1. Introduction
After reviewing and reviewing interesting articles on the importance and need of a prevention culture, I think it is time to contribute with a modest but sincere idea, based mainly on the Chilean reality. Not in order to provoke odious divergences, but, looking at the possibilities in my country of a more powerful development, based largely on the possibilities of the Free Trade Agreements with the USA, the EU, Korea and others, whose convenience may be discussed, but, its existence does not.
In any serious analysis we must start with reality.
Always, this one, more stubborn than the analyst's wishes and goodwill. In this regard, two types of work must be distinguished: formal work, which is protected by law, which is based on an employment contract, whether individual or collective. Formal work subject to provisional statistics, social security and enjoying all the privileges of decent work: holidays, weekly day off, work hours, respect for the ability of the worker, union protection, etc.
Along with formal work, there is another type of work carried out by compatriots who do not have any access to the benefits mentioned above. They are informal workers. They do not have an employment contract and, consequently, they do not have any provision nor are they beneficiaries of current safety regulations.
In other words, only they are satisfied with receiving an agreed salary, sometimes in very unfavorable conditions, typical of the absolute lack of supervision. Among them are workers who are known as "teachers." Multifunctional worker, who performs the most diverse tasks, from fixing a roof to solving plumbing problems; build a wall or fix a garden.
These workers in numbers are as many as the unionized. Formal workers in Chile exceed 3,500,000, but the working force is around 6,000,000 or more. Informal workers also include all the activities of unemployment in disguise, for example: street vendor of chocolates; retirees with new jobs not included in the statistics, vendors on the buses or "guaguas", street artists, artisans, etc. In general, people who navigate the difficult path of livelihood in an insecure, dangerous and random environment rather than their skills and knowledge.
2. Work Safety
In this regard, we can say that Chile does not depart from the circumstances that surround the whole of Latin America. Indeed, in our countries employers have not acquired the good habit and the ethical duty to protect their workers one hundred percent. A large percentage is left to their own devices in the vicissitudes of life.
This is evident proof that the national reality allows us to suppose that the issue of job security is under-developed, or better said, under-attended, both in public and private companies. There will be no possible, viable and definitive solution, as long as there are thousands of informal workers unaware of the benefits of formal hiring and its control by laws and specialized organizations.
However, it is also true that the issue of job security is raised on a psychological level, viewed from the point of view of the individual worker. In this sense, it could matter little whether the worker is from the formal or informal area, provided that the prevention culture was genetically rooted, viscerally, placed in his inner self as part of his being.
I wonder, why do even the smallest children, when they go from their house to the outside, take their steps along the sidewalk? When you leave your house, who thinks about it? No one. But it is done. Who puts their fingers on the electrical outlets out of curiosity or daring? No one except infants. That is, there are hundreds of actions that a person performs automatically, if it could be said in that improper way, because it is not so, since the sense of self-protection is deeply rooted in the very consciousness of the subjects, in such a way that they prevent their self-destruction or self-harm.
3. Prevention is Culture
This leads us to formalize the conception that security, self-security, in this case is a question of a cultural nature, apprehended in the development of generations and genetically integrated into being.
So what is the problem?
Well, there are still immense interior spaces in which the sense of self-protection has not been educated. Among other things, for this reason it means an extraordinary contribution to new situations for the individual, which in the dynamics of social, economic and cultural development have not been able to be integrated as essential formulas of self-protection. This is so because new risks have entered this society, new threats, new dangers.
Every day events happen that are a source of danger for man, those that are created so quickly that there is no time to incorporate or assimilate them.
Experience shows us that the State and companies spend millions of dollars every year on training costs. The training that has been carried out in Chile is in the hands of private companies, hence its main function is to obtain the maximum profits in the least time and cost. The purpose of solving the lack of a preventive culture is not in your interest. For this reason, they account for the hours worked, not the results obtained in training.
Another latent problem is that the training is generally done after working hours or on days set aside for rest, which turns an alleged teaching of occupational risk prevention into "preventive torture", a term that is by no means original, but heard from the lips of workers appointed to the classes.
4. What is the solution? In a word: "Culture".
But the culture that I propose is not the inorganic, voluntaristic culture, but, on the contrary, a controlled, planned, programmed culture.
This can only be achieved if there is a violent change in educational policy. Indeed, without going into exaggeration, it must begin when the person is in gestation, in the womb. The mother, a fundamental support to induce self-care, respect for herself and others, the socialization of the concept of security, considering it as a virtue of civilized beings, in solidarity, concerned with the other.
This policy should not be abandoned when the toddler leaves the home. On the contrary, at the beginning of their socialization, education should abound in protection and self-protection. In this regard, do Spaniards, Mexicans, Cubans, Brazilians, etc. know how many school accidents there are in a year in the country? How many student disabilities and how many deaths of children and young people due to or due to study?
Perhaps it is better that they do not know those fateful figures, they could get depressed as people or as a nation, the truth is that they are six painful figures. In Chile they are calculated at approximately 250,000. So, then, that the issue of security must be incorporated into the educational system. And not only that, but also hygiene and the problem of the environment.
It is about creating, no longer an emergency culture, but a true formative culture, that starting in the womb extends to the highest levels of education, permanent and dynamic, in all careers and in all instances of education. education and constantly improving.
5. Project effectiveness
If we started this project today, the control of total safety at the country level, we would obtain it at the latest in the new generation of workers, that is, just 18 more years, without prejudice to the advances in decreasing accidents and accidents in general, which would gradually decrease over the years.
Which means that in eighteen years, at the latest, billions of euros would be saved for the benefit of the whole country, but without stopping to decrease constantly since the program started. All this at a minimal cost, since all the educational infrastructure is permanently available. (The annual cost is calculated in a percentage between% 4 to% 5, of the GDP))
6. Imagine the situation in Cuba
Known throughout the world is the quality of their education and the permanent and constant efforts so that the people enjoy its benefits. The use of all the material elements to the maximum, even suffering the precariousness of its industry, attributable to the ignominious economic blockade against the people who inhabit the island, have been able to lift the economy reaching enviable and unattainable percentages for the rest of America, including the capitalist giant itself. In this environment, the prevention culture can flourish exemplary together with the integral education of the population.
If we can understand that there are two different things Preventive Culture, on the one hand, and Risk Prevention Training, on the other, we would have solved the training intrinsic. In effect, the immediate and patch solution is what is applied daily for the solution of risk prevention problems in the operational aspect of companies, jobs or tasks. However, as has been stated, for years the outdated prevention programs repeat, reiterate and copy what causes workers an effect of aversion and indifference, since it is what they call, not without a little reason, “torture preventive ”.
7. Why does this happen?
Mainly because the general population does not have the integrated doctrinal background as a way of life, of daily exercise. The population lacks Preventive Culture and, consequently, everything that is planted in training will inevitably fall into arid terrain. The trainings will happen day by day, just like accidents, because there is no solid basis for support.
In this project, the vocabulary would be common and certainly there would be no difference of opinion between a preventive engineer and an operational one, since the sense of sustainable production for the benefit of people's safety would constitute a principle of maximum respect, precisely, he who does not exist today, for himself or for others.
