Approved by the UB Governing Board on July 13, 2000.
Principles and commitments
The University of Barcelona (UB) is aware of the current requirement of all companies and institutions to ensure a safe and healthy work environment for their workers. This requirement is also a necessity for 4 main reasons:
- For ethical and moral reasons: the UB must be concerned about the quality of working life of its workers as an explicit manifestation of their social consciousness.
- For legal reasons: the appearance of the Occupational Risk Prevention Act and complementary regulations, obliges companies and institutions to comply with a series of obligations in terms of risk prevention.
- For economic reasons: accidents and illnesses arising from work impose high economic costs on workers, companies and society in general.
- Because one of the functions of the UB, at the service of society, is the creation, development and transmission of science, technology and culture acting within the framework established by both the Law of University Reform and the Statutes of the UB.
We must therefore be pioneers in promoting prevention in both teaching and research, with the aim of making our students aware of it and developing their activity under a safe work philosophy. We are the transmission belt for the integration of these values in society.
In order to achieve optimal levels of safety and health at work, we consider it appropriate to make this statement of principles that should be the basis for our health and safety policy:
- We consider that the prevention of occupational risks must be an integrated action within the University’s own activity, understanding it as a main objective in the line of continuous improvement of our work.
- Preventive activity must cover, given our social function, not only the organization itself but also the students and, in addition to their preparation, enabling them to spread it to society at large.
- UB staff are the most important resource that guarantees our future. That is why it must be identified with the objectives of the UB and, specifically, with that of risk prevention.
- We consider that illnesses and accidents at work are not the consequences of the exercise of the activity that takes place, but of an inadequate policy of prevention and risk control.
In order to carry out the actions aimed at complying with these principles, we adopt the following commitments:
- All commanded personnel must carry out all the actions available to them in order to ensure the correct working conditions of the workers as their own function linked to their work.
- The UB must have the necessary resources for the development of preventive activity.
- The UB will ensure that all its staff carry out their work in appropriate conditions, by adopting the necessary measures to identify, assess and control the risks.
The UB will establish the necessary channels so that all its workers and students are trained, informed and can actively participate in the establishment of the necessary risk prevention measures. In order to try to achieve the commitments acquired, an Occupational Risk Prevention Management System will be adopted, bearing in mind the uniqueness of our institution.
Rector of the University of Barcelona
The management of Occupational Safety and Health at the UB
The entry into force of the Occupational Risk Prevention Act has led to the implementation of a new approach to occupational safety and health management. Its performance by the university community must allow us a degree of prevention that will avoid possible risk situations in the normal development of our tasks at the University of Barcelona.
The special characteristics that, as a work center, bring together the Universities with regard to Occupational Safety and Health, force us to be even more sensitive and to strive harder than any other organization. Apart from the work in the classrooms and offices carried out by a large part of the staff, we also find an extensive variety of laboratories and services where tasks are carried out, for the performance of which special protection measures are necessary. But above all, there is a fact that especially conditions the preventive task: the presence of students.
Therefore, the implementation of emergency plans must emphasize the large volume of people that can be found in Schools and Faculties. On the other hand, the actions that the Universities develop in preventive matter must form part of the formative baggage that the alumnado carries out once finalized the studies.
The University of Barcelona does not use this topic again. The work done for years within the Commission on Safety and Hygiene, the work done by the divisions and the inclusion, year after year of a budget item to improve the aspects of prevention are quite a test. Everything that has been done so far must be consolidated and increased in compliance with regulations.
In this line, risk prevention is an objective that forms part of the UB’s strategic plan, which contains various actions aimed at improving working conditions, which will promote the successful development of the Occupational Risk Prevention Act in our University.
Rector of the University of Barcelona