A responsabilidade do estado e da iniciativa privada na promoção do meio ambiente de trabalho sadio em meio a uma sociedade de risco

The goal of the present study is a reflection about the position of State and the private initiative towards the increscent demand for prevention and precaution in the matter of the Health and Safety at Work, with notes regarding legislative instruments created as incentives to a healthier work environment. There will be, at start, based on the notes of Beck and Luhmann, considerations about professional risks in risk society and the importance of the Environmental Law’s principles of precaution and prevention, approached by Ingo Sarlet and Tiago Fensterseifer, in the debates concerning Health and Safety at Work. Brief comments will be rendered about the State’s role as responsible for the protection of workers, as a direct protector as much as encouraging employers to value safer work environments. It will be shown, however, that state’s mechanisms such as SAT and FAP stumble by overtaxing employers, through the inclusion of misfortunes that are unrelated to the work environment in the concept of work accident. This, according to the critics of Floriani Neto, transfers to the private initiative the responsibility of the Government’s inefficiency in social protection, jeopardizing a more effective spur to those who guarantee safer work place, disregarding, thus, the principle of solidarity.