Law 31/1995 calls prevention all the activities or measures taken to avoid or reduce risks at work, and occupational risk the possibility that you suffer harm because of your work. To judge how serious a risk is, two things are looked at together: how likely it is to happen and how severe the harm would be (Article 4).
Who is responsible
- You have the right to effective protection of your safety and health. That right comes with an employer's duty to protect you (Article 14).
- The right includes: information, consultation and participation, training, stopping work if there is a serious and imminent risk, and health surveillance.
The order in which risks are prevented (Article 15)
- Avoid risks.
- Assess the risks that cannot be avoided.
- Tackle them at source.
- Adapt the work to the person (job, equipment, methods) and cut down monotonous and repetitive work.
- Keep up with technical progress.
- Replace what is dangerous with what is less dangerous or not dangerous at all.
- Plan prevention.
- Put collective protection before individual protection.
- Give workers proper instructions.
Training is free and during working hours
Your employer must give you sufficient and suitable theoretical and practical training when you are hired (whatever the type or length of your contract), when your duties change or when new equipment or technology arrives. It is given during working hours or, if not, that time is deducted from them, and you can never be made to pay for it (Article 19).
In practiceA warehouse puts a guardrail on a mezzanine instead of just handing you a harness:
that is the «collective before individual protection» principle. The harness is for whatever the guardrail cannot cover.