Factory inspectorate

The Factory inspectorate is in France a body of specialized control, charged with taking care of the good application of the Law the labor within the Entreprise S.

History

The Inspection of the work is born from the deficiency in the application of the law the labor. A jurisdiction, the court of arbitration, already had been created in 1806. It missed nevertheless an administrative control mechanism, charged to relay in justice the complaints of the employees, to even replace. Before the creation of the current body in 1892, a body had been created to control the application of the law of March 22nd 1841 prohibiting the Travail of the children of less than 8 years; this one missed independence. This law had been created continuations with the reports/ratios of Dr. Louis Rene Villermé, which had revealed the work conditions of these children.

France had been preceded by the England (Factory act of 1844), the Germany (law on the industry of June 1st 1891) and the USA.

The factory inspectorate (IT) was created by the law of the May 19th 1874, instituting a service of 15 divisional inspectors and inspectors departmental. The new organization was to be financed by the General advices, with their initiative. In front of the little of eagerness of the latter, and following the International Conference on Work, at this meeting in Berlin the March 15th 1890, envisaging the introduction of an international legislation of work, the French authorities créérent, by the law of the November 2nd 1892 a body of inspectors, civils servant of State. The law envisages the possibility for the inspector of penetrating freely in very undertaken and sanctions the obstacle S with this right; the law also enacted a maximum duration of work of the children, women and girls minor.

The function was popularized in particular by the inspector Pierre Hamp, who held a chronicle in the Humanité of 1906 to 1912.

The IT was attached to the Ministry of Labor, during its creation in 1906. The 81e international convention (adopted in 1947) of ILO obliges all the countries having ratified it “to organize a system of factory inspectorate in charge to ensure the application of the legal tendencies relating to the work conditions and the protection of workers in the exercise of their profession”; France ratified it by the law of the August 10th 1950.

With the Ministry of Labor, the factory inspectorate is divided into two categories: employment (foreign labor, information etc) and the section (control of the companies).

Organization

an interdepartmental body The Factory inspectors belong to an interdepartmental body but are affected when they take their functions with three ministry different:

the Ministry of Labor of employment and professional training accommodates the majority of the Inspectors. The latter are general competent on all the companies employing of the personnel paid except for those rewashing their colleagues assigned to two other ministries Ci after
the ministry for agriculture accommodates the qualified Factory inspectors for the agricultural sector. That defined in practice by the companies raising not of the general scheme of the social security, but of that of the Agricultural Social insurance system. They are obviously the companies whose activity is matériellemetn agricultural but also of certain a number of paid employees by companies directly related to agriculture such as for example those of Crédit Agricole.
the ministry for transport accommodates the Inspectors having a specific competence on the haulage company (Road, Fer, Air)

This division of the body particularly finds its origin in reasons at the beginning related to a legislation very different (with regard to the employees from the agricultural mode: there was agricultural minimal wages much lower than that of the common mode, the safety regulations were not all applicable to farm equipments etc…). Since the Eighties the differential between them modes was reduced considerably and, according to some, really any more the maintenance of this distinction does not justify. The question of the fusion of the three services of factory inspectorate in a great single service is regularly mentioned but encounters many inertias and concrete difficulties among which the concern of the ministries for transport and agriculture not to see the Ministry of Labor too strongly interfering in their field, because beyond the services of inspection themselves that would pose the problem of the higher levels to which should be then attached this single service.

the Section of inspection and the personnel which composes it Each department is divided into sections of factory inspectorate. The perimeters of the sections are, in theory given according to the employees. That can be reduced to a single section as in the Hollow one with several tens for Paris, while passing by 5 dasn Oise or 22 in the Tops of the Seine. The factory inspector is responsible for a section of inspection territorialement definite. He cash animates a team made up of a secretariat, generally, two administrative officers and of two controllers of work, placed under his authority and having of the same powers to control and observation of the infringements, but not of the whole of the administrative decision-making powers (various exemptions, authorization of dismissal of the employees protected in particular). In general, the controllers of work deal with the small structures, when the inspector deals with the companies of more than 50 paid. Selected by the means of an administrative contest accessible to the holder from a license (external contest) or to the civils servant from B+ category having exerted functions of controller of work lasting five years (internal competition), the factory inspectors follow a 18 months formation remunerated by the National institute of work, use and professional training (INTEFP) of Marcy-l' Star (the Rhone). Under direct supervision of the ministry, this school passed to January 1st 2006 under statute of administrative public corporation by decree of the December 13rd 2005.

The controllers of work are civils servant of category B+, their contest is accessible to the holders from a diploma from level Bac +2 (external contest). The training program initial of the controllers of work is worked out by the INTEFP but the lesson is exempted in the CIF (Center Interregional of formation) 9 in France: Lyon, Lille, Marseilles, Montrouge, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Dijon, Nantes and Nancy. The controllers of work, unlike the inspectors, are during their formation already affected in a DDTEFP, a DRTEFP or a subdivision. They are gathered within the CIF according to their geographical area of employment then according to their specialization (Section of inspection employment or SDITEPSA).

Role and capacities

In section of inspection, the inspectors and the controllers of work have the general role to take care of the application of the law the labor. With this intention, they have an import duty and of visit without prior approval in any place in which they have a reason reasonable to think that a paid work is exerted (article L 611-8 CT). These capacities, just like the independence of the agents, are guaranteed by convention 81 of ILO, quoted above. This convention equipped with the obligatory force for all the countries having ratified it, is notably more precise, in its article 12, on this point:

1. The factory inspectors provided with supporting documents their functions will be authorized:

a) to penetrate freely without warning preliminary to any hour of the day and the night in any establishment fixed with the control of the inspection;

b) to penetrate of day in all the buildings which they can have a reason reasonable to suppose to be fixed with the control of the inspection;

c) to proceed to all examinations, controls or investigations considered it necessary to make sure that the legal tendencies are actually observed, and in particular:

I) to question, either only, or in the presence of witnesses, the employer or the personnel of the company on all the matters relating to the application of the legal tendencies;

II) to ask communication of all books, registers and documents whose behavior is prescribed by the legislation relating to the work conditions, in order to check conformity with the legal tendencies of it and to copy them or to establish extracts of them;

III) to require the posting of the opinions whose affixing is envisaged by the legal tendencies;

iv) to take and carry for purposes of analysis of the samples of the matters and substances used or handled, provided that the employer or his representative is informed that matters or substances were taken and carried for this purpose.

2. At the time of an inspection, the inspector will have to inform of his presence the employer or its representative, unless it estimates only one such opinion is likely to carry damage to the effectiveness of control.

These provisions, sometimes badly felt by the representatives of the employers but also by some paid, are obviously essential to the observation of certain infringements and particularly of those relating to dissimulated work. The Inspectors and controllers can be made communicate the registers held obligatorily by the employer.

The action of control as regards hygiene and occupational safety, is concretized in six possible ways:

simple observation; It is about the report of an infringement without is immediately taken penal actions pursuant. If the company obtempère, it will not have there other consequences. In the contrary case of the criminal prosecutions could be committed. Moreover, in the event of accident related to the infringement, the company will see its responsibility committed within the framework for the inexcusable fault (contentious of social security). This recall with the Law " without expenses " is thus not if pain-killer that for a company which would not hold account of it. It acts, by far, of the mode of intervention more practiced by the factory inspectors who, in spite of a tough legend among the heads of undertaking and their representatives, have a practice far from repressive.
Injunction (L 231-4 Ct and L 611-14 CT); contrary to a spread belief, the injunction is not an observation more firmly notified, but the respect by the factory inspector of a procedure which prohibits to him to raise statement before to have notified with the employer to have to conform to the regulatory provisions before the expiry of a variable time (4 days in two months) .après the expiry of this time of injunction if the company did not conform to the texts, the factory inspector will be able to continue the penally responsible person (the head of undertaking or its délégataires). If the inspector estimates that the facts constitute a serious and imminent danger to the people, it will be able by exception to draw up statement immediately. It is thus more the absence of notification of injunction which characterizes, sometimes, the most serious situations that the reverse.
Procès-verbal (L 611-10 CT), transmitted to justice these statements make, in front of the repressive courts, faith until proof of the opposite;
stoppage of the works in the event of serious and imminent Danger on a building site of the building or public works (L 231-12 CT);
referred in front of the Court of Bankruptcy (L 263+1 CT) to obtain from the judge an ordinance obliging (often under financial obligation) the employer to take measurements ready to put an end to the danger including total closure and final of an establishment. In the event of implementation of this procedure (very rare) the employees should not undergo any financial loss. Whenever their dismissal would be inevitable, they have right, in addition to their dismissal indemnities, with a compensation for the undergone damage with load of the employer.
description with the Parquet floor by article 40 of the criminal procedure code. This article lays out:

the public prosecutor receives the complaints and the denunciations and appreciates following their giving it in accordance with the provisions of article 40-1. Any authority made up, any public officer or civil servant who, in the performance of his duties, acquires the knowledge of a crime or an offense is held to deliver opinion without delay to the public prosecutor and to transmit of them to this magistrate all the information, official reports and acts which are relative there.

But the factory inspector is one of the rare civils servant to be profited from the right to derogate from this legal requirement because of convention 81 of ILO (of which the legal authenticity is higher than that of the Law): Convention 81, Article 17 1. (...) 2. It is left with the free decision of the factory inspectors give warnings or councils instead of bringing or recommend continuations.

The agents of control of the factory inspectorate of transport also have the possibility of claiming administrative sanctions against very delinquent companies before a commission of administrative sanctions (SCUMS).

Their action is limited neither to the control and the engagement of criminal prosecutions, nor with the only field of the hygiene and occupational safety. One of specificities of the French Factory inspectorate is its character general practitioner. The Factory inspector is qualified for the application of the whole of the Laws, regulations on paid work. They control égalemetn the respect of the wage minima envisaged by the wide collective convetions. They can engage of the penal procedures when these provisions are matched of sanction of this kind. They inform the public about the whole of the applicable provisions while taking care, pursuant to the separation of the administrative and legal capacities, not to encroach on competences of the courts (court of the arbitration mainly). This concern leads them to finish their mails answering àde S requests for information by the ritual formula, " subject to the decision of the courts compétents". In addition to their focntion of report of penal offenses and their mission of information of the public, they exert a certain number of administrative capacities:

They grant or refuse exemptions from certain provisions of the labor regulation when this one envisages it. One will take care aps to confuse the exemption (administrative act taken in a precise legal framework, creating rights for the applicant) with the tolerance (abstention to exert a repressive power for reasons for opportunity, not creating any right to that which profits from it)
They delivers or refuses certain authorizations (going beyond of quota of overtime, authorization of dismissal of protected employees)
They deliver many opinions to other administrations when they are requested (delivery of permit building for buildings intended to accommodate employed persons)
They intervene spontaneously or at the request of the parts in the event of collective conflicts of work. This type of intervention, although often appreciated, is accomplished in contradiction with the recommendation R 81 of ILO accompanying convention. This indeed precise recommendation in its paragraph III article 8:

the functions of the factory inspectors should not include/understand the function to act as quality of conciliators or referees in disagreements of work. It should be noted that it acts there only of one recommendation (R81) accompanying convention (C81), and not of convention it only to even, have an obligatory force.

The agents of the factory inspectorate also have a role of information on the regulation near the employees and of the employers. Article 15 of convention 81 offers essential guarantees on the conditions of exercise of the function:

independence: the factory inspectors should not be personally interested in the companies which they are charged to control
confidentiality of the complaints: the factory inspectors should not reveal with the employers the personal identity which seized them, nor even if control that they exert makes following a complaint.
respect of the trade secrets: it do not have even after having left their functions to reveal the trade secrets of which they were informed of this fact.

Their action runs up sometimes against an opposition on behalf of the employers or their representatives who can take all the forms going of the simple demonstration of bad mood, with the obstacle with the exercise of the functions which constitutes an offense penally repressed (L 631-1 CT: offense of obstacle), sometimes accompanied by insult, violence or resistance implying then, moreover the implementation of the provisions of the penal code relative to such facts. A dramatic recent illustration of these tensions occurred the September 2nd 2004, when a farmer of Saussignac (the Dordogne), killed a controller of work and a controller of the agricultural social insurance system, Sylvie Trémouille and Daniel Buffière. The murderer was condemned in March 2007 by the Court of Assizes of the Dordogne to 30 years of prison.

Manpower

The personnel working for the Factory inspectorate is distributed between three ministries:

the Ministry of Labor
the Ministry for agriculture
the Ministry for Transport

According to the report/ratio 2005 of the International office of Work, factory inspector, one counts in 2005: 1399 agents of controls (including 458 inspectors and 941 controllers) concerning Ministry of Labor 337 agents (controllers and inspectors) concerning ITEPSA controlling the companies of the agricultural sector 241 agents (controllers and inspectors) concerning ITT controlling the haulage companies that is to say a total of 1977 agents of control for 18.000.000 of employees concerned with the private sector.

See too

Departmental management of work, employment and professional training
Factory inspectorate of Transport

Random links: