April 28: R.I.P Protección Laboral magazine

On April 28, World Day for Safety and Health at Work, it is time for analysis and further thinking. This day was instituted as part of a global campaign to promote safe, healthy and decent work. What can we say about it? Are we progressing adequately, or do we fail in work quality? As in any rule, we find responsible compliance, and fraudulent, if not criminal, breaches.

SPANISH VERSION

On this occasion we do not need outside data. We will present our own case: the practical liquidation of the magazine Protección Laboral, sold by a foolish and irresponsible editor to a avid and ambitious operator.

Everyone is allowed to draw his own conclusions. In safety matters, health and work wellbeing, hypocrisy is systemic and gives rise to a double moral. In Spain we have companies that declare among their principles that human capital is their first asset, placing the safety and health of workers in the ranking of priorities, at the level of business competitiveness. Some companies promote, even, the health and quality of life beyond the strictly labour scope. We also have other companies that ignore everything about safety, health, wellness and occupational risk prevention. Said without euphemisms, they trample the safety / health / wellbeing in the workplace. All over the world the panorama also presents many darks.

It is not easy to discern if we progress or suspend in safety, health and work wellbeing. However, one thing is certain, we have too much evidence that we do not confront to good times for workers... because the quality of working life seems to be going down year after year.

Kick for the ORP information

The press media -particularly those specialized in ORP (Occupational Risk Prevention)- must denounce the flagrant situations abovementioned. But, what happens when the operators themselves of some of these specialized media are non-compliant in terms of labour protection, among other contradictions?

There are forms of hidden workplace violence, but they are more perverse than the physical aggression itself

Let’s consider the case of Protección Laboral magazine, which has been the pioneer of ORP information in Spain, and which has entered into a drift that no one knows what it will end up with.

In February 2018, Proteccion Laboral changed ownership. With bad criteria, the seller sold his best asset. When selling the headboard he also got rid of the staff that made the magazine. In short, the seller abandoned this journalist and my colleagues to our fate, denying labour rights and pretending -interestingly- that the buyer of the magazine would restore to workers the rights of which they were stubbornly and illegally depriving us.

One needs to be insane enough as to think that another will fulfil his legal-moral obligations. Obviously, the buyer, an opportunistic company skilled in the appropriation of foreign talent at zero cost, is only motivated by its economic interest, not by the subrogation of labour rights or the theoretical discourse of the journal that is meant to be published.

There are forms of covert workplace violence that are more perverse than the physical hostility itself. This post denounces that seller and buyer -partners in the infringement of workers’ rights- have exerted workplace violence under another appearance.

Is there any doubt that both companies have disrupted labour rights, and that such abuse is a confusing but genuine form of violence? In this case, the paradox is that both defend the theoretical discourse of labour wellness. But, in their daily activity, what they do the best is to trample labour wellness with practices as unsupportive as illegal, which must be prosecuted if we do not want to encourage something as old as the exploitation of man by man.

In addition to violating labour law, both the old and the new editor of the magazine Protección Laboral they do not believe in the message of prevention, being fully unfamiliar with the subject. For both, Protección Laboral is only a zeal for profit and ambition for surplus value, an ‘udder to be milked’ fiercely until it is dried.

The harmed ones have been the workers and, soon, will be all those advertisers who trust a magazine, managed by newcomers in ORP, and whose only creed is to make money -much money- with the minimum cost; maximize the economic benefit without counterparts.

We are about to see a decaffeinated and soulless Protección Laboral magazine. This is what happens when, in economic activity, the economism of wild surplus value is imposed on any other legal or ethical principle. Written is with implacable rotundity: “root of all evils is the love of money”.