Irish workers have the least stressful working conditions in Europe, according to the Third European Survey on Working Conditions. Only 12 per cent feel stressed at work.
This is the same result as in 1995, when the survey was last conducted. At the other end of the scale are the Greeks, with 53 per cent complaining of workplace stress, and the Swedes, at 38 per cent. The EU average is 28 per cent.
Reasons for the lower stress rating of Irish workers are hard to identify. The research manager for the survey, Mr Pascal Paoli, suggests it may be linked to longer working hours here. Other Europeans work faster to finish earlier. On top of that, fewer Irish people do repetitive high-speed work - 18 per cent against a 33 per cent EU average - and those who are stressed out are more likely to be diagnosed as suffering from high blood pressure or migraine.
The survey, which covers 21,500 workers in 15 countries, is carried out once every five years by the Dublin-based European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions. It is the most authoritative study of its kind in Europe.
The director of the foundation, Mr Raymond-Pierre Bodin, has found the results dispiriting.
At a time when new technology and the move to a post-industrial, knowledge-based society should mean Europe's workers are leaving the satanic mills behind, more of them are suffering from backache (38 per cent) than five years ago. In fact backache is still more prevalent than the new ills of stress (28 per cent) and burn-out (23 per cent). Mr Paoli believes the shorter working week can actually contribute to ill health. "This type of [work] intensity is strongly linked to health disorders and accidents at work."
He says 4 per cent of workers doing high-speed and repetitive work suffer backache, 37 per cent suffer muscular pains in the neck and shoulders, and over 20 per cent limb pains. The respective figures for people who never engage in this work are 19 per cent, 11 per cent and 4 per cent. Some 41 per cent of workers, the highest figure ever, report they have to deal with fluctuating daily work schedules and 19 per cent say working-time flexibility does not fit in with their family and social commitments.
This is the first time "family-friendly" questions have been included, so it will be 2006 before we know if current initiatives at EU and national level for reversing trends and creating "family-friendly" workplaces are effective.
At present flexi-working is driven by market-place forces. Since the last survey in 1995, "the pace of work has become increasingly induced by `market constraints' - external demands from clients, passengers, users, patients, etc - and by work done by colleagues". In response to a multi-answer questionnaire, 67 per cent of workers identify external demand as a key determinant in dictating their pace of work and another 48 per cent identify pressure from colleagues. The respective figures in 1995 were 65 per cent and 41 per cent.
In contrast, traditional factors count for much less. Only 38 per cent of workers identify the pace of work with "direct control" by management (down from 40 per cent in 1995); 31 per cent identified production norms (down from 35 per cent in 1995), and 21 per cent automatic speed of machine or product (down from 23 per cent in 1995).
There is also a rising level of violence and harassment re ported in the workplace. Two per cent of employees reported sexual harassment as a problem (no change since the 1995 survey), while 9 per cent experienced intimidation (up from 8 per cent).
Physical violence is reported by 6 per cent of workers, and for every worker reporting acts of violence perpetrated by other people in the workplace there were two reporting violence from people based outside. The survey also shows that agency workers, many of them immigrants, are more likely to be employed in "painful" or hazardous occupations than permanent employees. Women workers are still worse off than men. Forty-one per cent of them say they take primary responsibility for children and their education. Sixty-three per cent of women take primary responsibility for housework and 64 per cent for cooking. Only 24 per cent of men say they take primary responsibility for children and education, 12 per cent for housework and 13 per cent for cooking
Twenty-six per cent of women workers are on low incomes compared with 9 per cent of men. Only 10 per cent of women workers are on high incomes, compared with 22 per cent of men. In the middle-income bracket percentages tend to even out, but there are 22 men on medium-high incomes for every one woman.