Occupational Safety and Health in the Czech Republic

Part III: Monitoring of the workplace

The last section looked at identifying the problems present in different sectors and workplaces. It was in essence a subjective assessment of the situation. The next step in any occupational safety and health and environmental programme is to evaluate the problems. This part relies on measuring and monitoring to supplement the "feelings" and concerns of members on the shop floor. Monitoring is also important to make sure that controls to limit exposures are in place and working.

Enforcement of health and safety standards at the workplace was perhaps controlled by trade unions, but since transition unions have been presented with a more passive role concerning monitoring. This section aims to find out what the situation is now in relation to what type of monitoring is carried out, its extent, who carries out the monitoring, and if improvements are made as a result of the monitoring.

Figure 16. Workplaces where exposure levels were monitored

Monitoring of exposure levels took place in 78.3% of the workplaces surveyed, broken down as follows: monitoring of noise (in 57.7%), temperature (53.7%), dust (51.9%), vibration (36.8%), chemicals (30.3%), and/or outside pollution caused by the workplace (26.9%) (See figure 16).

Compared to all units in the Czech sample, monitoring was more common in those units where the respondents reported having problems with the issue concerned. Exposure levels of noise were monitored in 70.9% of those workplaces where the respondents considered noise as a minor or serious problem, but the difference was most obvious in the monitoring of vibration and chemical exposures. Vibration was monitored in only 36.8% of all workplaces surveyed, but in 67.2% of those units where vibration was considered as a problem (See figure 16). Likewise, exposure to chemicals was monitored in 30.3% of all workplaces but in almost 53% of those where chemicals were considered a problem.

Monitoring was more common in workplaces which belonged to companies that were foreign-owned to at least some degree. Monitoring also positively correlated with workplace size.

Monitoring was carried out by a government inspector in 76.2% of the workplaces surveyed, by a trade union inspector in 38.6%, and by a company industrial hygienist in 34.8%. In 10.9% of the workplaces, monitoring was carried out by all three. In 28.3% of the workplaces, the monitoring was carried out also by someone else, not specified. In 71.2% of the workplaces, the monitoring results were given to the union. When the monitoring was carried out by a company industrial hygienist, it was more common that the results were given to the union than when the monitoring was carried out by a government inspector.

In 62.6% of the workplaces, the respondents assessed that some improvements were made after monitoring. The percentage was only very slightly higher (62.9%) when the results of the monitoring were given to the union. 64.1% of the respondents reported that they had received support or cooperation from the labour inspection services.


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