Making the EU a safer place for its working population

Date: 22/04/04

THINK of the wonderful world of work and the issue of health and safety is, of course, of paramount importance.

Indeed, that was the reason the EU set up an agency dedicated to improving health and safety standards for millions of European workers.

Seven years on, however, the Bilbao Agency, as it is commonly known, still finds itself struggling to justify its existence.

This is all the more surprising when one considers that as much as two-thirds of all EU social and employment legislation falls within the field of health and safety.

Even the agency's own director admits, however, that it takes tragic events, such as the recent drowning of 20 Chinese cockle pickers in north- west England, or the 2001 explosion at a chemical plant in Toulouse, which killed 30 people and injured 2,000 others, to really get the issue into the headlines.

Even recent revelations that at least 13 immigrant workers have died in industrial accidents in the race against the clock to build Greece's Olympic venues on time for the summer's sports event failed to grab the public imagination.

The agency hopes to go some way towards addressing this relative indifference with the high-profile launch of a campaign later this month aimed at improving health and safety for the 12 million people who work in Europe's construction industry.

European Parliament President Pat Cox and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern are due to launch the six-month campaign in Dublin on 30 April, the day before the EU expands to take in ten new members.

The initiative, called "Building in Safety", will culminate in a specially-designated European Week for Health and Safety at Work on 18-22 October.

As with EU enlargement, agency Director Hans-Horst Konkolewsky hopes the campaign will lay the foundations for a bright new future for the organization.

"The campaign will be the biggest ever health and safety campaign to take place in Europe," he says. "It is very ambitious and I hope will help emphasize the agency's vital role."

It is the fifth campaign the agency has run (last year it was dangerous substances, the year before, stress), but the first time it has focused on a single, high-risk sector.

Not surprising, says Konkolewsky, as construction is an industry that has to deal with considerable health and safety problems.

The statistics speak for themselves:

• Some 1,300 people die every year in construction accidents. This is equivalent to 13 employees out of every 100,000 and more than twice the average for other sectors, and;
• almost one million building workers have accidents that entail more than three days' loss of work.

The above figures refer only to the current member states. The situation is even worse in accession countries, where the incidence of work- related deaths and absence rate is almost three times higher.

Konkolewsky accepts that raising health and safety standards in these countries will be a challenge.

"The accession countries have already transposed the EU's comprehensive safety and health directives into national legislation.

"The main challenge now is to ensure that these legal standards are converted into real improvements in working conditions," he says.

The agency highlights falls from heights, such as scaffolding, as one of the biggest risks facing construction workers. This is backed by results of a recent inspection of 16,200 building sites across Europe, which revealed a "disturbing" low level of compliance with health and safety regulations.

At 1,510 sites - nearly 10% of all those visited - work had to be stopped due to serious safety breaches.

As well as a high fatality and accident rate, another health and safety factor is the many illnesses associated with the construction sector, specifically noise-related hearing problems, back and upper limb pain, as well as dermatitis and respiratory problems from the handling of dangerous substances.

Then there are those workers, thought to number in the thousands, suffering from - or still to develop - asbestos-related diseases.

Construction is one of Europe's largest industries, with an annual turnover in excess of l900 billion and 12.7 million employees - almost 8% of the EU's total workforce.

Unfortunately, the industry also has one of the worst occupational safety records, something that is estimated to cost business and taxpayers almost *75 billion a year, not to mention the human suffering, says Konkolewsky.

Françoise Murillo, head of the agency's campaigns task force, says lack of compliance is a headache. "Just having the safety laws in place is not enough. It is up to governments to ensure the legislation is enforced at member state level," she said.

"If it [the legislation] was enforced, then many of these deaths and injuries could be prevented."

As the vast majority of construction firms are small- and medium-sized enterprises, usually without the resources and skills to tackle health and safety issues effectively, she says the industry needs to work together more, by pooling expertise and information, including examples of good practice.

But, as countries such as Germany and France have shown, it isn't all doom and gloom.

Germany, for instance, has paved the way in the lowering of exposure to hazardous substances used on asphalt road surfaces by adding "zeolites" to the asphalt mix.

This has not only cut the fumes by up to 50% but has also improved the durability of the road surfaces by somewhere in the region of 60%.

In France, meanwhile, the use of different types of scaffolding has led to a 10% drop in the number of accidents caused by falls.

Konkolewsky, half way through his second term in office, hopes to see similar success stories at the end of this year's campaign.

This will include information packs, awareness-raising posters and leaflets, a multilingual website and "good practice awards" for organizations that have most successfully dealt with health and safety issues.

The agency will coordinate the safety campaign, with the help of its "focal points", or national representations, in each member state as well as in every accession state.

While the internet lies at the heart of the agency's information output, it is through this network of occupational health and safety institutions that it carries out much of its work.

Certainly, the agency has come a long way since Konkolewsky launched it almost single-handedly in September 1996.

"I was given a piece of paper - the agency regulation - and told to get on with it," he recalls.

Back then, the agency was housed in temporary offices adjacent to the landmark that was destined to put the Basque city on the map - Bilbao's Guggenheim Museum.

It had just three staff and an annual budget of only *2 million.

"We had to build it up from scratch," he says. "Looking back, it was a pioneering and very exciting work."

Within six months of its launch, the agency had moved to its present base, Gran Via, the city's main shopping street.

Spread over four floors, it now boasts a 55-strong workforce and an l11m-budget.

According to Konkolewsky, the biggest obstacle in the early days was a general feeling of scepticism about the agency's function, not least from members of the European Parliament.

"We were under a lot of pressure to prove ourselves," he says. "I remember a few days after our launch, the agency's budget was cut from l4m to f2m, because there was thought to be a lack of information about our programme."

Konkolewsky, who worked in the Danish labour ministry before taking up his current post, slowly but surely turned things around to the point where the agency now enjoys more widespread recognition across the EU.

However, he readily admits that all Union agencies still struggle to win people over.

"It would be nice if we had the support of everyone but our job is to explain what we are doing, show that the EU funds are well invested in us and that we're doing a good job," he says.

Much as he enjoys working and living in Spain's Basque country, Konkolewsky also feels agencies such as his can appear remote in being so far away from Brussels policymakers.

"You can feel particularly distant from the European media.

"It isn't easy to get your message across and, while we've had plenty of positive success stories, it sometimes seems as though the only time the mainstream media takes any notice of health and safety issues is when there is a major industrial accident."

Konkolewsky is not blaming the media. "Clearly, we in the health and safety business have got to improve our methods of communication," he adds.

Article considers the work of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work.

http://osha.europa.eu/en http://osha.europa.eu/en

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