Schlagwort: ISO 45001

Comments on 5.4 "Participation, consultation and representation" in ISO 45001 2nd CD

5.4 Participation, consultation and representation
https://drafts.bsigroup.com/Home/View/3449155?pos=3449155

Comment
This is about Employee Participation: ISO 45001 vs. OHSAS 18001
ISO 45001 weakens the worker’s options compared to what has been achieved in OHSAS 18001:2007, paragraph 4.4.3.2 “Participation and consultation”.

Remedy
Here the employee representatives in the committee probably will have to propose significant changes in order to come to a standard which is acceptable in Europe. My proposal is to at least maintain what has been achieved with OHSAS 18001:2007.
I hope that employee representatives thoroughly compare to the 2nd CD of ISO 45001 what is written about employee participation in OHSAS 18001:2007. Additionally, the differences between OHSAS 18001:1999 and OHSAS 18001:2007 show what had been achieved for the workers thanks to the beneficial competition with the ILO standard. (There also was resistance on the employers’ side against this improvement. I know of a case where a large European company had been certified since 2009 for OHSAS 18001:2007 although they only switched to from :1999 to :2007 in 2013 after complaints by employees to the accreditation authority.) Was OHSAS 18001 too tough on employers? Seemingly the development of ISO 45001 is used by them as a means to revert these achievements.
Unions should check with labour councils how much resistance they met when trying to put 4.4.3.2 of OHSAS 18001:2007 into practise. Support to workers councils by certification auditors may have been negligable too. Employers may want to use the chance provided by a new AMS standard (ISO 45001) to get rid of requirements which gave workes a say in occupational health&safety practises.
Furthermore, the “Certification scheme for occupational health and safety (OHS) management systems according to OHSAS 18001” of the SCCM (Stichting Coördinatie Certificatie Milieu- en arbomanagementsystemen) in the Netherlands is a valuable source for ideas, how workers participation can be put into practice.

 

Comment
There is too much “as applicable” in the draft, e.g. “Effective participation of workers (and, as applicable, their representatives)”. The workers’ representatives need sufficcient competence and clout.

Remedy
The standard should make it an requirement to establish elected workers representations for OH&S matters where no works councils exist yet. Without such representatives you simply can forget about an effective workers participation. One special requirement should be to let the workers’ representatives participate in certification audits and internal audits. These workes should be able to obtain the required qualifications.

Comment on 3.33 "incident" in ISO 45001 2nd CD

From the viewpoint of employees, the term “incident” has a much better definition in OHSAS 18001:2007 than in ISO 45001. Here the employers seemingly were successful in watering down the standard. I posted this comment in drafts.bsigroup.com:
https://drafts.bsigroup.com/Home/View/3449143?pos=3449143


“Incident” and “ill health” according to OHSAS 18001:

  • Incident: Work-related event(s) in which
    • an injury
    • or ill health (regardless of severity)
    • or fatality

    occurred, or could have occurred.

  • Ill health: Identifiable, adverse physical or mental condition arising from and/or made worse by a work activity and/or work-related situation.

“Occurrence(s) arising out of or in the course of work that could or does result in injury or ill-health” as proposed here for ISO 45001 is much less ambitious. Strangely, “fatality” has been dropped completely in the ISO 45001 draft. And “(regardless of severity)” made sure that employers cannot “evaluate” the severity of ill health before it enters the evaluation process defined in the standard.


Use terms from OHSAS 18001:2007. Make sure that incidents are not filtered away before the enter the official process of evaluation of ill health and its severity.

Again no definition of "ill health" in ISO 45001 2nd CD

My comments to “Terms and definitions” (section 3 in in ISO 45001) posted in drafts.bsigroup.com:
https://drafts.bsigroup.com/Home/View/3449110 (not online anymore)

Comment
In the comments to the 1st CD it already has been criticized, that one of the most important terms in ISO 45001 has not been defined. Strangely, a definition of the term “ill health” is missing again in the 2nd CD. Thus, OHSAS 18001 still does a much better job: “Ill health: Identifiable, adverse physical or mental condition arising from and/or made worse by a work activity and/or work-related situation.”
In contrary to ISO 45001, the BS OHSAS 18001:2007 explicitely mentions physical and mental health. This is important: Search for “Health Impact of The Psychosocial Hazards of Work: An Overview” in the pages of the WHO.
A standard which does not acknowledge the importance to protect mental health is unacceptable in the 21st century. Sadly, ISO 45001 seems to be on the way back to the last century.

Remedy
In order not to fall behind OHSAS 18001:2007, include the definition “Ill health: Identifiable, adverse physical or mental condition arising from and/or made worse by a work activity and/or work-related situation” into 3 “Terms and definitions” of ISO 45001.

2nd ISO 45001 Draft

Press Release from BSI
http://www.bsigroup.com/en-GB/about-bsi/media-centre/press-releases/2015/march/Comment-on-the-latest-draft-of-occupational-health-and-safety-standard-ISO-45001/:

Comment on the latest draft
of occupational health and safety standard ISO 45001
31 March 2015
A new international standard on occupational health and safety management is currently under development with publication expected in October 2016. The second committee draft of ISO 45001 – Occupational health and safety management standard systems – requirements with guidance for use is now open, with UK comments requested by 1 May 2015. This follows the re-drafting of the standard to reflect comments received from the September 2014 public consultation.
BSI, the UK’s National Standards Body, has worked with experts from around the world to develop the second draft and now invites interested parties to register their comments online: https://drafts.bsigroup.com/Home/Details/54548. All comments submitted will then be considered by a panel of UK experts before BSI submits the national position to the international committee.
Occupational health and safety continues to be a priority across the world. Despite extensive regulation, existing standards and guidelines, work-related disease still kills millions globally each year, with hundreds of thousands more fatalities caused by workplace accidents. The international committee developing ISO 45001 includes experts from over 55 countries, 14 observer countries and around 20 liaison bodies, all with knowledge and practical experience of occupational health and safety issues and the challenges faced. The new standard is designed to replace the widely-used OHSAS 18001 whilst also taking into account other key documents and discussion points from around the world. Ultimately it intends to provide a single, clear framework  for organizations of all types and sizes who wish to improve their OH&S performance and protect those working on their behalf or who may be affected by the organization’s activities.
ISO 45001 is being developed using a collaborative, consensus-based approach taking into account the views of large and small organizations, government bodies, trades unions and worker representative organizations. To ensure the widest possible input is received from stakeholders BSI has taken the unusual step of making drafts available to the public at every stage of development. Usually, this would only happen once, half way through the process.
ISO 45001 has been written to a core structure and common text defined by ISO for use by all management system standards. The core structure will ensure that the new standard is broadly aligned to the forthcoming revisions of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 – thus helping those who are implementing multiple management systems.
Anne Hayes, Head of Market Development for Governance & Risk at BSI, said: “Occupational health and safety is a matter of importance for all businesses worldwide, regardless of their size or sector. It is not an issue that can be ignored especially when it can literally mean life and death for many.”
To read and comment on ISO CD2 45001 please visit BSI’s draft review site:
https://drafts.bsigroup.com/Home/Details/54548
The draft is also available from the BSI shop:
http://shop.bsigroup.com/ProductDetail/?pid=000000000030323155

ISO 45001: The jury is still out

http://blog.lnsresearch.com/blog/bid/203469/8-Questions-Answered-from-Yesterday-s-EHS-Management-Software-Webinar
(Posted by Paul Leavoy on Fri, Dec 05, 2014 @ 10:19 AM in blog.lnsresearch.com)

[…]
Q. How do you think the release of ISO 45001 will impact EHS?
A. ISO 45001 could go either way. If it becomes a go-to standard, it will take some time for it to gain traction. Of course it has the ISO name and brand behind it, but existing default standards like OHSAS 18001 have already become fairly entrenched, and a health and safety standard has been a glaring omission in ISO’s catalog for some time.
All signs say the new standard will be risk-based, like the newest version of ISO 9001, which could be a positive sign, given the increasing traction of risk management in EHS. But the jury is still out on whether ISO 45001 will establish relevance.
[…]

OHSAS 18001 in parallel to ISO 45001

http://www.hastam.co.uk/iso-45001-replacement-ohsas-18001-dr-tony-boyle/
(Tony Boyle, 2014-11-24)

[…] in theory, ISO 45001 and OHSAS 18001 could run in parallel from then on. However, in OHSAS 18001 it says

This OHSAS Standard will be withdrawn on publication of its contents in, or as, an International Standard

so it seems unlikely that this will happen. However, there will inevitably be a transitional phase during which organisations move to the new International Standard.
In an earlier blog I described the ten clauses that make up OHSAS 45001 and showed that ISO 45001 differs from OHSAS 18001 in many important ways. At the end of this blog I have Listed the ten clauses again and have given brief notes on the significant changes from OHSAS 18001. As that section also indicates, you can expect some more blogs from me over the next few weeks and months going into detail on some of those changes […]

OHSAS 18001 will be withdrawn on publication of its contents in, or as, an International Standard. However, if ISO 45001 is different from OHSAS 18001, then there will not be any publication of its contents in, or as, ISO 45001. Consequently, OHSAS 18001 will not necessarily be withdrawn after ISO 45001 eventually will have been published.

ISO 45001: back to the drawing board

http://www.british-assessment.co.uk/news/iso-45001-goes-back-to-drawing-board

[…] The headline news has been that voting failed on the ISO 45001 Committee Draft. With a two-thirds majority needed for a Draft standard to proceed, there were 29 approvals and 17 disapprovals. However, a ‘no’ at this stage simply means that a majority of the voting countries believe there is a need to improve the draft further before it can go to the next stage.
This situation is not out of the ordinary; during the development of the new version of ISO 14001 expected next year, a second Committee Draft was created and this will happen with ISO 45001 once the Committee’s Working Group meets to discuss submitted comments. […]