A year ago, in the midst of the first wave of the Covid, I was suspended from my duties as a labor inspector, then sanctioned with an automatic transfer for having requested health protection measures – including the provision of masks – employees of a home help association. The massive support campaign that followed made it possible to alleviate the sanction resulting from a procedure, according to the terms loaned to Minister Elisabeth Borne, “Neither done, nor to be done”.
This “case” also showed that the choice to repress – at the Ministry of Labor as elsewhere – trade union activists, whistleblowers or simply employees or public officials trying to fulfill their mission during the health crisis could not mask the Insufficient health protection measures for millions of workers in this country faced with the risk of exposure to Sars-CoV-2, a pathogenic biological agent. This lack of protection – symbolized yesterday by the refusal to prescribe the wearing of a mask in a company – is illustrated today by the lack of implementation of a priority vaccination policy for the hundreds of thousands of employees in the “second line ”that are in particular the drivers of VTC, the employees of the large distribution, the handlers, the deliverers, the employees of household and many others.
The pandemic also acts as a powerful indicator of the failings of employers to protect those who, every day, expose themselves to Sars-CoV-2 at work, while a recent study by the Institut Pasteur confirms that more than one a quarter of out-of-home contaminations take place in the workplace.
Far from regulatory constraints, the time has come for “soft law”, this flexible law that can be found in the “business advice sheets”, “best practice guides” and other “health protocols” of the Ministry of Labor and of which the Council of State recalled the nature of recommendations, without coercive value. Conversely, the watchword, both today and for the next few years, should be the protection of the health and safety of employees at work by law.
Degraded conditions
And in order to protect, there is a need to take strong measures, starting with the creation of a mechanism for immediate shutdown of the activity of a company that does not take or too few health protection measures and the safety of its employees in the face of exposure to Sars-CoV-2 or any other pathogenic biological agent. This extension of the scope of the stoppage of activity – which already exists, for example, in the event of a risk of falling from a height in the construction sector or in the event of non-compliant work equipment in a company – would result in the withdrawal, without loss of salary, employees of their workstation while waiting for the implementation of effective corrective measures by the employer (organizational measures such as teleworking, the setting up of tour de passage for taking meals or taking shifted workstation, collective protection measures and provision of personal protective equipment) in order to eliminate or reduce exposure to the risk.
This “Covid judgment” would be a decision that would fall under the exclusive competence of labor inspectors. This would imply consolidating their independence, already guaranteed by International Convention No. 81 of 1947 of the International Labor Organization (ILO), but severely damaged during the first wave of the Covid, a situation which led to the inter-union of the Ministry of Labor to file a complaint with the ILO. This would also imply reinforcing the resources of the Inspectorate, which has seen its control staff drop by nearly 20% in less than two five-year terms and whose missions to defend employees’ rights are carried out today in extremely degraded conditions. .
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