“It looks like we no longer can talk about a fall or stabilisation
of the number of workplace related accidents in Norwegian working
life,” says Ingrid Finboe Svendsen, Director of the Norwegian Labour
Inspection Authority.
NLJ’s preliminary figures remain to be controlled and are still not
quite comparable, but they indicate a trend. According to Norwegian
Labour Inspection Authority statistics 48 people died performing paid
work in 2013 compared to 37 the year before. The figures for Sweden
were only 33 compared to 45 in 2012 and 57 in 2011. In Denmark the
number of deaths reached 36 last year compared to 40 people in 2012 and
40 in 2011.
Statistics from Finland will not be ready before March-April, but
the preliminary figure is 19 deaths. Head of workplace safety at the
Federation of Accident Insurance Institutions, Janne Syvä-Aho,
still reckons the final figure to be closer to 25-30 deaths. The
numbers for 2012 and 2011 were 28 and 26. Deaths during work related
travel are not included in these figures.
According to Syvä-Aho, the differences between the number of fatal
accidents stem first and foremost from different industry structures.
In Finland the three most dangerous sectors are heavy industry,
construction and transport. The primary sector is not included, but it
is in the Norwegian figures. The number of accidents also tend to
follow the economic cycle.
“During a depression there is less manufacturing, construction and
transport.”
Finland has slowly managed to reduce the number of deaths. In 1963
452 people died at work, ten years later the number was 321. In later
years the number has stabilised at around 40-50 deaths with an
additional 200-210 deaths as a result of workplace-related diseases.
There are other reasons besides safety campaigns behind the improved
figures.
“You could imagine that first aid has improved so that people no
longer die like they would have ten years ago. These figures are
difficult to interpret,” says Syvä-Aho.
The annual international World Day for Safety and Health at Work is
coming up — it falls on 28 April every year. The campaign was launched
in 2003 by the ILO, the UN’s agency for labour issues. The ILO
estimates that more than 2.3 million people die because of their work
every year. Out of these 321,000 are pure accidents, while the vast
majority are a result of various work related diseases like cancer,
cardiac and vascular disease or respiratory disease.
A research overview from The Swedish Work Environment Authority
published in 2010 shows that such estimates are still subject to
“considerable degrees of uncertainty”. In only a few cases is it
possible to establish with certainty that an illness is work related.
The researchers still conclude that at least 1,000 deaths a year in
Sweden are work related, many times more than the number of pure
workplace accidents.
