Título Quinto. Higiene y Seguridad en el Trabajo

Every employer is obligated to adopt the necessary precautions to effectively protect the life, safety and health of the workers in the provision of their services. To that end, it shall adopt the necessary measures aimed at:

a)Preventing work accidents, ensuring that machinery, equipment and process operations have the highest degree of safety and are kept in good state of conservation, functioning and use, for which they shall be subject to permanent inspection and maintenance:

b)Preventing occupational diseases and eliminating the causes that cause them;

c)Preventing fires;

d)Providing a healthy work environment;

e)Supplying, when necessary, appropriate protective clothing and equipment, intended to avoid accidents and occupational risks;

f)Placing and maintaining guards and protections on machines and installations, to prevent any risk to the workers that may derive therefrom;

g)Warning the worker of the dangers to his health and integrity arising from work;

h)Carrying out constant training activities for the workers on hygiene and safety at work;

i)Ensuring that the number of sanitary installations for women and for men is in proportion to the number of workers of one or the other sex, that they are kept in appropriate hygienic conditions and that they are also equipped with washbasins;

j)That the installations intended to offer and prepare food or to ingest it and the drinking-water tanks for the workers are sufficient and are kept in appropriate hygienic conditions;

k)When necessary, enabling premises for changing clothes, separate for women and men;

l)Maintaining a first-aid kit provided with the elements indispensable to provide first aid.

The foregoing measures shall be observed without prejudice to the applicable legal and regulatory provisions.

If in an ordinary labor trial it is proven that the employer has incurred in any of the following situations:

a)If in a negligent manner it fails to comply with the legal and regulatory provisions for the prevention of accidents and occupational risks;

b)If despite the occurrence of occupational accidents it does not adopt the necessary measures tending to prevent them from occurring in the future, when such accidents are not due to human errors of the workers, but rather are attributable to the conditions under which the services are rendered;

c)If the workers or their organizations have indicated to it in writing the existence of a risk situation, without it having adopted the measures that could correct it;

and if as a direct and immediate consequence of one of these special situations an occupational accident occurs that causes loss of a principal member, permanent incapacity or death of the worker, the employer party shall be obligated to pay compensation for the losses caused, independently of the pensions or compensation that the social security regime may cover.

The amount of the compensation shall be fixed by common agreement of the parties and in the absence of such agreement it shall be determined by the Labor and Social Welfare Judge, taking as a reference the compensation paid by the social security regime.

If the worker has died, the surviving spouse, the minor children represented as appropriate, the adult children or the parents, in that exclusive order, shall have direct action to claim this benefit, without need for a declaration of heirs or opening of the mortual proceeding.

Every employer is required to comply with and enforce the measures prescribed by the Guatemalan Institute of Social Security in order to prevent the occurrence of work accidents and occupational diseases.

Home-based or family work is subject to the provisions of the two preceding articles, but the respective obligations fall, as applicable, on the workers or on the head of the family.

Family work is work performed by the spouses, those living as such, or their ascendants and descendants, for common benefit and in the place where they reside.

Employers of industrial or commercial enterprises are prohibited from allowing their workers to sleep or eat in the very places where the work is performed. For one or the other purpose they must provide special premises.

Unhealthy tasks, facilities or industries are those which by their very nature may give rise to conditions capable of threatening or harming the health of their workers, or due to the materials used, manufactured or released, or to solid, liquid or gaseous waste.

Dangerous tasks, facilities or industries are those which harm or may harm immediately and seriously the life of the workers, whether by their very nature or by the materials used, manufactured or released, or by solid, liquid or gaseous waste; or by the storage of toxic, corrosive, flammable or explosive substances, in whatever form such storage is carried out.

The regulation must determine which jobs are unhealthy, which are dangerous, the substances whose manufacture is prohibited, restricted or subjected to certain requirements and, in general, all the rules to which these activities must be subject.

The weight of sacks containing any kind of products or merchandise intended to be transported or carried by a single person shall be determined in the respective regulation, taking into account factors such as the age, sex and physical condition of the worker.

All workers engaged in the handling, manufacture, or sale of food products for public consumption must obtain each month a medical certificate attesting that they do not suffer from infectious-contagious diseases or diseases capable of disqualifying them from the performance of their occupation. The provisions of Article 163 are applicable to this medical certificate.

All labor and health authorities shall cooperate in order to obtain adequate compliance with the provisions of this chapter and its regulations.

The latter shall be issued by the Executive Branch, by means of agreements issued through the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare, and in the case of Article 198, by the Guatemalan Institute of Social Security.

Agricultural workers have the right to housing that meets the hygienic conditions established by the health regulations.