Since January 2014, absolutely every official workplace should be rated on a scale of harmfulness and danger of working conditions. This is a prescription of Federal Law No. 426, which entered into force in December 2013. Let's get acquainted in general terms with this current law, methods for assessing working conditions, as well as with the classification scale.
Federal Law No. 426: General Plan of the Bill
The law was approved on December 25, 2013, and has also been supplemented three times to date: in 2014, 2015, 2016. It consists of four thematic chapters:
- General Provisions It parses here:
- the main subject of the bill;
- the concept of "special assessment of labor conditions" and its regulation;
- the rights and obligations of both the employee and the employer, and the organization engaged in valuation activities ;
- the application of the results of a workplace assessment of the harmfulness to life and health in practice.
- Assessment of working conditions. The chapter is dedicated to the assessment process:
- organization of work of the expert commission;
- preparation for the start of work;
- identification of potentially dangerous / harmful factors;
- compliance of the state of affairs with state safety standards;
- testing / research / measurement of harmful and hazardous working conditions;
- what is subject to mandatory research / measurement to put forward an assessment of labor conditions;
- classification of working conditions ;
- the results of the expert commission;
- features of the assessment of individual jobs;
- section on the universal federal information system for recording the results of these inspections.
- Organizations and experts evaluating working conditions. The following topics are highlighted within the chapter:
- organizations and experts authorized to carry out this activity;
- registers of the mentioned experts and expert organizations;
- independence and a number of obligations of an expert organization that evaluates the working conditions of any jobs;
- high-quality examination of the assessment.
- Final provisions. Considered here:
- trade union and state control over compliance with the provisions of this Federal Law;
- resolution of disagreements arising from the assessment put forward by experts;
- transitional provisions;
- section on the entry into force of this Federal Law.
On the key provisions of the law in question
General provisions of the Federal Law "On the special assessment of working conditions" are as follows:
- The main subjects of this act are relations that served as a pretext for assessing the conditions of the workplace, as well as the obligations of the employer to ensure the safety of their workers.
- The law establishes both the norms and the algorithm for conducting valuation activities, as well as the rights and obligations of all interested parties - the employee, employer, and experts.
- They regulate a special assessment of working conditions both of the Labor Code of the Russian Federation and this Federal Law, as well as other acts and laws that should not be listed by the content mentioned.
- If this Federal Law is contrary to international standards, then the final authority will be the latter.
- A special assessment of working conditions is a single set of sequentially conducted measures that determine the dangerous / harmful factors of production or other labor activity, as well as assess the level of their negative impact on the employee - this is determined based on the deviation of the identified indicators from state standards.
- The results of this special assessment provide an opportunity for experts to determine the classes of working conditions by hazard in the study area.
Rights and obligations of the parties
Consider in the table the rights and obligations of the parties - all participants in the process of assessing working conditions according to the degree of harmfulness and danger.
| Participant | Rights | Responsibilities |
| Employer | Requirement for substantiating the results of the assessment given to the workplace. Unscheduled special assessment of jobs in your organization. The requirement from the expert to present the documentation referred to in Art. 19 of this Federal Law. Appeal in court of actions / inaction of an expert organization (Article 26 of this Federal Law). | Ensure the assessment of working conditions in accordance with Part 1 of Art. 17 of the Federal Law under consideration. Provide the expert organization with all the information necessary for assessing the degree of labor. Do not narrow the range of issues directly affecting the final assessment of the expert. To familiarize the employee in writing with the results of an assessment of the harmfulness conditions of his workplace. Make the necessary improvements / modernization to establish more acceptable and safe working conditions. |
| Employee | The presence in the workplace at the time of the hazard / hazard assessment of the latter. The right to contact the employer, the expert with suggestions for a more successful identification of harmful factors of their work. The right to receive clarification regarding the assessment of working conditions. Appeal of a hazard / hazard assessment made by an expert organization. | To get acquainted with the assessment that determines the degree of labor by hazard. |
| Expert organization | Refusal to conduct assessment activities if they threaten the life or health of employees of the audited institution. Appeal against the instructions of the officials involved in the process. | Provide justification for the assessment of working conditions. Provide documents confirming their authority. Apply the methods and means of testing / measurement approved by the legislation of the Russian Federation. Do not start valuation activities if: - the employer has provided insufficient information for the examination; - the employer refused to provide the proper conditions for the work of experts. Keep commercial and other secrets protected by law, which became known during the assessment of working conditions at workplaces. |
To determine how dangerous the work is, the expert commission together with the employer carries out a number of activities. Briefly analyze them.
13 stages of hazard assessment
The key steps in determining the degree of labor in terms of harmfulness / danger of its conditions are as follows:
- Issuing an order determining the formation of an expert commission.
- Approval of a list of jobs in need of evaluation.
- Publication of the order on the work schedule of the evaluation committee.
- Conclusion of an agreement with an expert organization.
- Transfer of information necessary for their activities to experts.
- Approval of the results of analyzes of harmful / dangerous factors.
- Approval of the report on the assessment activities.
- Notification of the expert organization of the previous paragraph.
- Filing a declaration of compliance of the actual situation with state safety standards.
- Familiarization of employees with the assessments.
- Posting information about grades on the official website of the employer.
- Notification of the results of the FSS of the Russian Federation.
- Application of the results of valuation activities to improve working conditions, minimize harmful / dangerous work.
Four categories of working conditions
The evaluation committee must identify one of the four classes of harmfulness of a particular labor process:
- optimal;
- valid
- harmful;
- dangerous.
Let us dwell on each of them.
Optimal working conditions
The classes of working conditions in terms of danger and harmfulness begin with the first - the most favorable. Here, the impact of hazardous or harmful factors is absent / minimally / does not exceed the safe work established by the standards. Working conditions do not prevent the retention of an increased level of human performance.
Permissible workflow conditions
The workplace to which class 2 was awarded is distinguished by the fact that the worker is exposed to dangerous and / or harmful factors, but in such an amount that official hygiene standards allow. The moral and physical condition of the employee is fully restored subject to the established regime of work and rest by the beginning of the next working day.
Harmful working conditions and their varieties
Accordingly, harmful working conditions, according to the Federal Law No. 426, will be those that exceed the established standards for harmfulness / danger of impact on the employee’s condition. Grade 3 has four additional subclasses inside:
- The condition of the employee can be fully restored with a long rest (more than a break between work shifts). There is a risk of harm to health.
- Exposure to harmful / dangerous factors in the process of work can lead to certain dysfunctions of the body (hard physical work definitely applies here). With long-term (more than 15 years) work experience, the initial stages of occupational diseases may be manifested that cause slight harm to the general condition.
- Working conditions can lead to both mild occupational diseases and illnesses with a moderate degree of severity, which can contribute to the loss of aptitude.
- The conditions of the work process inevitably lead to the appearance of severe forms of occupational diseases, the result of which is the general loss of working capacity by the employee.
Hazardous working conditions
Grade 4 includes such definitely harmful and dangerous working conditions, which not only can contribute to the emergence and progression of severe forms of occupational diseases, inevitably leading to total disability, but also during the working day pose a danger to the life of the worker.
Federal Law No. 426 not only establishes a general classification of the harmfulness of working conditions, but also determines the procedure for making such an assessment for a particular workplace by a special expert, determines the rights and obligations of the employee, employer and expert organization in this process.