Publications

The provision and governance of health and safety (H&S) in the workplace involve multiple actors at multiple levels. At the EU level, the Framework Directive on Safety and Health at Work (Directive 89/391 EEC) guarantees minimum health and safety requirements for employees in Europe while member states are allowed to maintain or establish more stringent measures.

With this project, we wanted to understand how social partners (trade unions and employer organisations) at national and European levels contribute to H&S in the hospital1 and social services sectors (focusing on care services for older people). These sectors are characterised by similar health risks for their workers, as emerged during the pandemic, but also by markedly different organisations and providers, in terms of size, public, private, for/not for profit, religious nature, as well as different industrial relations systems and structures of employee representation for H&S. We share the view that patients and care service users are safe when workers are safe.

We, therefore, explored the effectiveness and coordination, if any, of policy H&S interventions between European, national, and organisational levels in the two sectors and the role of social partners in different national systems of collective bargaining and workplace mechanisms of H&S. Effective interventions will ensure better quality (‘fit for purpose’) and wider coverage (type of care workers and employment status) of good H&S protection for health and care workers.