Class 6 - core Reading Exercise

OSH - Occupational safety and health

Based on your reading of the text, please consider the following questions:

1. In what ways do the authors think that changing work environments are impacting
upon health and safety in the workplace?

2.1. Flexible working time and over-time work

Changes in working time and employment relationships may lead to psychological and
behavioural disorders. For example, stress, burnout, depression, excessive alcohol use, and
smoking (Quinlan, 2007; EASHW, 2007a; Cooper, 2006; Antoniou et al., 2003).

Worth mentioning is that the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has listed
the disruption of circadian rhythms caused by work on rotating shifts, as a ‘‘probable
human carcinogen”

long working hours are considered to be a major stressor.

Worth mentioning is that in Japan, the ‘‘Karoshi syndrome” has been related to deaths or
severe cardiovascular disorders caused by long working hours.

Irregular working hours and over-time work may result in chronic fatigue. This may be
attributed to limited resting time between shifts and to occupational stress

2.2. Types of employment contracts – organizational flexibility – job insecurity

Job insecurity related to changes in the work environment is correlated with higher
frequency of occupational accidents (Kirschenbaum et al., 2000; Caruso, 2006; Rajaratnam
and Arendt, 2001; Nag and Patel, 1998; Akerstedt et al., 2002; Lilley et al., 2002) and also
with mental, emotional and physical exhaustion

There is evidence that consequences of job insecurity may be as detrimental as job loss
itself.

For example, references report that in construction industry workers received bonus
payments for extra productivity while they may have worked unsafely (see for example in:
Choudhry and Fang (2008), Sawacha et al. (1999)).

2.3. Public safety Changes in the work environment may contribute to a greater probability
of occurrence of major accidents in major hazards plants affecting workers and the public,
as well as the environment (Zwetsloot and Hale, 2002; Zwetsloot et al., 2007; Uth and
Wiese, 2004; Attwood et al., 2006; Hofmann et al., 1995; Rasmussen, 1997; Papadopoulos,
2003; Georgiadou, 2001).
2.4. Women, young and elderly workers Women and young people represent a significant
percentage of the workforce working under flexible conditions, i.e. flexible working
schedules and working contracts (EFILWC, 2002b)

2.5. Social consequences Apart from occupational health and safety hazards, poor living
environment and unsatisfactory housing conditions are well documented to have harmful
effects on workers’ health and well-being (Papazoglou and Michaliou, in press; Nylen et al.,
2001; Barten et al., 2008).

2. What health and safety challenges are posed by recent changes in workplace
practices?

Several measures have been suggested in order to reduce harmful effects on workers
from flexible regimes. For example, the provision of social support is intended to
decrease job insecurity.

‘‘flexicurity”

One can easily comprehend that difficulty in assessing workers exposure can grow in the
event of instable working hours. This pattern of work ‘‘has no rules”, especially in the
context of the ‘‘deregulation” of working hours. Likewise the complexity of this problem
may grow due to workers’ mobility between workplaces and tasks, which entails exposure
to different hazards each time.

As it was mentioned in the previous section, the general problem of underreporting

occupational accidents, ‘‘near misses” and occupational diseases becomes worse in a
changing work environment due to time pressure, job insecurity, presence of ‘‘undeclared”
workers, immigrants at the workplace, lack of medical surveillance for those workers etc.

Under the dominant relations of production, the main criterion used in the field of
occupational risk management and decision making is the comparison between the costs of
risk prevention and the costs of occupational accidents and diseases (Papadopoulos, 2000;
Chatzis, 2004).

Outsourcing to subcontractors of dangerous work tasks.

3. What suggestions do the authors put forward for dealing with safety risks in the
twenty first century?

Using the criterion that health and safety must be approached as ‘‘the promotion and
maintenance at the highest degree of the physical, mental and social well-being of workers”
and not only as the retention of their work ability.