Heat management in the workplace: social partners, no agreement on protocol

On the management of heat emergencies in workplaces, the government proposed the adoption of the same protocol that was presented in the summer of 2023, encountering again this year the disagreement of the companies on the proposed instrument, which reiterated: the rules are already there, it is enough to apply them. In favour of the Protocol, on the other hand, were Cgil, Cisl and Uil, who called for new obligations with binding force. From the employers' associations and trade unions, there was also a common request to make the use of social shock absorbers structural, extending the causal for weather events and, in the case of an order by the Authority, for the similar causal, also to cases of excessive heat, as provided for in Decree Law 98 of 2023 that expired at the end of last year. The Minister of Labour, Marina Calderone, is in favour of confirming the provision but it remains to be seen whether there are the resources.

The meeting at the Ministry of Labour, with undersecretary Claudio Durigon and the social partners, therefore had the same epilogue as the last table in September 2023: two different positions emerged between companies and trade unions.

The employers' associations of industry, trade, crafts, agriculture and the cooperative world expressed the same position. Summarised in the intervention of the Confindustria representative. "There is the utmost attention to ensure the safeguarding of workers' safety conditions," they said from Viale dell'Astronomia. "There is no need for further measures, we already have a vast regulatory and applicative instrumentation that also deals with the management of heat for workers exposed to heat, which includes the indications of the Ministry of Labour and Health, Inl, Inail, Asl, Inps circulars, regional ordinances. Sometimes these tools refer to different parameters, as is the case with the Ministry of Health bulletin and worklimate, the Inail portal. But above all, it is up to the employer to assess all risks, which includes extreme heat conditions. Yet another bureaucratic add-on is not the solution, the existing rules must be applied'.

The other concern of the companies, expressed by Ance, is that in cases where regional ordinances provide for work stoppages during peak hours, in public and private contracts, the responsibility for the delay in handing over the work should not be placed on the contractor.

For Francesca Re David (CGIL) 'we have legislation that says that over 35 degrees, with differences between indoors and outdoors, you cannot work but it does not say what happens if you continue to work. We want social shock absorbers that also allow seasonal workers and not only permanent workers, construction workers and everyone, to help the interruption of work, a different organisation of work agreed with the trade union where we can intervene with respect to this risk and we want a binding regulation'.