States including information on training programmes;
to organise conferences and seminars and exchanges of experts;
to supply European Union bodies and Member States with technical, scientific and economic information in order to enable them to formulate and implement policies;
to establish a network for the provision of information;
to collect and make available information on safety and health from and to countries outside the European Union and international organisations;
to provide technical, scientific and economic information on methods and tools for implementing preventive activities, paying particular attention to the problems of small‐ and medium‐sized organisations; and
to contribute to the development of European Union action programmes relating to the protection of health and safety at work.
Further developments have been the creation of a Committee of Senior Labour Inspectors (1995), a Scientific Committee for Occupational Exposure Limits to Chemical Agents (1995), whose functions were transferred to the European Chemicals Agency in 2019, and a Major Accident Hazards Bureau (1996).
The importance of statistics was reflected in research done by the European Agency, which led to a report in 2000 providing a comprehensive overview of the occupational health and safety situation in the European Union. The accession of 12 new Member States, many with industries which had lacked investment resources for 50 years or more, no doubt significantly altered the profile of the average European enterprise.
Although the safety of workers was an important part of European Community policy from the foundation of the Coal and Steel Community in 1951, and the Treaty of Rome provided specifically for equal pay for men and women at work (Chapter 8), the use of Community law to lay down minimum rights for workers in other areas has been far more controversial. Article 95 permitted legislation on working conditions if it was necessary to ensure the effective functioning of the common market, and measures to protect workers affected by collective redundancies, transfer of the undertaking in which they were employed and the insolvency of their employer were enacted under this power.
Conflict arose between the majority of European governments who regarded the protection of the worker as an important aim for social legislation and the free marketeers in the UK government who preferred to allow market forces to determine workers’ rights unfettered by what they regarded as artificial barriers to economic growth.
In December 1989 11 Member States signed a Community Charter of Fundamental Social Rights of Workers (the Social Charter). This was largely a declaration of policy, without direct legal effect. The UK government stood alone in refusing to agree to the principle that workers’ rights should be enshrined in European law and did not sign the Charter. The Charter’s provisions are expressed in general aspirational terms. It deals with minimum wages, working hours and holidays, rights of association and the right to negotiate and conclude collective agreements.
At the meeting of governments at Maastricht in December 1991, the majority of Member States agreed that they wished to adopt further measures to pursue the aims of the Social Charter. Again, the UK government was in a minority of one. The compromise eventually reached (the Maastricht Protocol) was that all 12 Member States agreed that 11 states (all except the UK) might have recourse to the institutions, procedures and mechanisms of the Treaty of Rome for the purposes of taking the acts and decisions necessary to give effect to the new agreement. The UK government would not participate in this process, though it would not interfere with the 11, and it would continue to comply with pre‐Maastricht legislation.
The political and social problems created by this two‐tier system were many. In particular, its implementation was thought to result in the British worker becoming the poor man of Europe, with significantly lower wage rates and reduced legal protection against exploitation by the employer, although increased trade through the production of more competitive goods increased general prosperity. There were signs that multinational companies looked favourably at siting their plants in the UK to take advantage of lower rates of pay.
The legal problems were formidable. It was not easy to differentiate between the various types of legislation. Take, for example, the Working Time Directive, which created minimum daily and weekly rest periods and annual paid holidays of a minimum length. If, as the Commission argued, this was as a health and safety measure it could be passed by a qualified majority without the consent of the UK government and must then be enacted into UK law. If it were to be classified as a ‘workers’ rights’ measure, it might either fall within what is now Article 95, in which case it could only become law if all the Member States agreed, or alternatively (but less likely) it could be regarded as an attempt to implement the Social Charter falling within the Maastricht Protocol and therefore not involving the UK at all.
This issue was litigated in the European Court in 1996. In United Kingdom v. EU Council the European Court held that ‘working environment’, ‘safety’ and ‘health’ should be interpreted liberally to embrace all factors (physical or otherwise) capable of affecting the health and safety of the worker in his working environment. Legislation on rest periods, holidays and night working was held to be relevant to health, defined by the World Health Organization as ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well‐being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’. Thus, the Working Time Directive was mandatory on the United Kingdom.
The Social Charter and the Maastricht Protocol emphasised the principle of subsidiarity, namely that the Community must recognise the differing social structures and the diversity of national practices of the Member States, and legislate only where it is necessary to achieve the objectives of the treaties. There can be no Union‐wide minimum fair wage, because of the many differences in cost of living, incidence of taxation and social security etc., but there can be the espousal of the concept of a legally guaranteed fair wage for each individual country. The Labour government elected in May 1997 adopted the Social Charter for the United Kingdom, and introduced national minimum wage legislation. In the Treaty of Amsterdam 1997 the UK government agreed to accept qualified majority voting for all Social Charter Directives in the future, and to adopt those directives already agreed by the other Member States after Maastricht. These were the European Works Council Directive, the Parental Leave Directive, the Part‐Time Workers Directive and the Directive on Burden of Proof in Sex Discrimination cases.
The previous Conservative government expressed concern that, at a time when it was pursuing a policy of deregulation on the home front with the aim of freeing industry from petty legal restrictions which deter growth, new and onerous duties were being introduced through membership of the European Community. ‘Health and safety legislation could be brought into disrepute by introducing bureaucratic requirements which would not be complied with’ (Review of implementation and enforcement of EC law in the UK (1993) Department of Trade and Industry). The DTI report recommended the designation of one of the Health and Safety Commissioners as especially concerned, as far as possible, to look after the interests of the small employer. In 2000 a report from the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions stated that ‘a more deeply engrained culture of self‐regulation needs to be cultivated, most crucially in the 3.7 million businesses with less than 250 employees’. The development of a Better Regulation strategy which followed is discussed in Chapter 5.
The implementation of EU law is for the Member States, who must adjust the European principles to their own domestic institutions, but the essence of the principles must reach the statute book. In recent years there have been fewer directives in the field of health and safety at work. The European Commission has engaged in an evaluation of the whole body of occupational
