EU-OSHA Wraps Up Small Business Research Project

The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) recently issued its fourth and final report on a 3-year (2014–2017) research project intended to identify the state of occupational safety and health (OSH) in micro and small enterprises (MSE) in nine EU-member states.

The report summarizes and analyzes findings and conclusions from 162 case studies presented in the three previous reports and, overall, identified key challenges and success factors that can form the bases for policies, strategies, and practical solutions leading to improvements in OSH in these enterprises. All the reports recognize the “huge heterogeneity” among MSEs in Europe but also found many commonalities. In both of these respects, these businesses face the same challenges and opportunities as U.S. MSEs.

Good Practices

The reports were written primarily for OSH regulatory and inspection bodies, trade unions, professional practitioners, insurers, and trade organizations. Of the four reports, the one that may offer the most immediate assistance to these entities contains 44 “good examples” that have, in different ways, succeeded in improving OSH conditions and management in MSEs.

“The descriptions of the good examples have been developed to serve as inspiration for stakeholders and intermediaries on how to reach out to and improve OSH in MSEs,” states EU-OSHA. “The aim is also to provide sufficient information for an analysis of what kind of initiatives work, how the good examples have been or can be tailored to the target group and how they can be adapted to the needs, prerequisites, and context of the target groups to answer the question ‘What works, for whom and under what circumstances?’”

Supporting Role in Value Chain

The following are included among the findings listed in the fourth report:

• A range of socioeconomic developments has resulted in a growing structural vulnerability, forcing a large proportion of MSEs to take a low-road organizational and business strategy to survive.
• One key trend is the lengthening of global value chains, wherein MSEs are prone to be situated in dependent and less powerful positions than their larger counterparts and to experience the consequent shift of risks and costs from larger operations to their own.
• The related pressure on working conditions contributes to the growth of precarious work and a more vulnerable workforce in terms of unsecure contracts, loss of wage benefits, unpaid overtime, and OSH risks.
• MSEs face a general lack of resources for OSH prevention and adequate OSH management; the workers employed in these firms are likely to experience poorer working conditions, lower job quality, and proportionally greater risks to their health, safety, and well-being.
• Among MSEs there is a low level of understanding concerning OSH requirements; limited time and attention paid to them; a lack of attention to learning how to improve arrangements; and a failure to regard such improvements as potentially efficient and cost-effective.
• Workers in MSEs have poor resources that match those of their employers, which hinder risk control and impact on their own safety and health. For many, these include more precarious labor market positions and employment contracts; comparatively lower education and skills; and poorer formal voice and representation structures and opportunities.
• MSEs operate under lower institutional pressure; have lower visibility to and contact with regulatory enforcement; are less vulnerable to public media attention; and have generally more limited governance contacts.
• An MSE owner-manager is simultaneously an entrepreneur, craftsperson, and family person. These MSE owners-managers identify themselves as decent individuals taking care of their workers and demonstrate this to their stakeholders. This identity may act as a reason for resistance to traditional risk assessment because listing risks can be seen as an indirect criticism implying negligence of their employer responsibility.

Support Needed from Many Actors

Among its conclusions, EU-OSHA states:

Institutional support for the drivers of good practice on arrangements for OSH in MSEs requires the engagement of constellations of regulatory actors present in the social and economic environment occupied by MSEs, rather than the initiatives of single actors. Regulatory inspectors, trade union representatives, professional practitioners, representatives of trade, social insurance or sector-level organizations, the agents of both public and private regulation, and other actors can have a much stronger impact by a coordinated orchestration of their activities. This task is often initiated by the regulator.