Senator Kavan Gayle - file photo
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Marlon Mahon, Director of the Occupational Safety and Health Department in the Labour Ministry and Senator Kavan Gayle, President General of the BITU
As the Occupational Safety and Health Bill inches closer to becoming law, there are clauses which could become controversial.
Marlon Mahon, Director of the Occupational Safety and Health Department in the Labour Ministry, said the law will give new rights to employees.
This includes the right to cease working.
The Bill has been evolving for several years, and is intended to radically change the approach to workplace safety and health across Jamaica.
It will create new rights and responsibilities for employees and employers, and this is where the concern has arisen.
Mr. Mahon argues that the right to cease work is unprecedented but is based on modern standards in other countries.
"Under this legislation, we are giving the worker a couple of rights and one of those rights is to refuse work in situations where there is a threat of serious injury or illness based on occupational exposure to the worker. The worker is given that right to cease work," he explained.
Mr. Mahon further explained how aspects of the legislation will work.
"We are looking at a mechanism that will allow for that worker to be reassigned to do something commensurate to what they were doing, so if you have a worker that was working as an engineer, for example, you could not assign him to (be) working as an ancillary staff because it would not be commensurate to what he was employed to do," he pointed out.
Mr. Mahon was speaking Tuesday night on Radio Jamaica's Balancing Justice.
Senator Kavan Gayle, President General of the Bustamante Industrial Trade Union (BITU), agreed that sections of the bill could cause controversy.
He said some of the changes - such as setting up an advisory counsel which would report to the minister, registration of business establishments, the establishment of health and safety committees at the workplace, and inspections - will impact business owners and their daily operations.
Senator Gayle noted that a review is still being conducted of the various clauses of the bill, after which a report will be provided for the scrutiny of parliament.
He hopes the bill will be finalised this year.
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