Employers should be required to conduct risk assessments on stress as a health hazard in the workplace, according to the Manufacturing, Science, Finance (MSF) union. A conference of its women members has called for legislation in Ireland and Britain to have stress at work identified and dealt with as a serious health threat.
The Irish regional conference for MSF's women members was held in Dublin at the weekend. Its primary theme was "Women's Health and Disability".
But one of the main areas of concern raised at the conference was the growing impact of stress on working life.
The secretary of the MSF women's committee, Ms Kate Warpeha, said that much workplace stress was due to inappropriate or poorly designed workplaces. Physical, environmental and social structures in the workplace should be reviewed from this perspective and an onus put on employers to ensure they did not generate stress.
Stress was now so significant that it should receive separate risk assessment from other workplace health hazards.
There was an urgent need for legislation in Britain and Ireland, she said, and employers should welcome such a move in the interests of good working practice.
The conference also called for more services to help women, and families generally, to cope with reproductive issues.
Employers and governments were criticised for not providing adequate child-care facilities, or respite facilities, for carers generally. Usually it was working women who bore the brunt of care work, whether it was children, parents, siblings or other relatives unable to look after themselves.
The Minister of State for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Ms Mary Wallace, told the conference that as minister with special responsibility for people with disabilities she wanted to assure them that the Government was committed to the need for radical change in these areas.
She said her Department was spending £800,000 a year on a pilot child-care initiative and had set up a working group to report on the issue by the end of 1998 at the latest.
Initiatives to help various groups of people with disabilities were also taking place, such as dedicated on-street parking and grants for organisations in the voluntary sector.