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NR-12: A Medicament or a Poison?
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2014-07-25
The Brazilian Ministry of Labor and Employment has the Regulatory Rule Nº 12, a rule for safety in work, also known as NR-12. Since 2010, the NR-12 jumped from 40 to 340 items to be met by the manufacturers and users, causing more troubles than solutions.
Recently the "Indústria e Competitividade", the official magazine of Federation of Manufacturers of Santa Catarina state published a report about Ciser, in which the Brazilian fastener company showed its difficulties in adaptation to these "overdone rules".
Considering an astonishing increase of 850% in total obligations, any company around the world would obviously have many problems in adaptation, which is something that happened to Ciser, that had made many fast changes, like what happened in its wire drawing machines, among others.
Ciser, producing more than 6 thousand tons per month (covering 27 thousand different kinds of fasteners), was founded in 1959 and never had accidents involving the wire drawing section.
However, the historical and security procedures adopted by the company did not convince the Brazilian Ministry, which saw "serious and imminent risk "of accidents in industry and banned the use of seven of 10 wire drawing machines in operation.
Left with no alternative, Ciser had to do adaptations in machines and process, which cost more than US$ 500 thousand.
Furthermore, during the 10 months with machines downtime, the company spent a lot of money buying wire rods more expensive than it could have made inside its industrial plant, coupled with a fall of 30% in its productivity.
But it was not a unique problem, because it was extended to other 700 machines, including 2 automatic presses of last generation made in Germany, considered as dangerous during the inspection.
Currently, the authorities know that the NR-12 is impractical, and are preparing a review (read below) to deploy "before it kills the patient with high dosage of medicine"
The proposals for revision of NR-12 |
Temporary cut of obligations for new and used machines |
New deadlines for complaints |
Differentiated obligations for manufacturers and users |
Differentiated treatment for micro and small enterprises |
Definition and characterization of the limits of "serious and imminent risk" |
Legal certainty in the purchase of new equipment |
Sources: CNI and FIESC |