Employer's occupational health and safety training obligations in European Union countries and Turkey

Changing and developing advanced technological developments every day in the context of new risks encountered at work require advanced measures about occupational health and safety and the obligations of the employer have an important place in these measures. The employer's training obligations under the debt of providing health and safety has a priority in solving problems related to occupational health and safety. Turkey has the first place in Europe in the fatal work accidents. Having no enough knowledge about occupational health and safety, environmental factors and giving no importance to the preventive measures of the accidents are between the reasons of the high fatal work accidents. The investigations reveal that the lack of training has the great significance in the work accident and formation occupational diseases. When occupational health and safety applications are evaluated in Turkey, fatal work accident rates are seen far behind according to European countries. In this work, which has a purpose of improving the occupational health and safety training applications, the health and safety training legislation within the framework of EU Directives are analyzed in detail comparatively with EU countries. Then the occupational health and safety legislation level of compliance in Turkey is evaluated with the EU Directives and offered suggestions for improvements to the solution of identified problems. Keywords: Occupational health and safety, Training obligations, Employee training