Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-10-22-Speech-2-283"
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"en.20021022.11.2-283"2
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"Mr President, I would like to thank Mr Pérez Álvarez for an incisive and thoughtful report.
The application of health and safety legislation to self-employed workers is an important subject, not least because of the ever-growing number of self-employed, subordinated, sub-contracted or atypical workers. The creation of false forms of independence and self-employment can put workers who are in an employment situation beyond the framework of protection. That is something we need to address.
This is something that the Commission recognises and, working together, as Mr Pérez Álvarez has said, we have tried to do something about it over the years. The extension of working time protection to road transport personnel in the directive, agreed at the end of last year, will cover owner-drivers, but only because parallel legal bases covering occupational health and safety on the one hand, and operational safety on the other have been used.
As Mr Pérez Álvarez has pointed out this evening, the issue was also tackled in the framework of the directive on temporary and mobile work sites, but in a fairly limited way. We therefore needed a more comprehensive approach and this recommendation may prove to be a useful contribution.
But other actions are possible, such as the more general extension of health and safety legislation to the self-employed suggested in Mr Pérez Álvarez's Amendment No 4. I know the Commission has difficulty with that. The Commissioner will say that the legal base in Article 137 will not permit this. But, if the recommendation does not have a positive impact, then we will all collectively need to come back together to reconsider the legal bases that are available to us and maybe take the route suggested in Mr Pérez Álvarez 's Amendments Nos 7 and 22.
If not, imagine the sort of problems we face in relation to, for example, the proposed directive we are currently considering on protection of workers from risks related to exposure to asbestos at work. We have massive amounts of asbestos hidden in our workplaces, homes, schools and hospitals. Many people with employment contracts will handle it and, if they work for a demolition, removal or transportation company, they will be covered.
But a whole army of self-employed workers are also exposed to asbestos, in particular the electricians, plumbers and carpenters who come across it while doing maintenance work. They will be predominantly self-employed.
It is also true that, even if we had a tenfold increase in the number of inspectors, they could not inspect this whole army of self-employed people at work. They need to be able to take responsibility for themselves. They need the information, the support and training to understand the risks they run if they take short cuts. The recommendation is a very useful contribution in that respect."@en1
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