Organizational and Legal Mechanisms for Implementing State Policy in the Sphere of Labor Protection in Ukraine

The article provides a comprehensive analysis of the organizational and legal mechanisms for implementing state occupational safety policy in Ukraine. The study examines occupational safety in both its broad and narrow interpretations. From a broad perspective, occupational safety is defined as a comprehensive system of legal norms regulating the entire spectrum of social relations in the sphere of employment. The narrow interpretation focuses specifically on normative restrictions regarding the employment of certain worker categories, representing a specialized legal regime within occupational safety regulation.

The study identifies several fundamental characteristics of occupational safety. The social dimension prioritizes human life and health as supreme social values within the labor process, establishing worker protection as a cornerstone of state social policy. The economic aspect entails the employer's responsibility to provide proper working conditions, creating an environment where both employee welfare and broader state economic interests are optimized. The legal dimension manifests through explicit regulatory guarantees for preserving workers' life and health, formally established in normative acts. The supervisory-control function enables state verification of employer compliance through specially authorized bodies. Furthermore, occupational safety demonstrates interdisciplinary connections with sociology, safety engineering, ecology, labor hygiene and physiology, psychology, engineering psychology, technical aesthetics, and related fields.

The implementation of state policy in occupational safety is framed by a system of specific principles. These include: the primacy of workers' life and health; full employer responsibility for establishing proper, safe, and healthy working conditions; enhancement of industrial safety through comprehensive technical oversight of production processes, technologies, and products, alongside state support for enterprises in creating safe work environments; integrated solutions based on national, sectoral, and regional programs aligned with socioeconomic policies, scientific advancements, and environmental protection; social protection of workers with full compensation for occupational injuries and diseases; uniform safety standards for all enterprises regardless of ownership or activity type; adaptation of labor processes to workers' physiological and psychological capacities; and economic management methods, including state funding and voluntary contributions for safety measures.