Pam magazine 14/13: Small restaurants are evading their occupational health care duties
If a company has even one employee, this company is obliged to provide occupational health care. But last summer's inspections showed that less than half of the small restaurants in Helsinki's Kallio, Sörnäinen and Lauttasaari neighbourhoods had dealt with this issue properly.
Forty-four out of the 71 restaurants inspected in early summer did not have a valid occupational health care agreement in place. In eight of the cases it was unclear whether such an agreement had been signed.
– The agreement document could not be found in the restaurant, says safety engineer Pirjo Kivistö, from the Regional State Administrative Agency of Southern Finland's occupational safety unit. The owners were given until the end of July to provide the Regional State Administrative Agency with the agreement in question. Restaurants with no agreement were issued a request to sign such an agreement by the end of August.
The number of missing agreements was high, but this did not surprise Kivistö. Inspections in central Helsinki in the spring yielded very similar results.
Employers' statutory occupational health care obligations are, in fact, rather scarce. Despite this, the extent to which these obligations are met decreases with the size of the company. All of the restaurants inspected in the summer employed fewer than 10 people.
– The statutory element is preventive. It aims to prevent loss of health resulting from work. The more extensive health care, which is voluntary for employers, is all about firefighting; it is a reaction to the fact that sick people already exist, says Erika Kähärä, occupational environment expert at PAM.
– Employers who have trouble conceiving of the risks at the workplace imagine they don't exist.
An essential part of statutory occupational health care is the workplace assessment, in which an occupational health nurse or physician visits the workplace in order to assess occupational health risks and provide instructions, which should be discussed together with the employees at that workplace. This assessment may also result in fixed-period health checks.
According to Kivistö, even those workplaces with an occupational health care agreement in place have often failed to conduct this assessment. This is a matter that is related to employer attitudes.
Occupational health care is also needed because of the daily sickness allowance. Since the summer before last, employees have been obliged to provide Kela with an occupational health care provider's statement on their ability to work after they have received an allowance for at least 90 days over a period of two years.
– If this obligation kick-starts occupational health care activities in at least some of the places, it's a good thing, Kähärä says.
Kivistö suspects that the demand only jolted some of the employees into action. The next procedure is an official hearing. Resistance usually dissipates at this point, especially when faced with a fine.
A more thorough inspection is scheduled for the autumn for a few of the inspected establishments. In these restaurants, work shift lists were not visible and no common language could be found.
– The proliferation of restaurants owned by foreign nationals increases the amount of language-related issues. However, cases of negligence are split evenly between Finnish and foreign owners.
Kivistö feels this occurs because of a lack of information. Small workplaces have neither shop stewards nor occupational safety delegates.
– We also hear explanations according to which occupational health care is not needed since there are only a few employees or only temporary employees. This is total rubbish. If you pay wages, you must have an agreement. The law makes no exceptions.
One additional problem is the heavy load on occupational health care providers. The occupational health care of small workplaces usually falls on the public health care system. According to Kähärä, there is more demand than municipalies are able to meet. In small municipalities, occupational health care services may be missing altogether.
– They exist in a state of unlawfulness. There are also cases in which a municipality buys its occupational health care services from a private service provider. In these cases, the entrepreneurs purchase their services from the municipality, but these are then provided by private service providers.
The City of Helsinki's occupational health care services for businesses have been merged with the Vantaan Työterveys public utility company.
Katri Kangas
Text:: Tiina Ritala