Survey findings reveal increased time pressure at work

The Survey of the Active Population’s recent findings on industrial accidents and occupational illnesses in 2007 show an increase in the industrial accident rate related to the expansion of the construction sector and economic growth in recent years. The study also considers for the first time the effect of psychosocial risks at work. Following the survey’s findings, the social partners have voiced different concerns about the efficacy of the Spanish risk prevention system.

In July 2008, the National Statistics Institute (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, INE) published the 2007 findings on industrial accidents and occupational illnesses obtained from the Survey of the Active Population (Encuesta de Población Activa, EPA). The EPA consists of a series of questions relating to the labour market which are put forward in interviews carried out on a quarterly basis with over 75,000 persons. The previous study of this type relating to accidents and occupational illnesses was carried out in 1999.

Main survey results

According to the survey’s results, 5% of the persons who were working in 2007 suffered an accident during working hours or on their way to work. This is more than double the percentage for 1999, when the figure stood at 2.3%.

Gender differences

In general, men were more likely than women to have an accident at work, although the distribution of the effect of work-related illnesses was similar between men and women. Overall, some 6% of men claimed to have had an accident compared with 3.7% of women. Furthermore, of the total number of persons who suffered an illness, over 27% – or 29% of men and 25% of women – claimed that it had been caused or aggravated by work.

Sectoral differences

Differences based on sector of economic activity are attributed to the occupational segregation between men and women and their exposure to different risk factors at work. A greater proportion of men than women were occupied in sectors with a high rate of industrial accidents, such as construction and manufacturing. The construction sector represents 12.9% of the working population and accounted for 21.4% of work-related accidents in 2007. This sector was followed by manufacturing, which represents about 16% of the active population and accounted for 23% of work-related accidents.

Mental health risks

A new feature of the 2007 survey is its consideration of workers’ exposure to mental health risk factors. In relation to this aspect of work-related health, the gender differences appeared to be much smaller. Of the factors considered in the study, the one that had the most negative effect on workers’ mental health was time pressure and an excessive workload, which accounted for 81.6% of problems – or 83.4% of difficulties among men and 78.8% among women.

Sick leave

With regard to sick leave, 33.4% of the workers took no sick leave, while 13.2% were off work for three to four days and 15.6% were absent for between one and three months.

Social partner views

The publication of the EPA findings takes place 12 years after the Law on Occupational Risks Prevention Law came into force in 1996 and just one year after the Strategy on Health and Safety at Work (2007–2012) (ES0707019I) was endorsed on 15 June 2007. The social partners have expressed their disquiet about the operation of the Spanish risk prevention system.

Employer organisations have long been concerned about what they consider to be an increase in unjustified absenteeism, which they claim is leading to a sharp increase in companies’ expenditure on temporary incapacity. According to the employers, this is because the benefit is managed by the National Institute of Social Security (Instituto Nacional de la Seguridad Social, INSS), whereas health management, which determines the length of the time off work, depends on the public health services of each autonomous community and the mutual insurance societies. As a result, the organisation that pays the benefit is not the same one that manages time off, so sick leave tends to be longer than necessary. To prevent these situations, the employer organisations propose that the industrial accident mutual insurance societies should manage time off work and its economic effects (ES0007100F).

Meanwhile, the trade unions criticise both the lack of means to guarantee the companies’ compliance with current legislation and the underdevelopment of occupational risk prevention measures through collective bargaining in companies, which is limited to the mere guarantee of health protection. The management of risk prevention in companies tends to be outsourced to specialists who have no decision-making powers, instead of being undertaken by joint committees (ES0510102N, ES0306105F). The new Strategy on Health and Safety at Work includes a set of measures that seeks to increase the role of trade union delegates in risk prevention activities in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), together with measures which favour the internalisation of prevention tasks and their self-financing by the companies.

Juan Arasanz Díaz, QUIT, University Autònoma of Barcelona (UAB)