Project title: The relocation to the company of disabled workers and workers who have become incapacitated as a result of an accident or occupational disease: the development of a model of good practice through comparative research and evaluation.
Proposing body: LABOS Foundation for social policies
Client: Ministry of Labor, Health and Social Policies
Problem addressed: The targeted and systematic interest in the issue of safety in the workplace arises and progresses in parallel with the development of industrial society. The affirmation of an organizational model focused on communication imposes new individual and group behaviors and exposes the subject to dangers that derive mainly from the relationship with the technology of work, rather than from the unpredictability of nature and of men themselves. Over the course of their working life, the risk that workers may incur an injury is remarkably high. Health and safety are clearly priority aspects of the quality of work and are among the indicators recently adopted following the Commission communication “Investing in quality”. Therefore, one of the first objectives of the research program will consist in deepening the measures for the relocation of the disabled and for the protection of workers who become incapacitated during the course of the employment relationship.
Recipients: Disabled workers and workers who have become incapacitated as a result of an accident or occupational disease.
Objectives of the project: The general purpose of the project is to develop and evaluate the applicability of a model of good practice regarding the relocation to the company of disabled workers and workers who have become incapacitated as a result of an accident or occupational disease.
Results to be achieved: The program aims: on the one hand, to provide a comparative analysis at a national and international level (France, Spain, Great Britain) on the following aspects: • the reference legislation for the protection – both in the labor market and in the performance of the employment relationship – of the disabled and of workers who became incapacitated during the course of the relationship, • the interventions carried out in order to relocate the disabled worker and become incapacitated to the company. On the other hand, to build, through evaluative research, a model of good practice that takes into account the national and international results of comparative research and the legislative and psycho-social peculiarities of the Italian reality. • Activities to be carried out: the project will be divided into three phases. 1. Comparative document research. In this first phase, comparative research will be carried out between Italy and other European countries (France, Spain, Great Britain), following an interdisciplinary methodology and using diversified investigation tools (analysis of documentation and processing of results of previous research) . The research group aims to analyze the regulatory and statistical characteristics of both the accident phenomenon and the practices relating to the relocation to the company of disabled workers and those who have become incapacitated as a result of an accident or occupational disease. After a preliminary study of a definitional nature, that is related to the different notions of disabled and incapacitated legally relevant to the different purposes of protection pursued by the legislator. The objective of this phase will consist, in addition to providing a reference scenario containing the cognitive elements of the problem at national and international level, to develop that set of activities intended for the comparison and exchange of experiences between different territorial realities, and the transfer of procedural and organizational models. 2. Evaluation research The objective of the phase will consist in the implementation of an evaluative research with the aim of building a model of good practice and verifying, first, its applicability. A qualitative-participatory methodology will be used and the following operational protocols will be implemented: I. the research group will contact a number of privileged observers (labor law experts, trade unionists, entrepreneurs, INAIL officials, psychologists and sociologists of work, etc.) to set up a High Specialization Evaluation Group (GVAS); II. on the basis of the results of the first phase, a series of national and international “good practices” will be identified; III. through a brainstorming session, the GVAS will analyze the single models of “good practices” with the aim of building a metamodel as best suited to the legal-working context of our country; IV. through an evaluation procedure, called Multicriteria Analysis, the GVAS will evaluate the reproducibility of the model in the Italian context, underlining the strengths and weaknesses. 3. Dissemination. The last phase, transversal to the survey, will consist of the presentation and dissemination of the survey results. A final international conference will be organized on the theme: “The relocation to the company of disabled workers and workers who have become incapacitated as a result of an accident or occupational disease”, with the participation of authorities, national and international experts in the sector, as well as representatives of the Inail, from Ispesl who collaborated on the project. In addition, a book will be published containing the proceedings of the conference and the results of the investigation.
Methodology: The three phases of the research reflect the three fundamental stages to which reference is made during the development and application of a classic evaluative research The initial phase of comparative analysis of the documentation corresponds to the definition of the properties of the object evaluated; the “Properties” will consist of the definition of the accident phenomenon according to a multidisciplinary legal-social perspective. The normative and jurisprudential sources will be studied and ordered according to the double trajectory along which the research intends to unravel, also taking into account the existing doctrinal contributions, in order to arrive at a critical elaboration that highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the system. Italian on the subjects under investigation. The same survey methodology will be followed for the collection of the normative, jurisprudential and doctrinal sources of the European countries selected for comparison. In parallel with the regulatory recognition, the research group will focus its attention on the interventions carried out at national and international level on the relocation of disabled workers and those who have become incapacitated as a result of an accident or occupational disease. The documentation will be analyzed through a monitoring and evaluation form containing information relating to the type of implementing body, the operational methods of implementation, the type of human resources involved, the type of funding, the innovative nature of the intervention and the main elements of transferability In the phase of the evaluative research, the “brainstorming” techniques and multi-criteria analysis will be used. Its specific field of interest is the development of interactive decision processes for the solution of multidimensional problems, not attributable to a single decision maker and to a single criterion of choice.
Person to contact: Anna Calvaruso