European Working Conditions Observatory (EWCO)
17 May 2012:
Support for disabled persons in the workplace
(Romania / Information update)
A survey by Romania’s National Institute of Statistics conducted during the second quarter of 2011 revealed that 30.1% of all disabled persons aged 15–64 who had a job benefited from special services designed to help them do their work. Among these recipients, 74.3% received personal assistance, 9.5% received special equipment or adjustments to regular equipment, and 47.7% said that special working conditions existed or had been created for them at their workplace.
17 May 2012:
Social dialogue helps to improve working conditions
(Latvia / Information update)
A 2009–2010 survey on working conditions and risks by the Latvian Employers’ Confederation repeated a similar survey from 2005 to 2006. Employees were more satisfied with their job and working conditions than the self-employed, though only the latter reported increased satisfaction. Employers with a collective agreement were more likely to perform a risk analysis, but over half of employers were found to be unfamiliar with the requirements of the Labour Safety Law.
17 May 2012:
Employment situation of disabled workers
(France / Information update)
A 2008 Dares survey into the employment situation of people with some kind of official recognition of their disability found that 6% of the French population aged between 15 and 64 fell into this category. This group is characterised by having more men, older workers and a lower level of educational attainment than the total population. They also had lower rates of employment and activity, worked part-time more often and had less access to training.
03 May 2012:
Rise in age-related discrimination at work
(Czech Republic / Information update)
Most of the respondents to the ‘Trends’ survey carried out by the Centre of Empirical Studies (STEM) in April 2011 believed that some groups of people are discriminated against at work. The extent of the problem in the Czech Republic has increased significantly in the last year. Discrimination on the grounds of age was considered to be ‘very frequent’ by almost half of respondents. State of health and motherhood/pregnancy were the next most common reasons for discrimination at work.
03 May 2012:
Impact of the informal economy on the labour market
(Romania / Information update)
In 2011, Romanian national trade union confederation BNS published a report on the informal economy and its impact on the labour market. It shows that informal employment represents 31.4% of total employment in Romania. The distribution of informal employment by institutional sectors is 75.3% in the households sector, 0.7% in the formal sector and 24.0% in the informal sector. Subsistence rural households account for 96.4% of the household sector’s informal employment.
03 May 2012:
Rate of in-work poverty attracts press attention
(Poland / Information update)
According to the report, ‘Employment and social developments in 2011’, Poland continues to have one of the highest in-work poverty rates in Europe. People most at risk of in-work poverty are those with the lowest level of educational attainment, the self-employed and family workers, and those employed on temporary contracts. The recent increase in the minimum wage is not expected to improve the situation as it applies only to people employed on full-time contracts.
24 April 2012:
Sickness-related absenteeism in the private sector
(Luxembourg / Information update)
The first of four studies about absenteeism by the Centre for Population, Poverty and Socio-Economic Policy Studies based on research in 2009 and 2010 examines absenteeism due to illness in Luxembourg’s private companies. The rate of absenteeism increased slightly between 2009 and 2010 but remains lower than in Belgium, France and Germany. The rate for blue-collar workers is twice as high as that for white-collar workers. Age, sector and company size also have an impact.
24 April 2012:
Fifth of workers have experienced mobbing at work
(Czech Republic / Information update)
According to the latest survey by the STEM/MARK marketing agency, mobbing at work was experienced in 2011 by almost one fifth of the working population in the Czech Republic aged over 15 years. Nonetheless, the phenomenon had diminished to almost 2007 levels after a steep increase in reports of workplace mobbing in 2009, attributed to the initial effects of the global economic crisis. In both 2009 and 2011, undervaluation of performance was the most frequent type of mobbing.
05 April 2012:
Young shift workers more at risk of developing multiple sclerosis
(Sweden / Information update)
Researchers at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm studied two different groups of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients to investigate the effect of shift work on the incidence of MS. They found a strong relationship between shift work before the age of 20 and the risk of developing MS. The researchers argue that the effect on the immune system from the disruption of the body’s daily rhythms and sleep disturbance due to shift work could be behind the increased risk in young workers.
05 April 2012:
Part-time sick leave found to speed up return to work
(Finland / Information update)
Part-time sick leave, available in Finland since 2007, can offer workers a compromise where contact with the workplace is retained but work load is reduced. A study by the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health found that allowing employees suffering from musculoskeletal disorders to take early part-time sick leave (that is, reduced working hours plus modified work tasks if necessary) reduced both the time before their return to full-time work and subsequent sick leave.