed and Wojciech Kowalczyk fo Ka-gra. The competition organised by the Safe at Work Coalition attracted managers, practitioners and specialists from diverse industries, as well as academic representatives and students. - I assess the level of the contestants' knowledge as high, although only 4 persons scored more than 10 points in the second phase test due to the penalty points for incorrect answers. The eventual outcome was determined by the open questions testing the contestants’ approach to OHS in practice. – says Marek Maszewski, Head of the Supervisory Department at SEKA S.A., chairman of the jury of the OHS Staff Championships.
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The OHS Staff Championships consisted of two stages. Fifty top-scoring contestants in the first-stage test consisting of 30 single multiple choice questions had to sit the second-stage test consisting of both closed and open questions. The greatest difficulty to the contestants posed the question about the threshold temperature at which the employer is required to ensure drinks to staff. Almost half (sic) of the contestants gave incorrect answers.
How long should the OHS initial and periodical training last? Training an employee in occupational health and safety is one of the employer's obligations under the Labour Code. Under the law, an employee cannot be admitted to work for which he or she does not have sufficient knowledge of, inter alia, OHS. The introductory OHS training should be given to a newly employed employee prior to commencement of work. It includes the general instruction (a minimum of 3 hours) and workstation-specific instruction (for administrative staff a minimum of 2 hours and a minimum of 8 hours for other employees). Periodical training serves to update and consolidate OHS awareness and communication to staff new technological and organisational solutions in this respect. The duration of the training is as follows:  a minimum of 16 training hours in the event of employers and those managing staff as well as engineers and technicians, including designers, constructors of machines and other technical devices, technology and production organisers;
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a minimum of 8 training hours in the event of workers and administrative or other staff whose work involves exposure to factors harmful to the health, strenuous or dangerous or with liability for occupational health and safety;
a minimum of 32 hours (including 4 hours of tutorial) for members of the OHS service and other employees performing the tasks of such service.
Environmental aspects of lease A business leasing premises should pay attention on signing a lease contract who will be using the building or neighbouring areas: the tenant, several tenants or perhaps also the landlord. This is important in determining the environmental obligations of the parties. Under Article 138 of the Environmental Protection Law, the obligation to properly exploit installations and devices (including the payment of environmental fees) rests with the owner unless he has transferred the right to use the installations (devices) to another entity under a legal title. Whereas under Article 275 of the EPL the entities using the environment are required to pay the environmental fees and incur potential administrative fines. In drafting a lease contract the following matters should be considered, inter alia: disposal of rain, snow and thaw water, water supply and disposal of communal waste water as well as industrial waste water management,
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waste generation (in relation to the business), including communal waste and that generated by green area maintenance, heating of the building, use of electric energy and air conditioners, obligations with regard to the technical maintenance of: wells, waste precleaning separators or septic tanks for sewage.
Feeling of safety in the workplace – a CWS-boco report A report published by CWS-boco on OHS confirms that European employees often compromise their safety at work. On behalf of the CWS-boco group a net-request team carried out in 2017 an online OHS survey in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Poland. A total of 1,000 employees between 20 and 60 years old took part in the survey. 400 respondents came from Germany and 200 from Poland, Switzerland and Belgium respectively. All respondents were employed in companies where OHS was significant. The results show that: 91% of respondents feel safe at work; 85% think that they are properly informed of the current safety regulations; 43% of the respondents state that their bosses have instructed them to the a dangerous job;
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 40% admit to occasionally not wear their protective equipment or clothes, such as gloves, glasses or helmets. The report also shows a significant relation between the age of the respondents and their OHS observance attitudes. The younger the respondent, the more often they fail to use the proper safety equipment. A half of the respondents between 20 and 29 regularly fail to wear all complete set of protective equipment provided to them.
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