At the end of 2024, the government submitted a bill that will enable the Danish Working Environment Authority to close all work for contractors and subcontractors on a construction site if serious violations of the working environment regulations are repeatedly committed. The proposal is due for 3rd reading in the Folketing on Thursday, March 27. This is what 3F writes in a press release.
- But it should be even tougher than what the politicians have been able to agree on, says 3F's union secretary Lene Krabbe Dahl.
3F has submitted three proposals for improving the contractor stop. According to the union, the contractor stop should not only apply to working environment violations, but also to failure to report in the RUT register, underpayment of foreign labor and violations of rules on residence and work permits or tax legislation.
- The politicians want the contractor stop to counteract social dumping. But the contractor stop cannot do that. In the bill, the contractor stop can only be triggered if there is a breach of the rules on the working environment. The contractor stop cannot be triggered if the authorities discover social dumping or work-related crime, as we have seen many cases of in recent years, and which was solidly documented in several TV documentaries last year. Politicians must do better if they seriously want to eliminate social dumping, says Søren Heisel, who is also the federal secretary of 3F.
3F also believes that the Danish Working Environment Authority should be able to issue orders to stop contractors more quickly. An order should be issued after just a few cases of dangerous work, instead of the authorities having to wait for a longer process with several immediate orders.
- The hammer should fall immediately when cheating, cheating and dangerous work are revealed. There is no point in having to wait day after day for a decision. Then the accidents happened and the cheaters vanished into thin air. It must be a real sanction option to issue an order to stop construction and not just a theoretical option, adds Lene Krabbe Dahl.
Finally, 3F points out that the procedure for issuing orders should be simplified. The union believes that the government's proposal is unnecessarily administratively burdensome and detailed, which could make it difficult to implement the construction stop in practice.
- Employers often talk about too much administrative hassle. In this proposal, the administrative burdens can be significantly reduced, so that it becomes more efficient and simple to use, says Søren Heisel.
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