Health and safety issues in the public sector

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In September 1998, Greece's Confederation of Public Servants (ADEDY) held a meeting on the subject of health and safety in the public sector, which highlighted a number of obstacles in the way of improvements.

On 17 September 1998, the Confederation of Public Servants (ADEDY) organised a meeting on "health and safety at work for employees of the state, public entities and local government organisations".

Working conditions in the public sector

One of the meeting's basic themes was working conditions and occupational safety in public services. In a presentation by the health and safety secretariat of ADEDY and a report by a special research group on improving public sector working conditions, the most important findings were the following.

• Although most work in the public services falls under the heading of office work, which does not involve high risks, a series of ergonomic studies has revealed a direct relationship between working conditions and worker performance, as well as certain health problems, mainly affecting the musculoskeletal system. Parameters of particular importance for office working conditions are desk and chair design, lighting, ambient temperature, ventilation and air quality, workplace arrangement (physical planning), work organisation and fire-risk provision.

• With increased use of computers in office work, some of the above factors (eg lighting) have become even more vitally important, and new factors have been added, such as the characteristics of computer monitors and keyboards, user training, user/computer interface design, form and features of user/computer interaction, and user support.

• Most workstations and workplaces in the public sector have been designed without taking account of the proper specifications for the above parameters, resulting in working conditions that are far from satisfactory.

• Workers' lack of awareness of certain risks they are facing, and their lack of training in ways to eliminate or avoid such risks are serious obstacles to improved health and safety at work.

• Apart from office jobs, which constitute the majority, there are other jobs that present different types of high risk. They include waste collection, shipyard repair work in Ministry of Defence naval stations, some jobs in the healthcare sector and other jobs for which, as a whole, improvement of working conditions and workers' health and safety problems have not been dealt with in a systematic way. Complicating efforts in this direction are the bonuses paid to workers in jobs hazardous to their health and safety and financial incentives to attract or keep workers in high-risk jobs; these often act as inhibitors to improving working conditions and eliminating risks.

• A final important finding is that the public servants' code contains no concept of occupational accident or illness. Therefore, occupational accidents and illnesses are treated as ordinary illnesses, and as a result in such cases victims cannot obtain the special treatment necessary for their recovery, which is provided for in relevant legislation. On the other hand, no record is kept of occupational accidents and illnesses among public servants. Such a record would be a good indicator of the impacts of working conditions in the public sector, and would at the same time allow for evaluation of interventions and monitoring of the measures taken to reduce risk.

Positions of the social partners

According to the report of the ADEDY health and safety secretariat, grave responsibilities for delays in implementing health and safety legislation lie with the civil service trade union movement. However, governments from 1985 to date share a major part of the blame: despite employers' obligations emanating from the relevant legislation, and from Law 1568/1985 in particular (GR9703107F), governments have failed to take measures to implement the relevant legislation in the workplace, nor have they taken account of occupational health and safety risks when drawing up new pay scales and creating measures on occupational illnesses and accidents in the public sector.

From the government side, the most important issue may be the bonuses - amounting to GRD 5,000 to GRD 30,000 per month - paid to workers in jobs that jeopardise their health and safety, and re-examination of the system by which these are granted. In particular, it is stated that attention must be shifted away from procedures for providing financial compensation for workers to procedures for improving health and safety at work. The competent ministers - those for the interior, public administration and decentralisation, finance and labour and social security - have stressed that bonuses do not remedy damage suffered by workers, and the rationale of granting them creates conditions of inertia rather than eliminating risk.

Commenting on the government positions, the president of ADEDY, although he registered his opposition to cutbacks in these bonuses, pointed out that demands for higher bonuses do nothing to remedy damage to health. Thus, in the framework of the forthcoming extension of free collective bargaining to the public sector (GR9809190N), ADEDY will put forward the following demands:

• promotion of favourable insurance and pension regulations (lower retirement age) for people employed in heavy jobs or jobs hazardous to their health, in line with current legislation in the private sector;

• reduction of working hours for people employed in high-risk jobs; and

• extension to the public sector of the Presidential Decrees on protection of safety and health at work, which provide for the appointment of works doctors and safety officers in government ministries.

Commentary

Despite Greece's adequate legal framework for regulation of health and safety issues at work, it is commonly admitted that to date efforts to implement existing legislation on health and safety in the public sector have been limited. As a whole, actions to implement relevant legislation have been piecemeal, and insufficient training of, and lack of support for, staff such as works doctors and technical officers in the competent bodies are some of the difficulties faced by the members of such bodies when trying to do their work effectively.

The ADEDY initiative to hold a meeting on workplace health and safety in public services, albeit 13 years after the passage of the basic Law 1568/1985, is a positive step, as it highlights for the first time this serious issue. However, such an initiative alone cannot resolve the grave problems regarding working conditions in the public services, nor can it fill the gaps created over the years. The need for worker protection and improvement of working conditions, as it arises both from the objective conditions and from the EU imperative to improve health and safety at work, requires a coordinated effort by the government, the unions and the workers themselves. (Eva Soumeli, INE/GSEE)