Health and safety legislation Essays

Health and safety legislation Essays Health and safety legislation Paper Health and safety legislation Paper Health and safety legislation in the contemporary world has reached new heights with governments and rule makers heaping on responsibility for their employees on their employers (Busse, 2005). It can be safe to say that such safety standards have never been as high at any time as they are today. Though the intentions of these lawmakers-which is to guarantee humane and peaceful working conditions for employees cannot be questioned-unfortunately the implementation can. Safety requirements today require an employer to offer protective gear to employees if they are managing dangerous machines, limits the number of hours and days that a worker can work requires workplaces to maintain a healthy temperature etc. Even then, accidents at workplace are all too common even in a developed country like the US. It is not the fault of the law makers but of the way rules in our society are implemented. Though external regulators regularly keep check on companies, it is not possible to monitor every manufacturer or company in the US. Furthermore, if employees regularly work overtime (such as lawyers in law firms), what can the external regulator do? Though not to such an extent as to be charged with ‘murder’, I completely agree that employers should be liable for their employees deaths, either by paying up substantial sums of damages to their families or promising to fulfill the health and education requirements of the dependents the deceased employee leaves behind. As to the question of whether safety standards should be raised, I don’t believe that that would be a plausible solution because these standards are already quite high and still accidents at the workplace are all too common. What should be raised is the level of enforcement and a better system for keeping checks that the employers are fulfilling their legal obligations should be bought in. Yes, there are some jobs which are too hazardous for people such as coal mining (where workers face dangerous work conditions) and diamond mining (especially in Africa where workers are made to work ridiculous hours) but these jobs cannot be done by machines alone. A better solution would be to insure workers against any mishap which happens at the workplace. References Book Busse, R. C. (2005). Your Rights At The Work Place. Sphinx Publishing.