Stress and illness rising in UK workplaces

Britons, slaves to some of the longest working hours in the European Union, are suffering growing levels of stress, back strain and other work-related injuries, the country's trade unions said on Friday.

The problem is exacerbated by the failure of nearly half of British employers to carry out adequate assessments of the risks faced by their workers, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) said.

"The top five workplace hazards are all easily preventable, yet too few employers seem to be getting to grips with (them)," TUC general-secretary Brendan Barber said.

Employers hit back, saying the TUC's findings were based on anecdotal and subjective evidence, compiled by the Congress' own safety representatives rather than independent monitors.

"We've had enough of these sort of surveys," said Dr Janet Asherson, head of health and safety at the employers' body, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI).

"We need really to base our policy making decisions on hard facts and medical and scientific evidence," she told Reuters.

The TUC found incidence of stress had risen two percent in the British workplace in the past two years. Complaints of repetitive strain injury (RSI) were up three percent and back strain four percent.

Some 58 percent of employees complained of stress, 40 percent of RSI and 35 percent of back strain.

The CBI questioned the figures, compiled by 4,521 TUC safety representatives at workplaces across the country.

"They are based on self-diagnosis," Asherson said. "We need to have medically validated diagnoses to make sure we are all talking about the same thing."

The TUC found that while over 90 percent of employers carried out regular risk assessments to try to limit workplace illness and accidents - as they are required to do by law - nearly half the assessments were inadequate.

The CBI questioned the TUC's definition of inadequate.

"The view of a (trade union) work and safety representative is very subjective," Asherson said. "At the end of the day, the real test of any risk assessment is whether it is deemed adequate in the eyes of the law."

The CBI could not provide figures of its own to counter those of the unions.

Britain is sometimes viewed as the sweatshop of Europe, with a "long hours culture" more akin to that of the United States than its EU neighbors.

The average fulltime British employee works a 43.7-hour week - longer than in any comparable country in the EU.

Britain has led opposition to a European Commission proposal to tighten an EU law that limits the working week to 48 hours.