50% of workplaces in Ukraine do not meet safety standards — head of the Builders' Union

This was stated by the head of the Construction Workers' Trade Union of Ukraine, Vasyl Andreev, while commenting on the state of labour reform and prospects for adapting to EU norms at the SocForum.

According to Andreev, official statistics already demonstrate a critical situation: the death rate at workplaces in Ukraine is at least twice as high as in Romania, which has the worst figures in the EU. At the same time, the real figures may be even worse due to the concealment of some accidents.

We as trade unions are faced with cases where such cases are simply not registered," he said.

Half of the workplaces are dangerous

Andreev cited the scale of the problem:

• about 8 million workplaces in Ukraine;
• about 3 million of them do not meet hygiene and safety standards.

This means that half of the people work in conditions where they are more likely to get an injury or occupational disease than to safely complete a working day, he emphasised.

At the same time, the union leader said there has been a significant delay in the preparation of new legislation on workplace safety, which has been in the pipeline since as early as 2019.

For six years, there has been no political will to pass this bill. There is a risk that it will not be there even after the war," he said.

He said the document is based on European directives and envisages a shift to a preventive model, where risks should be prevented rather than investigated ex post facto.

European norms and "draconian" fines

The bill, according to Andreev, provides for a significant increase in employers' liability, in particular, large fines for labour safety violations.

This causes resistance to business, which estimates the cost of implementing the standards at tens of billions of hryvnias. At the same time, trade unions point out that the system will not work without strict control and sanctions.

No norm is fulfilled without coercion - neither taxes, nor traffic rules. The same applies to labour safety," Andreev said.

He called the limited possibilities of state control a separate problem. According to Andreev, Gostrud today has much less authority than before, which makes it difficult to effectively supervise labour conditions.

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