About key concepts of safety at work in production

he article consistently reveals the differences and similarities between concepts such as “ safety at work” and “occupational safety and health”, as well as between personal living and materialized work, between private and hired labor, between the risks of exposure to danger to the worker’s body and the occupational risk of disability. The discussion is based on a detailed analysis of the “simple process of work”, during which, under the influence of “tools,” the “subject of work” turns into a “product of work”. This extremely general approach makes it possible to identify the duality of work, which both acts as a material process and as a socio-economic attitude of the “organizer of production” and the “hired worker.” This approach has been shown to be heuristically fruitful. It allows us to solve one of the cardinal issues of the modern economy and occupational safety and health - to identify a clear criterion for dividing the legality of “labor relations” under an employment contract and “legal relations regarding labor” formalized by civil law contracts. This criterion is the “ownership” of the product of work, and the real transition of the “worker” created by personal living work to the “product of work” at the disposal of either the “hired worker” himself (private labor) or the «organizer of production» (hired labor). It is shown how, depending on the essence of labor (private or hired labor), the organization of protection against dangers and the risk of harm by its effect on the body of the worker changes. In one case, it acts as “safety at work”, and in another - as “occupational safety and health”. The duality of occupational safety and health and its concepts arising from the duality of hired labor, illustrated by examples of Russian-speaking Russian and English-speaking international discourses, is considered. Particular attention is paid to the differences in the material risk of the impact of danger on the body of the worker and the socio-economic “occupational risk” of the loss of their ability to work by hired workers.