L’Agence européenne pour la sécurité et la santé au travail (OSHA) a publié ce jour les résultats d’un sondage d’opinions sur la sécurité et la santé au travail. 27 106 habitants de plus de 18 ans répartis dans les 27 Etats membres de l’Union européenne ont été interrogés, du 24 mars au 12 mai 2009, par le cabinet TNS.

61 % des citoyens européens craignent que l’actuelle crise économique n’ait des effets néfastes sur la santé et la sécurité au travail (France : 72 %, Luxembourg : 54 %), susceptibles de compromettre les améliorations obtenues au cours des cinq dernières années (France : 59 %, Luxembourg : 65 %). Cependant, 66 % des citoyens européens s’estiment bien informés en matière de sécurité et de santé au travail (69 % en France, 70 % au Luxembourg).

Pour 3 citoyens européens sur 4, la dégradation de l’état de santé peut être imputée au travail. Ce chiffre est encore plus important en France (79 %) et Luxembourg (82 %).

Au Luxembourg, la sécurité de l’emploi (53 %), le salaire (52 %) et les conditions de santé et de sécurité (44 %) sont les éléments qui influencent le plus une décision lors de la recherche d’un emploi. Ces 3 éléments n’apparaissent pas dans le même ordre pour les français : le salaire (63 %), la sécurité de l’emploi (54 %) et les conditions de santé et de sécurité (30 %).

La crise financière peut conduire des organisations à ignorer ou minimiser l’importance de la sécurité et de la santé sur le lieu de travail. Certaines risquent même d’envisager une réduction de leurs investissements en matière de sécurité et santé au travail (SST). En notre qualité d’Agence compétente dans ce domaine, nous devons les convaincre qu’il ne faut en aucun cas privilégier des économies à court terme au détriment de la résolution de problèmes à long terme. Tous nos travaux montrent que plus les lieux de travail offrent des conditions saines, plus ils ont tendance à être productifs. Dr Jukka TAKALA, directeur de l’EU-OSHA.

Plus que jamais, il est nécessaire d’investir dans la prévention santé et sécurité des collaborateurs en Entreprise.

En savoir plus

Sur simple demande par mail auprès de eric.scholer@laposte.net, nous pouvons vous adresser les résultats détaillés en France et au Luxembourg (sous la forme de fichiers pdf).

Chaque année dans l’Union européenne, 5 720 personnes meurent suite à des accidents liés au travail, selon les statistiques d’EUROSTAT (2005) et 159 500 travailleurs supplémentaires succombent à des maladies professionnelles (OIT 2005).

Face à ce constat, l’Agence européenne pour la Sécurité et la Santé au Travail (OSHA) coordonne depuis 2008 une campagne de sensibilisation sur le thème “Lieux de travail sains : bon pour vous, bon pour vos affaires” afin de réduire les accidents de 25 % d’ici 2012. La Semaine européenne pour la sécurité et la santé au travail se tiendra du 19 au 23 octobre 2009. Cette année, le focus est mis sur l’inventaire et la gestion des risques qui constituent les premières étapes du processus de prévention.

Selon les statistiques européennes (OIT Estimation 2008), un travailleur

est impliqué dans un accident toutes les cinq secondes (arrêt de travail de 3 jours ouvrables au minimum),

décède de causes liées à son activité professionnelle toutes les 3 minutes et demi,

trouve la mort sur son lieu de travail toutes les deux heures.

2 manifestations ont retenu notre attention dans le cadre de cette Semaine :

21 octobre 2009, Luxembourg : l’Inspection du Travail et des Mines organise un symposium sur le thème “Inventaire et Gestion des Risques”, en présence de Monsieur Bernd MERZ, DG entreprises de la Commission Européenne, chef de projets de construction en Europe (aéroport de Munich et Messestadt-Riem et en Asie) et expert en système de gestion SST (Sécurité et Santé au Travail) de la construction. L’inscription se fait en ligne sur le site :  https://guichet.itm.lu/inscription.

21 octobre 2009, Nancy. Le Forum Evallor a pour objectif de sensibiliser à l’importance de la démarche d’évaluation, de permettre les échanges sur des bonnes pratiques et d’identifier les compétences de professionnels présents en région Lorraine. L’inscription se fait en ligne sur sur le site : http://www.evallor.com/.

Whatever else you see or read today or in the next few days about the late Edward Kennedy, let me assure you of this:

The man did not get cheated by life. He lived four or five lifetimes in his 77 years: a young kid just hoping to carry the mantle of his slain brothers; a senator who many thought was a lightweight but grew into a powerful advocate, an incredibly wealthy man who cared deeply about people who had so little money.

He was also shamed and disgraced after being responsible for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick in 1969, pathetically leaving the scene of the crime, then not reporting it for hours while Kopechne drowned; and finally, after the drinking and carousing and womanizing was finished, he became a fantastic and distinguished voice of experience in the Senate, raging against big-company greed and fighting so hard for things like aid to the poor, civil rights, and immigration.

Really, the guy lived enough for three or four movies about him.

One of the things I said in a post last month about Kennedy is that he was such a tragically flawed hero, and was such a lightning rod, that most people either loved him or hated him.  I mean really, have you ever met anyone with no opinion on Teddy?

Just as so many of us on the left were thrilled he was championing causes few believed him, he was mocked viciously on the right, for his excessive alcohol intake (a woman in my office has a bumper sticker that reads: “I’d still rather go hunting with Dick Cheney than drinking with Ted Kennedy.”)

Much like with Bill Clinton, I think that if Teddy could’ve eliminated some of the more noxious elements of his personal life, he could’ve accomplished so much more.

As much as he did accomplish (helping pass the Voting Rights Act, helping found OHSA, the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, getting the minimum wage raised, starting the wildly successful SCHIP program for kids’ health), I feel that he could’ve had an even bigger impact, perhaps as President, if his wildly reckless behavior had been curtailed before the 1990s.

There are some people that I’ve read today who think Kennedy’s death from a brain tumor will spur change and action on the health-care debate, that now there will be some kind of symbolic unity and America will finally get a strong universal health-care plan.

Yeah, I’m not seeing that; Republicans and special interests are too dug in and this goes way beyond Teddy Kennedy’s legacy. 

What I keep thinking about today is, who’s going to fill his shoes? I don’t mean, literally, who’ll take his Senate seat.

I’m talking about, who’ll be the charismatic liberal voice in the Senate? We lost the great Paul Wellstone in a plane crash in 2002, and now Kennedy has died.

There are other liberal Senators fighting for our causes, men like Russ Feingold and Dick Durbin, but they lack the national profile and, quite frankly, the charisma of other past standout Senators.

I just fear that with Barack Obama turning out to be more of a centrist than I hoped, that with Kennedy’s death the era of the mad as hell, fire-breathing liberal championing those who don’t have anyone else to champion them is officially dead, too.

Who will speak for those without a voice? Who will argue on behalf of the single mother working two jobs and still being unable to pay the mortgage, or the minimum-wage-earning man trying to earn a living and break a cycle of abject poverty in his life, or in his surroundings? Hardly anybody speaks for those people now above a whisper, and now poor people lost one of the few megaphones they had left.

I thought John Edwards could be that voice once, but, well, we know what happened to him.

I think historians decades from now will see Kennedy in a mostly positive light; the alcohol and indiscretions will be glossed over, and his legacy will be that of the only Kennedy brother who lived a long life, and packed as much into it as it could.

Adam Clymer maybe summed up Kennedy best in his 1999 biography:

“The deaths and tragedies around him would have led others to withdraw. He never quits, but sails against the wind.”

Farewell, Senator Kennedy. You lived one hell of a life.

And say hi to Jack and Bobby for us, too.

There has always been contempt for economic liberty. Historically, our nation was an important, not complete, exception. It took the calamity of the Great Depression to bring about today’s level of restrictions on economic liberty. Now we have another government-created calamity that has the prospect of moving us even further away from economic liberty with the news media and pundits creating the perception that the current crisis can be blamed on capitalism.

We see comments such as those in the New York Times: “The United States  has a culture that celebrates laissez-faire capitalism as the economic ideal.” Or, “For 30 years, the nation’s political system has been tilted in favor of business deregulation and against new rules.” Another says, “Since 1997, Mr. Brown [the British prime minister] has been a powerful voice behind the Labor Party’s embrace of an American-style economic philosophy that was light on regulation.”

By Walter E. Williams
The Washington Times

First, let’s establish what laissez-faire capitalism is. Broadly defined, it is an economic system based on private ownership and control over of the means of production. Under laissez-faire capitalism, government activity is restricted to the protection of the individual’s rights against fraud, theft and the initiation of physical force.

Professor George Reisman has written a very insightful article on his blog titled “The Myth that Laissez Faire Is Responsible for Our Financial Crisis.” (http://georgereisman.com/blog/2008/10/myth-that-laissez-faire-is-respo nsible.html) You can decide whether we have an unregulated laissez-faire economy. There are 15 Cabinet departments, nine of which control various aspects of the U.S. economy. They are the Departments of: Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Health and Human Services, Education, Energy, Labor, Agriculture, Commerce and Interior. In addition, there is the alphabet soup cluster of federal agencies such as: the IRS, the FRB and FDIC, the EPA, FDA, SEC, CFTC, NLRB, FTC, FCC, FERC, FEMA, FAA, CAA, INS, OHSA, CPSC, NHTSA, EEOC, BATF, DEA, NIH and NASA.

Here’s my question to you: Can one be sane and at the same time hold that ours is an unregulated laissez-faire economy? Better yet, tell me what a businessman, or for that matter you, can do that does not involve some kind of government regulation.

Read the rest:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/nov
/09/capitalism-and-fiscal-woes/

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