Are Irish employers doing enough to stem the rise in work-related illnesses, asks Theresa Judge
Employers body Ibec has challenged Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures suggesting that 60,000 people suffered from work-related illnesses last year - a massive increase from 26,000 in 1998.
Ibec says the true figure is about 11,000, based on occupational injury benefit claims, and that the nature of the question posed by the CSO in its quarterly household survey results in misleading information.
However, trade union Siptu calls the problem of work-related illnesses "a creeping crisis" that neither the Government nor employers are doing enough to tackle.
The question of what constitutes a work-related illness can be a complex one as increased work-related pressures may only be one factor in psychological ill health.
However, research from independent research organisations such as the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working conditions shows that "job intensification" has been increasing in many EU countries, including Ireland, over recent years. About 60 per cent of workers have experienced job intensification, mainly due to workplace reorganisation, according to Agnes Parent-Thirion, research co-ordinator at the foundation's working conditions unit.
"This means that people are trying to do more in less time and this is a feature in most workplaces now," she says. "But people pay a price in the end if it goes on too long."
In the past when people took time off work for work-related illnesses and injuries it was mainly because of physical problems but this has now been overtaken by psychological ill health. People who work in the field say they are getting more inquiries on topics such as stress.
Malcolm Byrne of the National Irish Safety Organisation says "anecdotally the organisation is getting a lot more queries" in relation to health-related illnesses, and issues such as stress and workplace bullying "are being raised more and more by companies and employees".
While it is accepted that people are now more likely to attribute ill health to work pressures than they were 10 or 15 years ago, it is acknowledged that it is a major problem for the economy. Last month a Government-commissioned report found that occupational injury and illness was costing the economy €3.3-€3.6 billion a year. Minister for Labour Affairs Tony Killeen described it as a "stark figure [ which] should make everybody in the workplace take notice and redouble their efforts to make workplaces safer".
Changes in both the nature of work and the make-up of the workforce are factors that contribute to the toll that work can take. The workforce has grown rapidly over recent years and has now exceeded two million people with many more immigrants employed. In addition to workplace factors, many people are also facing longer commuting times and higher debt burdens because of soaring house prices.
There is also evidence that workplaces employing mainly immigrants have poorer health and safety standards. Non-Irish nationals are three times more likely to be injured in the construction sector than Irish workers, and two times more likely to be injured in other sectors.
According to Siptu, the scale of the problem can be seen in the fact that 1.4 million work days were lost due to work-related accidents and illnesses in 2004. Sylvester Cronin, the union's health and safety advisor, compared this with the 20,784 work days lost due to strikes in the same year.
He says that while considerable State resources are invested in structures to help prevent strikes, similar steps are not being taken to address the problem of work-related illness.
Siptu has called for a new mandatory reporting system to record all absences from work of more than three days due to work-related injuries or illnesses, saying there is a need for better data.
Cronin also points out that the CSO figures of people suffering work-related illnesses has grown by 129 per cent since 1998, while the working population grew by only 28 per cent in the same period. He says unions have found it "very difficult to even get this issue on the table" at talks on national agreements with employers over this time.
However, Tony Briscoe, Ibec's assistant director and head of health and safety, says he believes social welfare figures on the number of occupational injury benefit claims provide an accurate picture. These had remained stable over recent years at about 11,500 despite a growing workforce. These figures do not include the self-employed or a small number of civil servants who are ineligible for this benefit.
Briscoe says that of this 11,500, the numbers claiming benefit due to stress have actually fallen. "Over the years there has been no significant increase in the area of stress, anxiety or depression."
He says the problem with the CSO figure of 60,000 is that it is based on a question posed to one member of a household asking if a person in the family experienced an illness caused or made worse by their work. Describing this as a "nonsensical question", he says that even the Health and Safety Authority has pointed out reasons to be cautious about this figure.
Ibec, he says, is strongly opposed to the view that "any pressure is seen as a stress or a negative" because "if you take away all pressure, you also take away opportunity".
Ibec recommends to employers the importance of putting in place good supports for workers, of having work/life balance policies and of taking safety initiatives. The importance of good communication and training is also accepted by employers, he says.
Ibec is opposed to Siptu's call for mandatory reporting of work-related illnesses because it would put an extra and unnecessary responsibility on employers and would be "very difficult to manage".
Whatever about employers and governments' commitments to providing training, Agnes Parent-Thirion says the European foundation's research indicates that it isn't happening on the ground and inadequate training is a significant cause of stress and difficulties in the workplace: "What we find is that the workers with the highest education levels get the most training, but we need to think of the lower-skilled workers too."
Research on working conditions over recent years, she says, indicates that job intensification may be starting to level off. However, she believes there is a need for greater discussion of the issues, particularly given the difficulty of legislating to ensure people's workload is not such that it will damage their health.
Solutions such as greater degrees of autonomy and flexibility for workers, more effective social supports, enhanced training and good communication should be addressed in the workplace.
The foundation has found that the two most common work-related health problems are musculoskeletal disorders and stress, depression and anxiety problems.
Parent-Thirion says that overall in the EU working conditions league, Ireland "may be in the lower half, but it is not nearly the worst" in relation to such factors as job intensification, annual leave, working hours and exposure to risk.
The National Irish Safety Organisation, a voluntary not-for-profit organisation, says its message to employers is that measures to prevent injuries and illness are cheaper in the long run. For example, it encourages companies to carry out regular VDU assessments for workers who spend long hours on computers to prevent repetitive strain injuries (RSI), but Malcolm Byrne accepts that only a minority of employers do these regularly.
New legislation - the Safety, Health and Welfare at Work Act 2005 - was introduced last year and parts of this are still being implemented, but the question of enforcement is crucial. The Health and Safety Authority has pledged to increase the number of workplace inspections - from 13,500 in 2005 to 16,000 for 2006 - but this is still only a tiny proportion of all workplaces.
"We are happy that the HSA is going to increase its inspections - it is important that more inspections are carried out," says Byrne.