(Finance) – “Today we are facing an emergency that has already occurred in recent summers. We intend to intervene by strengthening existing tools and designing further strategies which, in addition to regulatory intervention, also provide for the involvement of the social partners in the adoption of good practices and organizational interventions capable of making the supervision of workers’ safety more effective and protecting their health. The objective is the integrated management of today’s heat emergency through changes to the organizational models capable of facing future crises due to changes climatic”. This is what he explained in a note Minister of Labor and Social Policies Marina Elvira Calderone at the end of heat emergency table with employers’ associations and trade unions. A new meeting is scheduled for next Monday on the subject.
“The ministry – continues the note – has made itself available to collaborate in the drafting of a joint protocol with the social partners, in which to address the issues of work organization, measures and good practices to be adopted to combat the heat emergency, with the supply of ad hoc PPE and heat-resistant supports. Furthermore, the ministry will also carry out an evaluation of the interventions proposed during the meeting, which require further regulatory interventions, such as for example the hourly management of the ordinary redundancy fund in all sectors”.
The existing measures to protect against heat peaks, including the possibility of applying for ordinary layoffs if temperatures exceed 35 degrees, as envisaged by the INPS, do not seem, in fact, sufficient to cope with the current record heat. Because of this the unions are asking for clearer measures. There Uil he asked for “an immediate decree that stops activities where 32/33 degrees are exceeded”, also underlining that there is no time to continue the discussion and arrive at a possible protocol. For the CGIL “immediately operational interventions” are needed because “the situation is at high risk”. There Cisl on the other hand, he judges the minister’s proposal positive “to proceed expeditiously with the definition of a trilateral protocol, reconvening the table next Monday to deepen and define possible agreements”.
And among the possible aid tools against the emergency there is also the project coordinated by Cnr and Inail on red heat alert stickers for workers’ health. It is a risk map that provides a classification based on geographical areas, of three days in three days, with the hours to be avoided by type of work, from the heaviest, intense physical activity, to the lightest, moderate physical activity.