Working conditions need to be improved in many cases. Advisory body SER advocates for more modern occupational health and safety rules, more attention to risks, and more work-related care. The standards should also not only take into account adult white men.
“There are still companies where people work in unhealthy and unsafe conditions,” writes the Social and Economic Council (SER) in an advice. “It is important that this is improved.”
The occupational health and safety regulations must be more modern but easier to comply with. “Also investigate the impact of diversity in the workplace,” says SER chairman Kim Putters. Society is changing, and more women, older people and people with a migration background are working.
The standards must take all employees into account, says Putters. “The effects of working with certain substances have often only been established for adult white men, while those substances may have a different (more harmful) effect on young people and women.”
Young workers and women – especially pregnant women – are more vulnerable to exposure to hazardous substances than the standard healthy man, the SER writes in the advice.
Putters advocates for mapping risks
New technologies can have consequences for work and work pressure. “We live in a time of radical transitions such as technologization, globalization, aging, flexibilization and climate change,” says Putters. He advocates mapping the risks of this.
Furthermore, the SER wants the legal position of core experts to be improved. Core experts are, for example, company doctors, but also occupational hygienists and safety experts. The SER wants to add ergonomists to that list. These experts play “an important role in the prevention of work-related health problems”.