Whoever organises the work answers for the safety of those who do it. The Consolidated Act distinguishes three roles with different duties: the employer (datore di lavoro), the manager (dirigente) and the preposto (supervisor).
Who they are
- Employer: the person who holds the employment relationship or, in practice, who is responsible for the organisation or the production unit because they exercise decision-making and spending powers (Art. 2).
- Manager: the person who, with adequate competence and powers, carries out the employer's directives by organising the activity and supervising it.
- Preposto: the person who oversees the work and ensures that the directives are carried out, checking that workers perform them correctly.
What matters is what a person actually does. Anyone who in fact exercises the powers of a preposto or a manager also has their duties and responsibilities (Art. 299).
Duties of the employer and the manager
Article 18 lists the duties. The main ones:
- appoint the occupational physician when health surveillance is needed;
- designate the emergency officers;
- assign tasks taking into account the abilities and health conditions of workers;
- provide PPE and require that it is used;
- identify the prepositi and make the rules respected;
- give information and training;
- give the RLS, on request, a copy of the DVR;
- notify INAIL of accidents in the cases and within the deadlines provided for.
Some duties cannot be delegated: risk assessment, the DVR and the designation of the RSPP (Art. 17). Others may be entrusted by a delegation of functions (Art. 16), which must be in writing, with a certain date, to a person with competence, organisational and spending powers, and accepted in writing. Even so, the employer keeps a duty of supervision over the delegate.
Duties of the preposto
Article 19 requires the preposto to:
- oversee and supervise compliance with the rules and the use of PPE;
- check that only trained people enter areas with a serious and specific risk;
- inform workers exposed to serious and imminent danger;
- report immediately to the employer or the manager any shortage of means, equipment and PPE and any dangerous condition;
- if a worker does not follow the rules, step in to correct the behaviour and, if it continues, stop their activity and inform superiors.
The preposto's training takes place in person (the Agreement also allows synchronous videoconference, but not e-learning) and is repeated at least every 2 years (Art. 37, paragraph 7-ter).
Penalties
Violations are mostly summary offences (reati contravvenzionali) punished with a custodial sentence (arresto) or a fine (ammenda):
- an employer who does not give workers sufficient training risks a custodial sentence of 2 to 4 months or a fine (Art. 55, paragraph 5; in the text of the article the fine ranges from €1,200 to €5,200). The amounts double if the violation concerns more than five workers and triple if it concerns more than ten (Art. 55, paragraph 6-bis);
- whoever fails to carry out the risk assessment or to designate the RSPP risks a custodial sentence of 3 to 6 months or a fine (Art. 55, paragraph 1; in the text from €2,500 to €6,400);
- the preposto risks a custodial sentence of up to two months or a fine of €400 to €1,200, or a custodial sentence of up to one month or a fine of €200 to €800, depending on the duty breached (Art. 56).
Fines and administrative penalties are revalued by law (Art. 306, paragraph 4-bis): the amounts applied today are higher than those written in the articles. Refer to the updated values.