On the occasion of World Day of Safety and Health at Work, on 28 April 2021, the Labour Protection Council met at a special meeting. The topic of discussion was the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on health and safety at work.

The National Labour Inspectorate was represented by Katarzyna Łażewska-Hrycko, Chief Inspector of Labour, with deputies Jarosław Leśniewski and Dariusz Mińkowski and director of the GIP’s Department of Supervision and Control Jakub Chojnicki.

„The difficult pandemic reality still poses new challenges in every sphere of life and work. It forces people to look for non-standard solutions that protect the health and life of workers. We are constantly learning how to protect millions of employees, we are gaining more and more knowledge about the virus and with it our awareness of minimizing danger is growing,” said The Speaker of the Sejm, Elżbieta Witek, in a statement addressed to the conference participants. She thanked the Labour Council for preparing the conference and taking up such an important topic today.

The President of the Social Insurance Department Prof. Gertruda Uścińska spoke m.in about the impact of COVIDU-19 on sickness absence. „Last year was exceptional. 22.7 million medical certificates were issued for almost 270 million days of sick leave. That’s a lot. In terms of the number of days of sick leave, there was an increase of 4.4% compared to the previous year,” said the President of zus. In this way, it highlighted a very large increase in the number of exemptions issued due to mental disorders and behavioural disorders – by more than a quarter.

Prof. Jolanta Walusiak-Skorupa also raised the issue of the extremely bad impact of the pandemic on the mental health of workers in her paper on the occupational risk of sars-cov-2 coronavirus infection. „We have a lot of mental health disorders among our employees and there will be more and more,” she said, pointing out that the coronavirus’s consequences are social isolation, anxiety, depression, reaching for alcohol and psychoactive substances, and the associated stigma causes people to often not report the disease.

Katarzyna Łażewska-Hrycko, Chief Inspector of Labour, spoke about the control and prevention experience of the State Labour Inspectorate in the era of the pandemic. It recalled that, in the initial period from March to June last year, the inspection activities undertaken by labour inspection bodies were limited to investigating the causes and circumstances of accidents at work and responding to situations of immediate danger to the life or health of workers. In the months when the restrictions were lower and companies returned to normal operation, in addition to carrying out the tasks of the PIP Action Programme, it was required to carry out checks verifying compliance with the restrictions, orders and prohibitions introduced in the state of the epidemic. Irregularities in non-compliance with the rules to reduce exposure to SARS-CoV-2 virus infection were found in almost 43% of the controlled establishments.

New work organisation arrangements, including remote work in particular, have reduced the overall number of accidents reported to PIP and investigated by labour inspectors. However, between March 2020 and the end of January this year, 11 accidents were reported to the State Labour Inspectorate, including 7 deaths that occurred while performing remote work.

An example of PIP’s prevention and promotion during a pandemic is the Safe at School prevention programme. It aims to promote legal requirements and good practices in the field of measures to prevent and reduce risks of biological factor, with a particular focus on health protection during the pandemic and – as Katarzyna Łażewska-Hrycko pointed out – to support the directors of educational institutions in identifying and reducing dangerous, harmful and disruptive factors in the working environment. Some of the effects of the programme are: organising nearly 31 000 jobs taking into account the required distance, equipping almost 2.4 000 people working in anti-epidemic protection measures, updating the occupational risk assessment with the new biological agent SARS-CoV-2 for more than 1 000 jobs.

In his presentation, the director of the GIP’s Department of Supervision and Control Jakub Chojnicki presented pip’s activities in the field of organizational and technical prevention of SARS-Co-2 infections in the workplace. Prof. Marek Wiktor Zawieska, director of the centre, had a similar speech on the activities of the Central Institute for Labour Protection – The State Research Institute.

During the deliberations, the Labour Protection Board also adopted a position on remote work. It recommended m.in. 'regulating remote work by defining it in the Labour Code, together with the necessary health and safety requirements for the performance of the work by its participants, i.e. employers and workers’.

Source: https://www.pip.gov.pl/pl/wiadomosci/124274,uroczyste-posiedzenie-rady-ochrony-pracy.html

Projekt otrzymał dofinansowanie z Norwegii poprzez Fundusze Norweskie 2014-2021, w ramach programu „Dialog społeczny – godna praca”.