The workers’ and employers’ representatives draw up a document with recommendations for the implementation of preventive measures in the sector’s workplaces, construction sites and offices.
At the beginning of April, and at the request of the Spanish Government, the social agents of the construction sector -the employers, the National Construction Confederation (CNC), a partner of Construction Blueprint, and the trade unions, the CCOO of Construction and Services, and the Federation of Industry, Construction and Agriculture of the UGT (UGT-FICA)-, established the Guide to Action on Preventive Matters due to Covid-19 in the sector’s workplaces.
This document has been updated according to the new needs of the sector, including the measures that must be applied in all the work centers of the sector, including the offices, which are added to the spaces included in the first draft of the Agreement.
Re-defining Safety at work
The new document, which contains a series of recommendations regarding the Covid-19, which cover from the displacement of the workers to the centers, until their departure, indicates as a novelty that in the activities where the RD 664/97 is not applicable because of the Covid-19, it is not necessary to update the Evaluation of Labor Risks, nor the Plan of Security and Health by means of an annex to the same one. However, the guide specifies that if, due to the health measures to be adopted because of the coronavirus, any constructive process should be modified, the Safety Plan should be revised.
On the other hand, the groups of people who are particularly sensitive to Covid-19 have been updated according to the criteria adopted by the health authorities, and it is indicated that the measures to be adopted with regard to transport will be adapted to the de-escalation phase in which each Autonomous Community finds itself.
The guide, which establishes recommendations regarding personal protection measures for workers, insists in this update that workers must always use gloves, avoiding touching their faces at all times. “At sites where two people are likely to work less than two meters apart, masks will be used, and if necessary, any other individual protection equipment in accordance to the procedure approved by the Ministry of Health”, the text explains. Likewise, the document has modified the recommendations of personal measures when leaving the work center and recommends the following steps: remove work clothes, gloves, wash hands thoroughly and remove the mask.
The update of the Guide has been published by Fundación Laboral de la Construcción in its portal specialized in preventive matters, Línea de Prevención (trad. Prevention Line).