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Best practices
European BEST PRACTICES
European weeks for health and safety at work
The European week for health and safety at work is an every year initiative supported by the European Agency for health and safety at work together with European countries and social bodies.
It consists of an information campaign in order to promote this topic around Europe and to increase awareness in each country.
Targets of this event are: enterprises, worker organizations, workers trade unions. In particular, it means to involve small and medium enterprises and all those organizations that daily deal with safety and health at the workplace.
It can be considered a unique opportunity to develop and deepen topics linked to safety and health in different countries.
Every year, since 2000, a specific topic has been chosen.
2000 TURN YOUR BACK ON BACKPAIN
The Week aims to reduce the problems of backpain and musculoskeletal disorders by increasing awareness, identifying solutions and supporting practical projects in the workplace. Musculoskeletal disorders and backpain cause misery and suffering to tens of thousands of workers. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has teamed up with the National Back Pain Association, the TUC, CBI, the Departments of Health, Education and Employment, and Social Security, and the Health Education Board for Scotland to encourage employers and workers to reduce work-related ill health and injury.
2001 SUCCESS IS NO ACCIDENT
The European Week 2001 is an information campaign aimed at making Europe a safe and healthy place to work by promoting activities to reduce the number and severity of work-related accidents. With the backing of all Member States , the European Commission and Parliament, trade unions and employers federations, it provides a unique opportunity to focus attention on the importance of workplace safety and health. Across the European Union 5,500 people are killed and 146 million working days are lost due to work-related accidents every year. But most of these accidents could be avoided. That's why accident prevention is the focus of this year's European Week for Safety and Health at Work.
2002 WORKING ON STRESS
Organised in the UK by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE), this annual initiative has become the largest workplace health and safety event in Europe . Thousands of businesses use the Week to focus on ways of making their working environment a safer and healthier place. The biggest ever drive to tackle work-related stress in Europe - a problem that affects 28% of employees in the EU - gets underway across the European Union. Recent research has estimated that up to 40 million workers in the EU suffer from this problem, costing Member States up to €20 billion a year.
2003 DANGEROUS SUBSTANCES
The European Week is the first pan-European campaign to reduce the risks of chemicals, biological agents and other dangerous substances at work – hazards that affect around a quarter of the EU's 150 million employees. The Agency's dangerous substances web feature means that practical and up-to-date advice is now just a mouse click away. It covers all the main risks associated with working with dangerous substances and links to online information provided by more than 100 safety and health institutions across Europe . Users can choose from a list of more than 40 key topics, like ‘chemical accident prevention' or ‘personal protective equipment', or by sector, such as ‘agriculture' or ‘construction'.
2004 BUINDING IN SAFETY
Higher safety and health standards in Europe 's construction industry could save up to 1,300 lives each year and avoid 850,000 serious injuries, according to the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work at today's launch of its major campaign. Cutting the sector's high incidence of accidents and work-related illnesses could also save the EU up to €75 billion a year, claims the Agency. The ‘Building in Safety' campaign highlights the health and safety risks in Europe's construction industry, as well as the solutions, in more than 30 countries throughout the continent, making it the largest ever campaign of its kind.
2005 STOP THAT NOISE
The campaign marks the final run-up to the entry into force of a new EU directive aimed at containing the alarmingly heavy human and financial toll of workplace noise. An estimated one third of Europe 's workers - more than 60 million people - are exposed to high levels of noise for more than a quarter of their working time. Noise-induced hearing loss is amongst the most commonly reported occupational diseases in the European Union. It is also one of the most costly, with billions of euros a year paid in compensation and in hidden costs resulting from sick leave, lower productivity and accidents due to impaired communication because of noise. The human costs are immeasurable.
2006 SAFE START
The 2006 European Week for Safety and Health at Work has the aim of ensuring that young people have a Safe Start to their working lives. Across Europe , 18 to 24-year-olds are at least 50% more likely to be injured in the workplace than more experienced workers, and over 700,000 young people in this age group suffer serious injuries at work every year. Behind the statistics are harrowing stories, of young people having to live with the consequences of accidents and damaged health for the rest of their lives, or dying when they had so much of their lives ahead of them.
2007 LIGHTEN THE LOAD
The theme for this year's campaign is Lighten the Load. The week focuses on musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), including back problems - the most common form of ill-health disorders at work. The aim of the campaign is to support employers, workers, safety representatives and other stakeholders in improving MSD prevention. Problems include back pain, work-related neck and upper limb disorders, including repetitive strain injuries, and lower limb disorders. Raising awareness, prevention and management are all key factors in reducing MSDs.
Greek BEST PRACTICES
Α) The network
The office has started operating in the framework of the program Equal in May 2006, and it is supported by two consultants. The aim of the program is the par integration of immigrants (extra and intra-EU) in the Greek labor market.
The first months of its operation, the office had as main aim the development of a network of actors involved to the immigration process, able to support the immigrants' and refugees' demands. The office has contacted labor unions members of EKA having immigrant workers as members, in order to establish communication and cooperation with them. The office has also encouraged labor unions to address to foreign workers in order to attract them to affiliate to the unions. Special relationship has been developed with the union of workers in household services, cleaning, (where the majority of immigrant workers is involved), food supplies, tourist services, construction, nurses, drivers, textiles and leather.
Contacts have been also established with public authorities dealing with immigrant issues such as the City Hall, Region of Athens, National Social Security, Ministry of Domestic Affairs, Labor Inspectorate etc. Finally, the office has contacted all immigrants' communities supporting them to participate to collective forms of claiming their rights. A good cooperation was also developed with the foreign press and the respective NGO's.
Β) The operation
Since the establishment of the Immigrant's Office more than 3000 persons have been helped directly or through telephone. The telephonic contact was very useful giving the possibility for the information to reach the most distant areas of Greece . Often the immigrants communicate with facsimile or they Email. Through the foreign communities press the Office publicizes informative articles regarding the relevant registration and the immigrants' rights. The service in the Office is in Greek, Bulgarian, English, German and Russian language.
C) Results
The up to now results from our job are positive. A great percentage of immigrants with our support became familiar with the respective to unions and became members of them. Many of them have been paid for their work done and they also got their social security stamps with our mediation in their dispute with their employers avoiding in this way the involvement of the justice. We follow the evolution of the legislation keeping informed the immigrants' through announcements in the newspapers. We support Immigrants' Communities on labor unions activities.
D) Date collection
A great part of the program is the collection of data and their elaboration by the Institute of Labor experts, in order to register the problems of the immigrants and to exert pressure on the state for more favorable settlements for the immigrants and the improvement of their living and working conditions.
In the office a register is kept with the data of the persons served. Besides, an Observatory of Employment for Immigrants has been established within the Institute of Labor www.inegsee.gr . Data are coming from Immigrants' Offices in the various Regional Labor Organizations throughout Greece ( Athens , Piraeus , Volos , Patras, and Thessalonica), the NGO Praxis and the Immigrants' Forum.
E) Immigrants from Bulgaria
80% out of the immigrants who have contacted the Office service are Bulgarians (intra- EU immigrants since 01/01/2007 ). These are the second group after the Albanians. After the admission of Bulgaria and Rumania in the EU, a new wave of immigration has occurred. In any case their citizens are in a transitional phase. Namely, right to work have only those having work permission before the date of admission of their country in the EU. The new arrived persons can have only got a sojourn permission. This situation leads them to the black labor market.
Italian BEST PRACTICES
THE AGREEMENT BETWEEN FGS FAMILIA ( Romania ) AND FENEAL UIL ( Italy )
In the building sector, the growth of a culture that aims to develop quality employment, contractual guarantees and safety has been significantly incremented by cooperation between the Romanian trade union FGS-Familia and Italy 's FENEAL-UIL.
The first bilateral agreement between these two trade-union organisations dates back to May 2002 and is still in force.
In the city of Rome alone, foreign workers registered with the Building Trades Funds number over 25,000, of whom 17,000 are from Romania . All in all, the work-force registered by this sector's bilateral bodies accounts for 44.2% of all workers.
A study carried out by the FENEAL-UIL / CRESME Observatory reveals that from 2006 to 2007, in the workplace safety field the indicators are positive, although not yet good enough: the accident rate per hundred workers has dropped from 5 to 3. And when the number of hours worked is taken as the measurement parameter for accident risk exposure, with reference to annual figures the number of accident-hours per hundred hours worked has decreased from 0.9 in 2006 to 0.8 in 2007.
These results are due also to this cooperation experience which has promoted, amongst other things, to the extensive grass-roots information campaign conducted amongst Romanian-immigrant building workers in Italy on work-site safety and accident prevention measures.
The present information campaign has been conducted thanks to the commitment of CEFME, Rome 's bilateral vocational training body for construction workers, which has opened info-desks in various local centres in the province of Rome to provide adequate information to immigrant workers on accident prevention and work-site health protection.
The trade-unions' sensitisation campaign on work safety topics
Article 1 of the Italian Constitution states that “ Italy is a democratic Republic founded upon Work”. Which means that Work as a right constitutes an absolute value that must be safeguarded for the promotion of the nation's social, cultural and economic growth. But all too often, work can mean sickness, injury, disablement or even death.
In the opinion of the CGIL-CISL-UIL Trade Union Federations, the state of workplace health and safety is still absolutely tragic, with a million injuries and 1300 deaths every year and a shocking toll of occupational diseases which not only affects a considerable proportion of workers both male and female but also entails a total economic cost of around 40 thousand million Euros per year.
Nor can one be content with the slight improvements in the situation recorded from one year to the next. These marginal improvements are not sufficient to enable us to achieve the target set by the European Union, which foresees a 25% reduction in the accidents rate. In Italy , when the figures are related to an equal number of persons, the percentage of accidents is still higher than that of many other EU countries.
Starting from January 2007, on the occasion of a unitary event in Rome attended by over 1500 union officials, the three Trade-Union Organisations launched a grass-roots sensitisation campaign for collective consciousness development on workplace accident prevention and health protection issues. This initiative was further strengthened in 2008 so as to involve, in an extensive and generalised manner, all levels from that of the Federations to the sectorial and local district organisations to company-level representatives and the workers themselves. In particular, attention was focused on small firms with less than 16 employees, where Trade Union presence is scarce and which account for 93% of work accidents, including many with fatal outcomes.
