Prevención de riesgos laborales en el transporte por carreteraaspectos cruciales

Abstract

This paper addresses the different problems posed by regulatory compliance in labor matters in the field of road freight transport, and its implications regarding the activity of workers and the responsibility of employers. Likewise, issues such as the evolution, characteristics, weight of the sector in the creation of wealth, labor aspects, and importance of the activity both for workers and for all those citizens who, in the daily driving of their private vehicles, can be affected by professional transport. For this reason, an exhaustive study of its regulation is carried out, of the requirements to be able to carry out the profession, trying to delve into the actual compliance with this legislation, as well as the reasons for possible non-compliance, and its prevention. On many occasions, workers in this sector are not only limited to driving a vehicle, but their tasks are generally multiple, which makes it difficult to determine their job profile and, as a consequence, assess their risks. . On many occasions they have to load-unload (This despite the fact that Law 29/2003, of October 8, on improving the conditions of competition and safety in the road transport market prohibits it, precisely for safety reasons) , take care of cargo safety (the worker is responsible for its condition), monitor cargo temperatures (refrigerated transport), as well as take care of truck maintenance. The way of working, and we could say of life (meal and sleep times) of most workers in the sector affects their health and safety, as well as their performance (and, consequently, their remuneration). As much as there are protocols in the company for good management of occupational safety behind the wheel. Certainly these protocols do not have the desirable presence and forcefulness, because they are presented at the request of an inspection, in the corresponding documentation in case of audits, in a strictly formal manner, with little application in the daily performance of work. In this sense, in the present work a wide space of study of safety is collected, the repercussions of the work activity of freight transport on the physical and mental health of the carrier, and its implications for the worker and for other drivers of transport. route. Special emphasis is placed on the need to inspect and control non-compliance, so space is reserved for its study, the bodies in charge of doing it and the main elements used to carry it out. Likewise, a section is reserved for the differences that, in the sector, exist between a self-employed worker and another for another's account and it is noted with surprise how, in the latter, the responsibility of the employer is transferred to his worker in what that it refers to the organization of their work, and as in the first (self-employed) it is done in the opposite direction: they cannot decide, choose, organize, select neither their work, nor the way of developing it. Finally, it is a matter of developing a diagnosis of the road transport sector, collecting different content areas that are apparently unconnected (work and rest hours, route programming, lorry loading and unloading, control devices, telematic connection with the company, traffic offences, presumption of innocence) but which, as a whole, are absolutely essential for carrying out this study, shedding light on the characteristics of the worker and his job. As well as its supervision and possible correction of bad practices in matters, especially security.