What does Law No. 16,744 include? (risk prevention)
This law provides compulsory social insurance against work-related accidents, commuting accidents and occupational diseases.
Objectives of the Law:
Prevent in order to avoid an accident or contract an occupational disease.
Provide medical care to restore the worker's full working capacity, if possible.
Provide economic benefits to compensate for the worker's loss of earning capacity and his/her rights.
Rehabilitate the worker to restore all or part of his earning capacity.
Re-educate in effect to give him/her the opportunity to perform a new trade or profession, taking into account his/her residual work capacity.
Work Accidents:
Law No. 16,744 establishes that a work accident is any injury suffered by a worker due to or on the occasion of work, and which causes disability or death.
Therefore the elements of the accident are:
An injury,
The causal or occasional relationship between the work and the injury, and
The incapacity or death of the injured party.
Injury is the damage or loss caused by a wound, blow, illness or disease. For the purposes of a work accident, the extent or depth of the damage is not important, but only its existence, which may refer to the physical body of the worker, as well as to his intellectual or sensory faculties, or to his mental health.
The expressions “due to” and “in connection with work” allow us to consider as constituting an occupational accident not only the injury suffered by the worker during the working day and at the workplace, but also the injury suffered before, during the suspension or after said working day, occurring inside or outside the workplace, since the expression “in connection with work” australia business email list only requires that there exists an unquestionable causal relationship between the injury and work. This qualification is appropriate if the work-injury relationship is direct or immediate (expression “due to”), or indirect or mediate (expression “on the occasion”).
Consequently, it is an essential requirement for classifying an accident as an occupational accident that there is a relationship between the work performed and the injury produced, and that the latter causes incapacity or death for the worker to carry out his or her usual work.
Example:
Slipping on unsafe fixed ladder.
What is the procedure in the event of an accident at work?
Workers affected by an accident due to or in connection with their work, or while commuting, must submit the DIAT (Individual Report of Workplace Accident) to their respective Administrative Body, whether signed by their employer or by themselves, in order to obtain the benefits they require.
Travel Accidents:
These are accidents that occur on the direct route to or from work. Commuting accidents are also considered to be those that occur on the direct route between two workplaces, considering that the accident is related to the work to which the worker was going.
The term direct route implies that the route is rational and not interrupted. The direct route is the route that the worker normally takes to or from work or home, even if it forces him to deviate from the route, for example, when he drops off or picks up a child from school every day. For an accident to be classified as having occurred on the route, it must occur within the physical limits of the route - entrance to the room and entrance to the workplace - in such a way that from the moment the worker has crossed the entrance to the company or his room, he has put an end to the direct route.
Example:
The worker was bitten by a dog while he was on his way home from work, without making any detours.
Occupational disease:
It is caused directly by the exercise of the profession or work that a person performs and that causes disability or death.
From the legal concept mentioned above it is inferred that there must be a causal relationship between the work activity and the pathology that causes disability or death, even when it is not one of those listed in the regulations for the qualification and evaluation of work accidents and occupational diseases, contained in DS No. 109, of 1968, in total there are 32 occupational diseases that are covered.
The above means that members may prove to the respective administrative body that they have a professional illness that is not listed in the previous paragraph and that they have contracted as a direct consequence of their profession or work. This decision must be submitted to SUSESO (Superintendency of Social Security), which must decide within three months with a report from the National Health Service, now Seremi de Salud.