Accident in digital format – Newspaper Kommersant No. 26 (7471) dated 02/13/2023

The reform of control and supervision in the filing of the government was aimed at reducing the excessive activity of regulatory bodies in order to improve the business climate. However, sooner or later it should have raised the question of how capable the state bodies themselves are of carrying out the tasks entrusted to them. The draft amendments to the Labor Code, published by the Ministry of Labor on regulation.gov.ru, show that this has happened: the authorities are no longer satisfied with the state of affairs with industrial accidents. The summary report to the document recognizes that the approaches to the state expertise of conditions at the workplace in the Russian Federation need to be revised both in terms of procedural harmony, and for reorientation to prevention, and for digitalization, and for the sake of the possibility of increasing the competence of employees of federal and regional labor inspectorates.

Referring to the best foreign experience (USA, UK, Australia, Germany and Canada) on the “transition from reactive to proactive safety”, the Ministry of Labor notes that the mandatory digital recording of labor accidents makes it possible not only to investigate accidents (in which they find “something what they want to find”), but also an analysis of the situation that allows you to work with risks. Therefore, the main innovation of the bill is the obligation of employers (including individual entrepreneurs and individuals) to report incidents themselves through the personal account of Rostrud. All reporting becomes electronic, and in the event of severe consequences of an emergency, a report on the preventive measures taken will become mandatory; the investigation of hidden accidents will be open-ended, and as a result, the employer will receive a mandatory order to eliminate risks.

It is noteworthy that the amount of business costs for adapting to the new rules of the game is described by the amount of “0 rubles” and the phrase “new responsibilities consist only in organizing work with electronic labor protection cabinets”, although we believe this will become a tangible headache for the relevant departments of enterprises. Several norms of the project are devoted to solving the problem of “insufficient qualification and high workload” of the employees of labor protection bodies themselves: “to undergo training and advanced training” is imputed to the duties of inspectors, and regional authorities are given freedom in terms of regulating their number and financing. However, the Ministry of Labor admits: “in view of the subsidized budgets of most subjects of the Russian Federation,” the costs of state examinations of working conditions and advanced training of their employees are now “minimal”, which forces the victims to apply to the courts. Judging by the fact that the ministry does not ask for federal money, first of all, we are talking about the forced digitalization of business: officials will not have to pay for it, and analysis can be done later if the regions have money.