Practices

Abstract

Research and instruments can only make their way as part of a movement, carried by social dynamism capable of both guiding and regulating an industrial course, too exclusively concerned with competition and profit. At the end of the last century Western Europe witnessed the ravages of a brutal form of capitalism, which, according to the incisive expression of Neuville (1976), “afforded lower life expectancy to an industrial worker than to a soldier on the battlefield of Waterloo”. A century of social conflict, of workers’ gains, the progressive development of a legislative arsenal, the awakening of public opinion ever more concerned by industrial catastrophes and sensitized by the ecology movement, trade union pressures and occupational medicine have all reduced risks. The European Commission through its various structures has given a decisive push to this generalized improvement in working conditions. However, vigilance remains necessary. The increase in unemployment combined with the requirements of the industrial world engenders new risks that are even more difficult to detect and combat. Safety, in the sense of reducing industrial accidents, and today, stress in the workplace, which we can consider as a kind of occupational disease — though not recognized as such — preoccupy States and find their way into legislative texts. This is not the case for human error. Although too often the subject of top news stories though it is part of the judicial domain, the subject remains vague. Whose mission is it to be concerned by human error? On whom and on what does it depend? What are the current practices?