To explore this topic, some key questions should be considered:
- What is labor protection, which document is fundamental in this area?
- What is the state standard and the classifier of standards, what is the status of these documents?
- How is the labor protection system reflected in these standards?
The Labor Code of Russia, more precisely, its tenth section, regulates the labor relations arising on their basis between the employee of the enterprise and the employer in the field of labor protection. Article 209 of this legislative act, adopted in 2001, defines labor protection as a system of measures that includes legal, rehabilitation, sanitary and hygienic, social, organizational, economic, technical and preventive aspects, the purpose of which is to preserve (in the performance of labor obligations) health and life of the organization’s employees. That is, this section of the Labor Code sets out the basic principle of labor relations and law.
The labor protection system, on the other hand, is a complex of legislative and regulatory documents. They regulate sanitary-hygienic, social, economic, technical, organizational and preventive measures, technical means and methods, which are aimed at ensuring safe working conditions for the employee of the organization. For their interconnection, a system of safety standards for labor safety standards has been developed. All its components are aimed at ensuring labor safety; today they have the status of interstate (GOST for the CIS countries) or state (GOST R - for Russia) standards. They are identified (after GOST or GOST R) by the number 12 with a dot.
The USSR also had a system of labor safety standards with the alphanumeric code “GOST 12.”, which still retains legal force in the territory of 12 CIS countries (all former republics of the Union, except the Baltic). After the formation of independent states, the development of the IGU is allowed to develop national standards (for our country it is GOST R), which must be harmonized with respect to interstate GOSTs. In Soviet times, there was a classifier of all standards with alphanumeric codes (most of the documents were identified in sections designated by the 19th letters of the Russian alphabet). Since October 2000, it has been replaced by the All-Russian Classifier of Standards, built in accordance with the International Classifier of ISO.
If in the days of the USSR all GOSTs were mandatory for application in the relevant fields, then Law No. 184-FZ provided for the mandatory implementation of technical regulations, and state standards have been applied voluntarily since September last year. However, this law, as indicated in paragraph 4 of Article 1, does not regulate legal relations in matters relating to labor protection. Therefore, state standards, which includes a system of labor safety standards, relate to the main regulatory legal acts, which set out state requirements in the field of labor protection. Each of them is aimed at providing guarantees enshrined in Articles 7 and 37 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation.
The whole system of labor safety standards is divided into six existing subsystems (indicated by numbers from 0 to 5) and three backup (from 6 to 9). The zero subsystem includes documents of an organizational and methodological nature. The first includes standards that govern the requirements for hazardous and harmful production factors. The second subsystem establishes safe methods and methods for the design, manufacture and operation of production equipment, and the third - the safety of production processes. The fourth subsystem is aimed at ensuring the safety of workers through the use of standardized protective equipment. The fifth includes standards for the safety of buildings and structures.
Failure to comply with any document that includes a system of labor safety standards (by the employer or employee) is a violation of the Labor Code of our country.