Health
5:30 pm AEST October 10 2000
ACTU launches National Stress Free Day
AAP --
Got a headache or backache? Feel constantly tired, anxious or lacking in
energy? Finding it hard to sleep?
These are the symptoms of on-the-job stress that workers will be encouraged
to alleviate during National Stress Free Day tomorrow.
Releasing a draft document: Stop Stress at Work - A Guide for Workers, the
ACTU has recommended workers get together tomorrow and talk about the
issues that contribute to stress in the workplace.
ACTU president Sharan Burrow said stress was a significant health and
safety problem in Australia which was being ignored by employers and
governments at their peril.
According to the Mental Health Foundation of Australia, one in five
Australians suffer from a mental illness.
It is the fourth-biggest health problem in the world and will be the second
by 2020.
Mental illness causes a $5 billion loss of productivity in Australia each
year and $80 billion in the US.
Ms Burrow said the incidence of mental illness was growing as organisations
continued to put more pressure on workers.
"In today's increasingly competitive environment many organisations are
pushing their people to work longer hours to increase productivity," she
said at the launch of Mental Health Week.
"Most often those so-called productivity improvements are brought about by
requiring less people to do more work, to spend longer hours at work and
increasingly ... without an adequate rest break."
Ms Burrow said a 1998 report by the World Health Organisation found stress
at work and stress in life generally were two of the 10 key determinants of
poor health.
In addition, an ACTU national study had found more than one in four people
had taken time off due to stress in the workplace.
And in a survey by personnel consultants Drake International more than 85
per cent of 3,500 businesses agreed their workplaces were stressful.
Ms Burrow said factors contributing to stress included workplace bullying,
growing workloads, excessive surveillance by management and the tension of
balancing work and family life.
She used the Australian finance industry as an example: One million hours
of over-time is worked each week, seventy per cent of those hours are
unpaid and the time could account for 23,000 more full-time jobs.
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