Occupational Safety and Health in Estonia

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.

Figure 15. Workplaces where exposure levels were monitored

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.

Monitoring of exposure levels took place in 78.1% of the workplaces surveyed, broken down as follows: monitoring of noise (in 64.8% of workplaces), vibration (in 55.6%), temperature (in 51.9%), dust (in 50%), chemicals (in 37.7%), and outside pollution (in 34.6%) (See figure 15).

Compared to all units in the Estonian sample, monitoring was more common in those units where the respondents reported having problems with the issue concerned. The difference was most obvious in the monitoring of vibration, whereby this was monitored in 55.6% of all workplaces, but in 74.3% of those workplaces where it was considered as a problem.

Figure 16. Monitoring of exposure levels in workplaces of different size

Monitoring was much more common in larger workplaces (See figure 16).

Monitoring was carried out by a government inspector in 58.5% of the workplaces surveyed, by a trade union inspector in 44.4%, and by a company industrial hygienist in 32.4%. In 44.4% of the workplaces, the monitoring was also carried out by someone else, not specified.

In 55.8% of the workplaces, the monitoring results were given to the union. When the monitoring was carried out by a company industrial hygienist, it was somewhat more common that the results were given to the union than when the monitoring was carried out by a government inspector.

In 67.4% of the workplaces, the respondents assessed that some improvements were made after monitoring. The percentage was higher (88%) when the results of the monitoring were given to the union. This latter information confirms research from the USA and Europe that shows that improvements in health and safety conditions at the workplace are more effective when negotiated with trade unions.

64.2% of the respondents reported that they had received support or cooperation from the labour inspection services.


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