Workplace Burdens, Occupational Diseases and Invalidity

Workplace stresses, both physical and mental, have an effect on the health of the workforce. Six types of physical work cause about 23 percent of all sick days per year in Austria. Pressures at work also have an effect on employment being terminated due to ill health (for men around 50 percent, for women around 20 percent).Three types of illness seem to be responsible for almost three quarters of people retiring due to ill health. The main cause for muscular skeletal illnesses, which is the main reason that men go into retirement due to ill health, is "hard physical labour" and "vibrations". By simply restricting this kind of work the number of muscular-skeletal illnesses could be reduced by one third, thereby decreasing accordingly the number of people retiring due to ill health. In the medium and long term the number of people leaving the workforce due to illness can only be reduced if pressure at work is tackled in a systematic fashion.