The Legal Protection Of Work Environment Right And The Practice In China

The occupational safety and health situation of workers in China at this stage isnot optimistic, and at the same time, the legislation on occupational health and safetyin our country is still in the lower level, and the protection to workers’ safety andhealth right is not scientific, rigorous, comprehensive and thorough enough. At thepresent, the International Labor Organization and most of advanced countries makethe work environment right as the legislative guiding ideology, in order to make a fullprotection to workers’ life safety, physical and mental health and human dignity, andthe legislations highest goal and aspiration is to achieve a decent work. For this reason,this paper considers that we have to learn from the advanced countries’ legislativeexperience, make the Work Environment Right as the legislative guiding ideology andestablish the protection mechanism of the Work Environment Right in China as soonas possible, in order to achieve a comprehensive protection to workers’ safety andhealth rights. Among them, the study from advanced countries about the protectionmechanism of the Work Environment Right and the analysis of the main problems oncurrent occupational safety and health protection in our country are the focus of thepaper.The first chapter of this paper is the basic theory of the Work Environment Right.First of all, the concept of the Work Environment Right is derived from theOccupational Safety and Health Right, but on the basis of the Occupational Safety andHealth Right, it conferred a new content to the latter, thus the protection of the WorkEnvironment Right to workers is more comprehensive and exhaustive. The sources ofinternational law about the Work Environment Right mainly consist of two parts, onepart is the global or regional international human rights conventions, the other part isthe conventions and recommendations about the Work Environment Right which areadopted by the International Labor Organization. Apart from this, this charter alsodiscourses detailed the definition, the main content, the basic characteristics and the significance of the Work Environment Right.The second chapter of this paper is the study to the protection mechanisms of theWork Environment Right in advanced countries. This chapter is the focus of the paper,the writer choose four advanced countries, which are Britain, United States, Swedenand Japan, and study on the protection mechanisms of the Work Environment Right inthis four countries. Among this four countries, Britain is the pioneer of theoccupational safety and health legislation, the United States first enacted the uniformoccupational health and safety act, Sweden explicitly establish the Work EnvironmentRight and enact “The Work Environment Act”, Japan is a successful example thattransplants the occupational health and safety legislation. Therefore, selecting thesefour countries with a typical representative of significance and studying from themwill provide a useful reference for our country to establish and improve the protectionmechanisms of the Work Environment Right. The study of the advanced countries onthe protection mechanisms of the Work Environment Right mainly includes fiveaspects. Namely, they are the provisions on employers’ and employees’ legal rightsand obligations which are setting by the occupational safety and health law, the settingof the health and safety committees and safety representatives, relevant policies on theprotection of the Work Environment Right, the inspection system and managementsystem of the work environment.The third chapter is the analysis of the occupational safety and health situation ofthe workers in our country and the main problems which exist in the protection of theoccupational safety and health at present. Overall, in our country, the number of theproduction safety accident is very big and the rate of occupational disease is very high,which shows the occupational health and safety is not optimistic. Accordingly toreflect on the current protection system of occupational safety and health, at thepresent the main problems include: the occupational safety and health legislationguiding ideology deviates from the theme of humanistic care; the occupational safetyand health legislation lack of a unified legal system; lacking a uniform occupationalsafety and health management organization; the contents of the occupational safetyand health legislation is not systemic and perfect enough, lack of operability, all of these are urgently need to reform and improve.The fourth chapter is the suggestions about establishing a protection mechanismof the Work Environment Right in our country. In order to improve the occupationalsafety and health situation thoroughly, this paper considers that the most fundamentalway is to establish the protection mechanism of the Work Environment Right in China.While the establishment and improvement of this protection mechanism need toinherit the tripartite mechanisms, which means the state, the enterprises and theworkers have to take appropriate action respectively, through the joint efforts to createa safety, health and comfort working environment.