In Europe, important steps forward for health and safety at work have already been made through the EU strategic framework on health and safety at work 2021-2027, the ‘Healthy Workplaces’ awareness raising campaigns of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, or the recently adopted fourth revision of the EU directive 27/2004 on the protection of workers from risks related to exposure to carcinogens or mutagens at work. Against this background, data from 2018 reveals that there are still approximately 3,300 fatal accidents and 3.1 million non-fatal accidents taking place every year in the EU-27. Moreover, as the Covid pandemic revealed, many essential workers have suffered disproportionally from mental health issues and burnout. According to CESI, health is one of the most important assets for anyone and protecting workers’ safety should be a priority in any workplace. For this reason CESI advocates for:

1. more efforts, via the Framework Directive on the safety and health of workers, by both workers and employers to protect the wellbeing of the workforce. This should be the premise of each work relationship; it should be effectively safeguarded by independent bodies, such as labour inspectorates.
2. mitigating the risks associated in the workforce through training and continuous investments in the workforce, most notably in the areas of up-skilling, infrastructure and personal protective equipment.
3. better combatting psychosocial risks, violence and harassment at work and making mental health a priority in the workplace as an integral part of the post-Covid pandemic recovery. Many stress-induced diseases could be more easily prevented if early detection, care at initial stages and a better understanding of their realities would be shared in the workplace.

Klaus Heeger, CESI’s Secretary-General, declared: “Let’s learn from the Covid pandemic and together with employers and members states, let’s make the necessary changes and investments at European level so that we better avoid the risk of work-relates injuries or diseases and save lives and preserve the well-being of our workforce.”

Esther Reyes, President of CESI’s Expert Commission ‘Health Services’ and member of CESI Spanish nurses union member SATSE said: “The severe mental consequences of the pandemic on the health workforce are still impacting the lives and performance of medical professionals in particular: We need to do more to address them and to support those whose health and safety was put at risk during the Covid times, to ensure their full recovery for the health and safety of us all.”