[GA - PASSED] Health and Safety Act

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Health and Safety Act
Category: Regulation | Area of Effect: Safety
Proposed by: Alistia, Co-authored by: Tinhampton | Onsite Topic​

The World Assembly,

Recognizing not only that industry is critical to the economic development of many member states, but that high standards of health and safety are critical to the development of many industries,

Concerned that some member states and employers might not have adequate laws and policies in effect to protect workers from dangerous working conditions, not only in factories and other centers of heavy industry but also - for example - in restaurants (where measures to prevent cross-contamination of foodstuffs, such as the use of different-colored chopping boards and regular handwashing, are of great importance),

Believing that employers in member states with strong health and safety standards should not be entitled to outsource jobs to member states with lax or nonexistent health and safety standards in order to increase profit at the expense of workers well being, and

Supporting the right of workers everywhere to face as small a risk of physical harm and deterioration as possible while they are working,

Hereby enacts as follows.

1. Each member state must:
  1. publish a first, quantitative manual of guidelines listing those levels of mechanical, temperature, chemical, and ergonomic stresses which a worker in that member state may endure on a daily basis without incurring adverse side effects over time,

  2. publish a second, quantitative manual of guidelines listing those levels of various industrial chemical substances, with reference to levels in both the factory workplace environment and a worker's blood sample, which a worker in that member state may endure on a daily basis without incurring adverse side effects over time,

  3. publish a third, qualitative manual of guidelines explaining the steps that their workers can take to reduce their risk of injury in the workplace (both in general and at the particular type of business where they work), regardless of where they work or what their job entails, and the steps that employers in each sector of the economy must take to reduce these risks,

  4. update the three manuals of guidelines, hereinafter "the Manuals," on an annual basis to incorporate the latest research findings and relevant statistical data, and

  5. distribute the Manuals to all of their businesses, and

  6. sanction those businesses who expose their workers to levels of stress and exposure to chemical substances (pursuant to Articles 1a and 1b respectively) beyond those stipulated in the Manuals, or who fail to report injuries sustained by their workers at the workplace to their member states government (to ensure its compliance with Article 2c).
2. The Health and Safety Board (HSB) is established. It is responsible for receiving the following data from each member state on an annual basis:
  1. legal measures enacted by that member state and its political subdivisions to protect the health and safety of workers,

  2. how frequently and effectively the measures described in Articles 1a, 1b, 1c, and 2a are being enforced by the government, and

  3. how often per year, on average, workplace injuries occur (which shall be disaggregated according to whether they were caused by mechanical hazards, temperature hazards, chemical hazards, or ergonomic hazards).
3. The HSB shall report all member states and political subdivisions of member states whose governments fail to enforce those measures they have enacted to protect the health and safety of workers, including by failing to enforce compliance with Articles 1, 2 and 4 of this Act, to the WACC.

4. Each member state must disseminate accurate and informative publications to all of their businesses (including state-owned businesses) that describe the legal measures they have enacted to protect the health and safety of workers and explain how businesses can comply with these legal measures.
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Note: Only votes from TNP WA nations and NPA personnel will be counted. If you do not meet these requirements, please add (non-WA) or something of that effect to your vote.
Voting Instructions:
  • Vote For if you want the Delegate to vote For the resolution.
  • Vote Against if you want the Delegate to vote Against the resolution.
  • Vote Abstain if you want the Delegate to abstain from voting on this resolution.
  • Vote Present if you are personally abstaining from this vote.
Detailed opinions with your vote are appreciated and encouraged!

ForAgainstAbstainPresent
71400

"Health and Safety Act" has passed 8,138 votes (50.7%) to 7,904 (49.3%).
 
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IFV
Overview
This proposal seeks to promote the health and safety of workers and their workplaces through two major mandates. The authors' first major mandate is to require member states to publish, on an yearly basis (i) guidelines on "mechanical, temperature, chemical, and ergonomic stresses", (ii) guidelines on exposure to chemicals, and (iii) guidelines on helping workers reduce the risk of injury, and send copies of these guidelines to all businesses in each WA member state. They also establish a Health and Safety Board that would compile legal measures implemented by each member state, and enforcement and workplace injury data.

Recommendation
We have several serious issues with this proposal, which, despite its name, does not seriously promote health and safety. Instead it requires compiling guidelines that should already be available in any sensible workplace in a nation with a well developed government, especially if the work is inherently dangerous. Furthermore, the compilation of workplace injury statistics, and the wide range of workplace safety laws, appear to serve no particular purpose in terms of improving multiversal governance. We thus end up with another layer of bureaucracy within the WA that compiles health and safety advice and statistics, largely duplicating similar functions often carriet out at national (or sometimes provincial/local) government levels, with no discernable effects on either the health or safety of workers.

For the above reasons, the Ministry of World Assembly Affairs recommends a vote Against the General Assembly Resolution at vote, "Health and Safety Act".

This IFV Recommendation was written in collaboration with our World Assembly Legislative League partners.
Our Voting Recommendation Dispatch--Please Upvote!
 
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It's hard for me not to view this in the vein of Comfortable Pillows for All Protocol, at least clause 1. Also, do we really need a WA OSHA because ugh. Against.
 
Hulldom:
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Health and Safety Act
Category: Regulation | Area of Effect: Safety
Proposed by: Alistia, Co-authored by: Tinhampton | Onsite Topic​


Note: Only votes from TNP WA nations and NPA personnel will be counted. If you do not meet these requirements, please add (non-WA) or something of that effect to your vote.
Voting Instructions:
  • Vote For if you want the Delegate to vote For the resolution.
  • Vote Against if you want the Delegate to vote Against the resolution.
  • Vote Abstain if you want the Delegate to abstain from voting on this resolution.
  • Vote Present if you are personally abstaining from this vote.
Detailed opinions with your vote are appreciated and encouraged!

ForAgainstAbstainPresent
3100
Click to expand...
For
 
This seems modelled not after OSHA but the Health and Safety Executive in the UK. (I correct myself, this seems based on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies, based on Tinhamtpon's forum comments). (Please look up on your preferred search engine what it is, but I stress the word "Advisory").

As far as I see it, this basically sets up a research agency full of "safety experts" to write manuals on every conceivable subject, with inspectors running around to check, say, paper cuts and whether someone has properly applied a plaster on it. (I am perfectly fine with regulations on hazardous occupations, but I just assume that sensible governments would already have rules governing coal mining or nuclear waste storage or the cleanliness of kitchens).

I guess it would make it an offence not to install an ergonomic desk at an office (for example referring to (1)(a)), among other regulations. As to "sanctions" in 1(f), I read it that a private caution ("telling off" in British English I guess) by a safety inspector would count as a sanction.
 
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@Tinhampton Could you answer a question I have about clause 1.c: when it refers to “the steps that employers in each sector of the economy must take to reduce these risks”, is it envisaged that member states would here be setting out existing obligations for employers or that member states would be bound to create new obligations?

I ask because I think it could be read both ways and because 1.f, while obliging sanctions for breaches of 1.a and 1.b does not do so for 1.c, which suggests to me that those are supposed to be new obligations needing new sanctions whereas 1.c concerns things member states already obligate (and, presumably, already sanction breaches of).
 
Fregerson:
Against. Unsure on the intention behind this bill.
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As mentioned on Discord, since bears are supposed to be sapient beings in the WA multiverse (in turn according to the Forum, and I don't get involved in the multiverse since I don't believe that there's one), I suppose we are voting on whether bears have the appropriate ergonomic desks and chairs with which to squat there prior to mauling their cow-orkers. At this point in time I am questioning whether I really should take seriously some WA proposals. And yes I am voting Against.
 
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Zyvetskistaahn:
@Tinhampton Could you answer a question I have about clause 1.c: when it refers to “the steps that employers in each sector of the economy must take to reduce these risks”, is it envisaged that member states would here be setting out existing obligations for employers or that member states would be bound to create new obligations?

I ask because I think it could be read both ways and because 1.f, while obliging sanctions for breaches of 1.a and 1.b does not do so for 1.c, which suggests to me that those are supposed to be new obligations needing new sanctions whereas 1.c concerns things member states already obligate (and, presumably, already sanction breaches of).
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Concur. This is a very odd way of implementing secondary regulations. I assume they're new obligations, since the word used is "must," as opposed to "can," which is used earlier in that same clause to refer to steps workers can take. It raises a question: employers must take... what steps? To reduce risks... how? There's no framework and no parameters for this. It's also done by a nation, not a WA body, meaning that nations will end up implementing secondary regulations they would've implemented regardless.

I generally disagree with the angle of this proposal. Having nations publish "manuals" and create secondary regulations based on those manuals is a weird cross between national obligations and a WA committee, and it seems to be inferior to either approach. Against.
 
Against

Clause 1 would be very difficult to carry out and would probably be overshadowed by scholars who have already made articles covering the topics that would be discussed in the manuals.

Clause 2 sets up a board that essentially does stuff that can easily be handled by local governments. For example, many nations are probably able to record the number of workplace injuries already. This fact thus would make the HSB useless.

Overall, this proposal would not have much of an effect on any nation in the NS multiverse.
 
Looking at this further, the HSB seems to me likely to be quite an ineffective entity. Obviously it is meant to be a monitoring mechanism for compliance with the Resolution, but the ability for it actually to monitor compliance seems very limited. It doesn’t have any power to investigate or research matters itself, it relies wholly on the data provided to it by member states to know about the steps that need to be taken, the steps that are taken, and the efficacy of the steps taken to comply with the Resolution. Presumably for some states that could give it all that it needs but I would think that for many (and particularly the most inclined to be non-compliant) the HSB will lack the tools to identify non-compliance.

Also, the HSB is obliged to report “fail[ure] to enforce those measures [member states] have enacted to protect the health and safety of workers, including by failing to enforce compliance with Articles 1, 2 and 4 of this Act, to the WACC”. While this is all very good for breaches of WA law (like this resolution and others such as the Workplace Safety Standards Act (GA #7)), it would seem potentially to range wider than that and to oblige the report of breaches of exclusively domestic legislation that would not be obliged by WA law, leaving the WACC with a host of reports on matters outside its competence. I suppose it is maybe arguable that the WACC could bring proceedings for breaches of solely domestic health and safety legislation as being a breach of the right to a safe working environment under GA #7‘s clause 2 but that seems like a stretch (and a bit worrisome) to me.

Having thought more about this Resolution, I think that am inclined to vote against.
 
Against (non-WA)

While I'd consider the goal of this proposal to be admirable, and the writing to be passable, I don't believe the approach it takes is particularly needed or at all effective. Its articles are more focused on information collection, and the authorship, distribution, and enforcement of the so-called "Manuals" (I kid you not, they felt the need to specify a name), than its proclaimed purposes of furthering the development of industry, protecting workers from dangerous working conditions, preventing the exportation of jobs based on healthcare costs, and "Supporting the right of workers everywhere to face as small a risk of physical harm and deterioration as possible while they are working". It is my opinion that we should not support.
 
"Health and Safety Act" has passed 8,138 votes (50.7%) to 7,904 (49.3%). This is author Alistia's 1st General Assembly Resolution authored and co-author @Tinhampton's 14th General Assembly Resolution authored.
 
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