Health check window grows to six months; 10% can demand safety rep vote

A new employee’s initial health check is now due within six months of starting workTooelu, replacing the previous four-month windowTooelu. The check takes place during working time at the employer’s expense, with average daily pay for that time. It covers employees whose health may be affected by workplace factors identified in the risk assessment – noise, vibration, artificial optical and ionising radiation, hazardous chemicals including carcinogens, mutagens and reprotoxic substances, biological agents, display-screen work, manual handling, continuous forced posture and any other factor or type of work – with display-screen workers past half their working time as a stated example.

Some checks cannot wait the six months. Night workers and workers exposed to lead and its compounds or asbestos dust are checked regardless of the risk assessment, and checks precede first exposure to biological agents, carcinogens, mutagens, reprotoxic substances, lead and asbestos, and precede the start of night work. Where an employee passed an equivalent check with another employer within the previous six months, the employer may schedule the check for the date stated in that check’s decision. Follow-up checks run at the occupational-health doctor’s intervals, at least every three years and yearly for minors.

The trigger for a working-environment representative election has moved from headcount to demand. The employer must organise elections in every company, territorially separate structural unit or shift where at least ten per cent of the employees express the wish to elect a representative – including groups of ten or fewer peopleTooelu, which the old more-than-ten-employees threshold excludedTooelu. The earlier headcount examples no longer appear in the guidance. The employer calls a meeting of the company’s, unit’s or shift’s employees, in person or through an authorised representative; the election stands where at least half of them take part. Employees and the employer may all nominate candidates, but the employees decide, and a meeting that elects nobody records that outcome in its minutes. Where no wish is expressed or no representative is elected, the employer consults the employees directly on occupational health and safety.

The representative’s protections are unchanged: no disadvantage from conflicts of interest, at least two paid hours a week for the duties, employer-funded training within two months of election, and the right to demand that defects be fixed, to access the necessary workplaces and documents, to turn to the Labour Inspectorate, and to halt work that directly endangers life or health.

Legal basis: Töötervishoiu ja tööohutuse seadus § 131 for the health-check timing, scope and follow-up, and §§ 17 and 181 for the representative’s election, quorum, rights, working time and training, as reflected in the Tööelu guidance on getting started and on workplace representatives.