Occupational Safety and Employment Contracts: Key Aspects
Occupational Safety and Employer Responsibility
Civil Liability
When occupational accidents with harmful outcomes are caused by reckless or negligent actions of the employer, they must compensate the worker for the damages caused by the accident.
Criminal Liability
The law punishes anyone who is legally obliged to safeguard the life and physical health of workers, yet fails to provide the necessary means for them to carry out their work safely and without risk to life, health, and physical integrity, resulting in such risks occurring.
Health and Safety Committee
The Health and Safety Committee (HSC) is a body for regular consultations regarding risk prevention in the industry. It is mandatory for companies with more than 50 workers. It consists of safety representatives, employers, and their representatives, in equal numbers.
Skills of the Health and Safety Committee
- Participate in the development, implementation, and evaluation of occupational risk prevention plans and programs.
- Promote initiatives on methods and procedures for effective occupational risk prevention, proposing improvements to conditions or the correction of deficiencies.
Rights of the Health and Safety Committee
The HSC is entitled to directly know the situation regarding occupational risk prevention, documents, and reports on working conditions, health damage, and annual reports.
Employment Contracts
Characteristics of the Employment Contract
An “agreement of wills” under which an employee voluntarily agrees to provide services within the organization and direction of another person, the employer, and on their behalf, in exchange for payment from the employer.
- Personal Work: The work is of a personal nature and cannot be replaced.
- Voluntarily Provided Work: The work is provided voluntarily, and contractual relations for life are prohibited.
- Subordinate Work: The work is performed under the power of organization, direction, and discipline of the employer.
- Employed Person: The products of the work belong to the owner of the means of production, not to those who produce them.
Specifically Exempt
Officials, mandatory personal benefits, activities limited to titles of friendship, benevolence, or family work.
Types of Contracts
- Contract for Provision of Services: One party agrees to provide a service for a price. It has a limited duration in time, without dependence or subordination. The price of services is set (e.g., lawyers). There is no obligation of results.
- Lease-Work Contract: One party is obligated to perform work for another for a price (e.g., masons, plumbers). The contract ends upon completion of the work.
- Term Contract: An agent is obligated to provide a service or do something on behalf of another (principal). The contract is assumed to be free.
- Agency Contract: A contract through which an agent provides services as a mediator, promoting business operations to others (business delegate).
Sources Governing the Individual Employment Relationship
These are the instruments governing the rights and obligations between the employer and employee.
Hierarchy of Sources
- Spanish Constitution
- Community Standards
- …
- The company can give the worker a better position than the convention provides.
Collective Agreement
A specific, written agreement between worker and employer representatives. It results from the constitutional recognition of the role of labor unions and business organizations. The constitution gives them the right to collective bargaining.
A collective agreement is a written agreement reached after a negotiation process between a company and the workers’ collective representation (unitary or union) to regulate the rights and obligations of the employer and worker that are integrated into the employment contract. Agreements are complementary to the rights recognized in law and can be improved upon.
Employment Contracts (Repeated)
Characteristics of the Employment Contract
“Voluntary agreement” under which the worker voluntarily undertakes to provide its services within the scope, organization, and direction of another person, the employer, and on their behalf, in exchange for payment of the employer.
- Personal Work: The work is of a personal nature and cannot be replaced.
- Voluntarily Provided Work: The work is provided voluntarily, and contractual ties for life are prohibited.