The Criminal Cassation, Sec. 4, Sept. 25, 2023, ruling No. 38914, has in fact defined an important interpretative novation of the Occupational Health and Safety Consolidation Act.
While the DL's conviction is an obvious consequence of the elements gathered by the judicial police during the preliminary investigation, the evidence presented by the prosecution at the various trial stages, and the established case law, the criminal sanction charged against the RLS represents an element that will certainly be discussed in the coming months.
In the case at hand, the Supreme Court challenged that the RLS did not "...in any way comply with the duties that had been attributed to him by law, allowing C.C. (worker who died as a result of an accident at work ed.) to be assigned to tasks other than contractual ones, without having received any appropriate training and not urging in any way the adoption by the head of the company of organizational models capable of preserving the safety of workers, despite the urging to that effect made by the Head of the Prevention and Protection Service".
In the previous levels of judgment, the workers' safety representative had been ascribed with specific guilt related to violations of occupational safety regulations, for having contributed to causing the fatal accident of the worker (who was assigned to tasks other than his usual ones and therefore lacked training), through a series of omissive acts, consisting of having failed to promote the development, identification and implementation of preventive measures suitable to protect the health and physical integrity of workers, to urge the employer to carry out the training of employees (including C.C.) in the use of lifting equipment, and to inform company managers of the risks associated with the use, by the C. C, of the forklift. In essence, the RLS had behaved as a passive subject with respect to the decisions of the DL and, despite the intervention also of the RSPP (acquitted in all levels of judgment) aimed at pointing out the existence of violations of the law, he did not solicit any intervention to protect workers.
It is therefore of paramount importance that the RLS collaborates effectively with the workers' safety organization, both in the context of the moments of confrontation legislatively provided for (e.g., periodic meeting), and through actions of concrete stimulus that are not, however, in a preordained way "against" the DL or vice versa supine to his every wish.
Drawing some food for thought from the Supreme Court's ruling, it is therefore necessary for each actor to effectively play its part in the common interest of worker protection, through proactive actions and not by remaining a spectator of events.