Contract workers concerned for years about the interpretation of their form of employment in local industrial relations legislation, should find some relief in the new Occupational Safety and Health Bill.

Minister of Labour and Social Security, Shahine Robinson, has noted that the Bill advances an expanded definition of “worker”, in contrast to the “narrow” use of the terms “employee” and “worker” which are interchangeable in the existing Jamaican labour laws.

Robinson made the statement in the House of Representatives on Tuesday, as she opened the debate on the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) Bill which has been some 20 years in the drafting.

She explained that the rationale for the new approach to the interpretation of a “worker” in labour legisaltion is that some employers, in an effort to avoid meeting obligations emanating from the employment relationship, seek to reclassify an arrangement which is substantively that of “employer and employee”, to that of “employer and independent contractor or an ambiguous derivative”.

She said that this situation, which exists under the current Labour Relations and Industrial Disputes Act (LRIDA), effectively casts the employed person outside the scope of existing labour.

The new definition describes a “worker” as a person who carries out work in any capacity for a person conducting a business or undertaking, including work as: an employee; a contractor or sub-contractor; an employee of a contractor or sub-contractor; a person whose service is procured or arranged by a company which is in business of supplying workers for other businesses, and who has been assigned to work in the person’s business or undertaking; a student gaining work experience; a volunteer; a public officer; or, a person of a class prescribed by the minister for the purpose of the OSH legislation.

Robinson explained however, that this far-reaching new definition of “worker” in the OSH Bill is not intended to affect the narrow definitions of “employee” and “worker” as they appear in existing labour legislation, including the LRIDA.

http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/robinson-opens-debate-on-long-delayed-osha-bill_125708