Innovations and labour law: towards a new legal reality in health prevention at work?

The law of August 2, 2021 shows signs of legal innovation by strengthening occupational health prevention. But the relationship between law and innovation is not intuitive. The criteria for innovation can shake up legal ways of thinking. We will therefore draw on the theory of legal realism to determine three variables specific to legal innovation: the purpose of the norm, the effectiveness of the law and the uses of the law. Based on a cross-reading of 115 collective agreements, we propose an exploratory qualitative study of the preventive approach to occupational health. Our research highlights “innovative uses” and goes so far as to determine the levels of legal innovation: unexpected, conditioned, uncertain or prohibited by the standard.