We invite you to read the article in Diario Financiero, where our partner, Jorge Arredondo, commented on how to prevent and address violence in the case of contractors or people who serve the public.
One of the focuses of the Karin Law is to prevent situations of violence in the workplace. But what happens in the case of contractors or people who serve the public? Assessing psychosocial risks and promoting a culture of prevention is key for experts.
Violence in the workplace has been a crucial issue in Chile, considering that 35% of organizations do not have training programs on workplace harassment, and 32.5% on sexual harassment, respectively, according to a Chile Mujeres report that considered 80 companies. This figure is alarming, bearing in mind that 52.5% of companies have had complaints of workplace harassment, according to the same study.
The Karin Law aims to ensure that companies are prepared to face situations of violence in the workplace. This law is a cultural change not only at the labor level, but also at the social level, which seeks to make all workplaces friendly, safe and healthy spaces,’ says Pamela Gana, superintendent of Social Security (Suseso).
Prevention is the key tool behind the new law. In fact, from the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare they comment that within the three focuses of this law, the main one is the prevention of mistreatment situations: “It is not enough to say that we are all oriented that we have to behave well, but we have to raise awareness of the damage that is done”, since harassment “can be from top to bottom, sideways or from bottom to top as well”.
Violence can also come from third parties, such as subcontractors, clients and suppliers, among other possibilities that companies must also be aware of.
For Francisco Cornejo, legal director and founding partner of Defensa Empresarial, the role of companies in this matter is focused on prevention and containment to face violence that third parties may exercise towards a worker. He comments that in cases where there is a relationship between the employer as principal of a contractor or subcontractor, ‘the first recommendation is to update the special regulations’ linked to them. Another point is the focus to be had on the review of service provision contracts in which ‘sanctions, fines and even the early termination of the contract in case of non-compliance with the regulations’ could be ‘established, in addition to carrying out a periodic review, in relation to compliance with the law.
Comprehensive measures
According to the Suseso superintendent, managing psychosocial risk factors is a fundamental process to prevent these behaviors from emerging in the organization in the future. She assures that it is likely that the companies most exposed to these risks have already identified them, so their challenge is to implement preventive measures.
Knowing the risk situations, it will be possible to adopt engineering measures, for example, to have places for public attention with safe spaces that have protection elements’, adds Gana, in order to avoid aggressions, mainly physical.
In the opinion of Jorge Arredondo, lead partner of Albagli Zaliasnik’s Labor Group (AZ), the role of companies in this aspect is preventive within the framework of what is established by the new law.
He comments that the employer is not the boss of a third party or of a client, supplier or user, so in terms of threats, it must develop a matrix of these to ‘glimpse the risky situations to which workers may be subjected by the actions of third parties with respect to workers in the exercise of their work activity’.
On issues of subcontracting or triangulation of labor relations, meanwhile, Arredondo maintains that the legal mandate is ‘to give the main company a monitoring role‘, and emphasizes that the Karin Law establishes degrees of iteration that must exist between companies in the event of complaints made by a worker of a contractor to its principal. Here there is an issue of collaboration that must exist between the organizations, beyond who that worker is dependent on’, he assures.
Lilian Padilla, deputy manager of Prevention at Achs Seguro Laboral, indicates that the most relevant challenges are related to training due to the need to invest in programs for all levels of each workplace, in addition to the culture of the organization, since making them more inclusive and respectful ‘will be a process extended over time, which requires the commitment of senior management and the participation of all workers’.
