Abstract:
Annotation. The article is devoted to revealing some problems of insufficient effectiveness
of mechanisms of realization and protection of the right to safe and healthy working conditions
both in Ukraine and in the world considering international and European labor standards,
development of proposals on improvement of legal regulation of protection of this right at the
international and national levels.
It is well-founded that the stereotype of the existing way of international regulation of
safety and health of employees, as well as the insufficient effective mechanisms of international
protection of the right to adequate safe and healthy working conditions in recent years, are one
of the key factors of the unfriendly statistics of industrial injuries and occupational diseases of
workers in the world. It is established that international and European labor standards, unfortunately,
differently interpret the right to proper safe and healthy working conditions. This language
variation of this concept makes it difficult to use these acts effectively.
At present, there are some problems of insufficient effectiveness of international legal
mechanisms for the realization and protection of the right to safe and healthy working conditions
if countries ignore the relevant provisions of the European Social Charter and ILO Conventions
N 155 and N 187. In our view, in the twenty-first century, when the world’s economies were
globalized, these mechanisms should be improved and more flexible so that they can be used
more often and more effectively by relevant actors.
It is concluded that the human rights system of the European Convention for the
Protection of Human Rights and fundamental freedoms in 1950 should be supplemented with a
new right to adequate safe and healthy working conditions as a full-fledged element of this
system. Such an event would clearly strengthen the legal responsibility for violations of labor
protection legislation in Ukraine.
All provisions of the draft Law of Ukraine "On Safety and Health at Work" should be
conceptually based only on a risk-oriented approach. For example, the lawmaker should not
introduce into this law a definition of the term "safe working conditions", which does not take
into account the theory of professional risk, but is developed on the basis of the soviet concept of
"absolute safety".
