Current situation, impact, and suggestions of practicing exemption from administrative penalty in occupational health work

After the revision of the Law on Administrative Penalty, in order to optimize business environment and promote economic development, all localities have vigorously promoted inclusive and prudential supervision and flexible law enforcement, and the exemption from administrative penalty is one of the important ways. The targets of occupational health supervision and law enforcement are mainly employers and occupational health technical service providers, which is one of the areas of health supervision and law enforcement that implements the exemption from administrative penalty. This paper described the current situation of practicing the exemption in the field of occupational health, introduced the occupational health violations applicable to the exemption, the scope of effectiveness of normative documents, and the supporting regulatory measures and safeguard mechanisms, and summarized the problems such as no definitive boundaries in the application of the system, unclear criteria for determining required elements, simplification and aggregation of statutory requirements, and excessive protection of the rights and interests of employers. Negative impacts during the process of implementing the system were also analyzed, such as damaging the principle of fairness, weakening employers' awareness of occupational health responsibility, hindering the development of occupational disease prevention work, and infringing workers' occupational health rights and interests. In this regard, we provided suggestions: clarifying the application boundary of the system, establishing a hazard assessment tool for illegal acts, refining the application conditions in combination with characteristics of occupational health, and strengthening post-event supervision measures, so as to provide reference for promoting occupational diseases prevention and high-quality development of occupational health for workers.