La actuación del Ministerio Fiscal en defensa de la seguridad en el trabajo: Vigésimo aniversario de la Ley de Prevención de Riesgos Laborales y del Código Penal de 1995

Luis Huete Pérez

doi:10.51302/rtss.2016.2014

Authors

Luis Huete Pérez Exfiscal adscrito al Fiscal de Sala de Siniestralidad Laboral de la Fiscalía General del Estado. Fiscal Jefe de Ciudad Real (España)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.51302/rtss.2016.2014

Keywords:

prevention of occupational risk, Public Prosecutor, criminal law

Abstract

A fact should be noted regarding the commemoration of the twenty-year life of the Law on Prevention of Occupational Risks, and that it was published in the Official Gazette on 10 November, 1995, however, that same year, and only two weeks apart, the Organic Law 10/1995, of 23 November, which was approved by the Criminal Code was published.

In this legal approach, we could say that the Law on Prevention of Occupational Risks regulates normal work activity, as its fulfillment guarantees the superior value of safe work, while the Criminal Code regulates the most serious diseases of that activity, when the upper value occupational safety and health has been seriously broken, causing a harmful outcome (death or serious injury of the employee) or even advancing the criminal protection barrier when created intentionally or recklessly seriously –for a serious risk and socially intolerable one or more workers.

In this evolution of the 20-year life of both standards, as far as the response of the criminal treatment of workplace accidents is concerned, we must highlight a number of milestones that are linked to the specialization of the prosecution in this matter.

The state has tried to deal with occupational accidents with all the instruments at its disposal, in accordance with its function to seek the satisfaction of social interest, creating a special unit headed by a coordinator room tax, and implementation in all sections territorial prosecutor specializing in workplace accidents, which have sought to rigorously applying the rules governing criminal workplace accidents to those cases which by their severity fully entered the scope of the Criminal Code.

The consolidation of the foundations laid will advance the culture of prevention, the priority of a law that brought about important innovations and which, undoubtedly undermines many years of operation.