From 20 to 22 February 2025 took place in Athens / Greece a seminar about “An (almost) unsolvable problem: work accidents and occupational diseases. How do we protect the health of the workers?”, organized by IFES (Institutul de Formare Economică şi Socială), in cooperation with DAKE (Dimokratiki Anexartiti Kinisi Ergazomenon ), under the coordination of EZA network secretariat. The seminar was funded by the European Union.
The seminar referred to a permanent topic of the social dialogue. With many important results over time, but without a decisive impact on the figures in the statistics: work accidents, consequences on workers' health, even deaths.
When it’s about health at work and occupational diseases, the topic is about a lot of suffering, a most often serious impact on the lives of workers and their families, it also means dysfunctions in the economic life of companies. Very serious aspects that should motivate everybody concerned to persevere in acting for a better situation. An information about the latest research and studies in the field of safety and health at work, a discussion about the objectives, tools and achievements of the EU OHSA campaign for healthy workplaces, an analysis of the role of technology and artificial intelligence in increasing safety and health at work, but also an assessment of the role and results of the trade unions' activity in this field are the main objectives of this project
The seminar was a good opportunity to examine statistics, legal provisions and practical methods of verifying how regulations in the field of health and safety at work are respected. It was emphasized that the number of accidents and work incidents in the member countries of the European Union is very high. Interventions were heard from the authorities in the field, from trade union leaders but also from workers. Several fields of activity were addressed from several countries.
The seminar goal was to formulate ideas that bring up to date the challenges that workers have at work, the modern tools by which safety and health at work (wherever it may be) can be improved. As premises of a social dialogue with better results.
The seminar was attended by 60 representatives of workers’ organisations from Bulgaria, Spain, France, Greece, Republic of Moldavia, Portugal, Germany and Romania.
The topics considered during the seminar were:
1. An (almost) unsolvable problem: work accidents and occupational diseases
-The European and National OHS system. Workers in Greece are in Danger. The Trade Unions’ proposals.
-The state of health at work in Romania
-The state of health at work in Bulgaria
-The actions of the Greek Ministry of Labor and Social Security
-Presentation of the Greek Institute of Labor’s survey: «Work, stress, burnout as a basic parameter of job quality»
Promoting workers’ safety and health as a fundamental right under the European Pillar of Social Rights
Presentation and report of the activity of the international working group organized between October 2024 – February 2025, coordinated by CFTL.
Health and safety of workers at work in various sectors of activity
-In the banking and insurance sector in Serbia
-In the healthcare sector in Romania
-In the mining and energy production sector in Romania
-In the police in Romania
How to integrate workers with chronic and/or occupational diseases into the workplace.
The role of social dialogue in protecting health and safety at work.
-Practical tools at the disposal of social partners for the prevention of occupational diseases and accidents
-Round table under the topic “Work-related accidents and illnesses: an unsolvable problem? How unions can contribute to eliminating accidents at work”
Conclusions
The implication of the trade union organizations must be coherent and well prepared. With their own experts in cooperation with the authorities, the message for safeguarding the health at the workplace must be delivered on the grassroots level. The message must be clear, easy to be understood by every worker.
The education for the personal safeguarding health and safety must begin at school.
The authorities must be better organized in informing and watching the effective application of the law.’
The procedure of professional diseases must be improved. Not all the situation are reported accordingly and this make detorsion on the statistics and the survey of the evolution of the work related illnesses and accidents.
A number of participants at the seminar expressed their interest in the continuation of the work on this extremely important topic. As a concrete example, it was taken a decision to go further with the working group coordinated by the Portugues EZA member in the project year 2024-2025.