WELCOME TO THE NEPSI WEBSITE!

Crystalline silica (SiO2) is an essential component of materials which have an abundance of uses in industry and are vital in many products and objects we use everyday: it is impossible to imagine houses without bricks, mortar or windows, cars without engines or windscreens, life without roads or other transport infrastructures and everyday items made of glass or pottery.

Although crystalline silica is ubiquitous in nature, the inhalation of fine dust containing a proportion of it may constitute a hazard that is limited to the workplace. Considering that such an exposure can be controlled, the main industries concerned by possible exposures to respirable crystalline silica agreed on appropriate and credible measures for the improvement of working conditions.

NEPSI is the acronym for the resulting European Network for Silica formed by the Employee and Employer European sectoral associations having signed the Social Dialogue "Agreement on Workers' Health Protection Through the Good Handling and Use of Crystalline Silica and Products Containing it" on 25 April 2006, representing 15 industry sectors i.e. more than 2 million employees and a business exceeding € 250 billion. The 17 initial signatory organisations represent the aggregates, cement, ceramics, foundry, glass fibre, special glass, container glass, flat glass, industrial minerals, mineral wool, natural stones, mining, mortar and pre-cast concrete sectors. The Agreement has recently welcomed the expanded clay sector and represents to date 18 European industry sectors. It remains open for further signatures.

Download the NEPSI video (Windows Media Player only)

INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL DIALOGUE

Art. 139 of the EC Treaty provides the possibility for management and labour to enter into contractual relations and notably to sign European Social Dialogue Agreements. Originally, joint social partners committees were established by the EC as consultative bodies, allowing relations between European representatives of workers and employers to adopt non-binding resolutions, declarations and joint opinions within these social partners committees. Ultimately, the agreements negotiated between the European social partners were allowed to be given legal force through a decision by the Council and its transposition into the legislation of each Member State, or else to be implemented autonomously by the social partners according to national procedures and practices. The first scenario led to the implementation of three agreements through Council Directives: on parental leave in 1995, on part-time work in 1997 and on fixed-term contracts in 1999, while three autonomous agreements were signed before the one on crystalline silica: on telework (2002), on the European licence for drivers carrying out a cross-border interoperability service (2004), and on work-related stress (2004).

THE NEGOTIATION

The NEPSI industry sector organisations and their counterpart trade union federations negotiated a multisectoral social dialogue Agreement between 1 September 2005 and 2 February 2006.

The European Commission supported the project, qualifying it as innovative: indeed, where European social dialogue agreements are usually sectoral or cross-industrial, this one is the first of its kind. An EC budget was granted to cover the costs of the negotiation, and the European trade associations which were not yet members of a social dialogue committee at EU level were considered as eligible to participate in this negotiation after scrutiny by the Commission.

Two working groups were set up for the negotiation: one Steering Working Group to draft the Agreement and discuss political aspects, and one Technical Working Group (made up of producers and consumers of products and materials that contain crystalline silica) to draft the technical annexes of the Agreement, especially the Good Practice Guide. Experts from national health institutes – the HSE (UK), the BerufGenossenschaften (D) and the Instituto Nacional de Silicosis (ES) – supported the technical working group.

The final text was unanimously approved by the negotiating Parties and the negotiations ended on 25 April 2006 with the signature of the Agreement, in the presence of Commissioner Spidla.