Survey examines working conditions

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July 2001 saw the publication of the findings of an innovative official survey of working conditions in Portugal. For the first time, detailed information was gathered about the workplace, employees' freedom to manage their own working hours, ergonomic conditions, absence and mobility between jobs. We summarise some of the key findings.

In July 2001, the Department of Labour, Employment and Vocational Training Statistics (Departamento de Estatísticas do Trabalho, Emprego e Formação Profissional, DETEFP) at the Ministry of Labour and Solidarity published the results of a survey into working conditions. This is the part of the third phase of surveys of working conditions conducted in Portugal. The development of DETEFP's research in this area has been as follows:

• the first phase, in the 1980s, involved surveys aimed at the early detection and prevention of occupational hazards for companies and employees;

• the second phase took place in 1992 and 1993 during the European Year of Safety, Hygiene and Health at Work and assessed working conditions, focusing especially on occupational hazards and companies' prevention structures; and

• the new survey forms part of the third phase. It was carried out in late 1999 and early 2000, and used direct interviews with 4,252 employees. For the first time, detailed information was gathered about the workplace, how free employees were to manage their own working hours, ergonomic conditions at work, absence and mobility between jobs.

The specific issues addressed in the new working conditions survey were:

• working time and flexibility arrangements;

• working conditions, with health and safety conditions at the workplace considered the most important point and analysed in terms of gender, age, size of company, working time regime, region, occupational category and sector of activity;

• industrial accidents during the employee's life, and their evaluation of the health, hygiene and safety services at the workplace, such as equipment;

• living conditions, including social benefits, the time spent commuting to work and the distance and transport involved; and

• work organisation, with a description of each type of job in terms of the workers' autonomy and the type of equipment used, broken down by profession, sector of activity and gender.

Some of the key findings of the survey are set out below.

Mobility

The survey found that, in the five previous years, 24% of employees had changed jobs. Employees under the age of 35, with secondary-school or higher qualifications and working for small and medium-sized companies, were the most mobile. Women have slightly greater mobility than men – 25.8% of women had changed jobs in the previous five years, compared with 22.3% of men. The risk of unemployment, which was evaluated at 3.8% overall, is slightly higher for men, at 4%, than for women, at 3.5%.

Working time

The study found that 60.2% of employees work 40 hours a week, with 22.2% working longer hours and 17.6% working shorter hours. Of all employees, 33.6% work overtime and 29.1% work at weekends. In terms of working time autonomy, some 66% of employees have no flexibility in their work schedule, while 27.4% are not allowed to choose when they take their breaks and 21.9% cannot choose when they take their holidays.

Women at work

There are two types of occupation where women are concentrated and outnumber men: "administrative personnel and similar", of whom 63.8% are women; and "service personnel and sales staff", of whom 63.6% are women. However, women make up only 22.1% of employees in "positions of leadership and authority". In sectoral terms, women work mainly in retail, where 20.4% of all women workers are found, textiles, clothing and footwear (19.1%) and "collective services" (10.7%). Although there are more men than women in overall employment, women are in the majority up to the age of 34 (making up 52.4% of all workers below this age).

In terms of the way in which women fit into the duration of working time and work organisation, the survey found that:

• women have less flexible hours than men. While 66.2% of all employees have an inflexible schedule, this is true of 74.2% of women. This situation can be explained by the facts that women work in occupations with inflexible schedules and that, since social services such as crèches, transports etc are not flexible, flexible work schedules are not desirable if women are to reconcile their work with their domestic duties;

• the proportion of women who can choose when to take their work breaks or their holidays is lower than for men

• women do not work in shifts as much as men. The survey finds that 6.9% of employees are shiftworkers - a figure which is relatively low compared with the EU average of 19.3% (according to the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions' third working conditions survey - EU0101292F). Among female workers, only 6.3% work in shifts;

• women perform more night work than men - while 0.1% of all employees surveyed report working at night, the figure for women is 0.2%. The female domination of occupations such as nurses and auxiliary staff at hospitals and hotels influence this difference; and

• while most employees (60.2%) work a 40-hour week, men (59.0%) are less likely than women (61.7%) to do so. Men are more likely to work longer hours - eg while 7.8% of all employees work more than 50 hours per week, the figures are 3.8% for women and 11.3% for men. Women are more likely to work fewer hours - 1.3% of all employees work fewer than 25 hours, while the figures are 2.4% for women and 0.3% for men. This reflects the fact that part-time work, which is generally involuntary, is more often done by women, and shorter hours may correspond to female-dominated occupations like cleaning work.

Absence

In the three months preceding the period of the survey (December 1999 to January 2000), 21.6% of employees surveyed had been absent from work. Sick leave accounted for 47.2% of the absence, time off to take care of dependents 19.6%, and problems related to working conditions 1.8%. There are major gender differences: 15.7% of men had been absent from work and 28.4% of women. This can be explained by the large number of young women with children, the fact that parental leave is not used very much yet and the lack of support from public services in cases of illness.

Poor working conditions

The survey reveals that many employees report unfavourable working conditions, notably: standing for long periods (reported by 44.5% of respondents); breathing in toxic substances (23.4%); uncomfortable, tiring positions (20.5%); frequent long walks (18.9%); and repetitive, monotonous tasks (18.9%).

Occupational hazards

Occupational hazards reported by respondents are associated mostly with issue of physical safety, such as injuries from machines (reported by 21.1%), hazardous working materials (17.4%), being struck by falling or thrown materials (11.7%) and being permanently exposed to loud noise (10.7%).

Health and safety services and training

Most companies provide their employees with medical services (64.6%). Some 68.6% of companies provide safety and hygiene services, while 84.9% of companies have collective safety equipment and 67.5% have individual equipment. Finally, 9.7% of workers have taken health and hygiene courses.

Commentary

The method used by DETEFP, choosing a sample of the type in question and not a wider survey, is more flexible and achieves faster results. Furthermore, the analysis of working conditions in the workplace, and especially aspects such as work organisation and gender, are of great interest in Portugal, where there is a lack of official or academic information in these areas. (Maria Luisa Cristovam, UAL)