The head of the European Agency for Safety and He alth tells Seán Mac Connellin Bilbao that a broader definition of a work-related fatality will give workers more protection.
The social partners have been urged to widen the definition of work-related deaths by the head of the European Agency for Safety and Health.
Dr Jukka Takala said there was evidence that the work-related mortality rate was far higher than that recorded in official statistics.
A move by the Goverment, employers and unions to widen the definition of what constituted a work-related fatality would give more protection to workers, he said.
The Finnish agency director said it was his belief that a worker dying of a heart attack on his or her way to work should be categorised as a work-related death, which was not currently the case.
He believed deaths from cancers and stress-related diseases and hazardous substances, which occurred outside the workplace, could also be attributed to the workplace and should be treated as such.
"It is time governments, including your own, looked deeply at these problems and legislate to protect their workforces and look at the real causes of death and not just at work," he said.
Speaking to The Irish Times at his agency's headquarters in Bilbao, Spain, Dr Takala said falling birth rates in Europe meant there would be fewer workers in the future and much had to be done to ensure the health and wellbeing of workforces.
The make-up of the EU's workforce was changing in a number of ways, he said. It was ageing, there was an increasing proportion of women and also of migrant workers, more temporary and part-time workers, and there was increasing use of technology.
"We have to look at the whole lifetime of the working population and ways to keep people working healthily until retirement age," he said. "In Finland, the average real retirement age is 59, rather than the legal age of 65 - that's pretty much the case in every European country. It's the result of a combination of accidents, diseases, musculoskeletal disorders and stress-related problems at work."
He said that while 7,460 fatalities had been caused by accidents at work in the EU 27, research showed that 167,000 fatalities can be attributed to work-related accident and diseases. Workers and employers needed to be made aware of the risks that they faced, and how to manage them. But health and safety bodies in the individual EU member states could not do this alone and this was why the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work was set up in 1996, he said.
The agency has a Brussels bureau which is headed by Irishwoman Brenda O'Brien, whose function is to raise awareness of the problems encountered in Europe's workplaces.
Speaking of the most dangerous employment sectors in the EU - agriculture and construction - Dr Takala said he was pleased with the progress being made in Ireland in both of these areas but problems still remained both in the Republic and the rest of Europe.
He said the fatal accident rate in agriculture for the old EU 15 member States was 12.6 per 100,000 workers; for accidents resulting in more than three days' absence, the rate was more than 6,000 per 100,000 workers.
"These are some of the highest rates for any industry. In the old member states just 4 per cent of the working population work in agriculture, but in the new member states it is 13.4 per cent," he said.
In construction, he said about 1,300 workers were killed in the EU each year, equivalent to 13 employees out of every 100,000 - more than twice the average of other sectors. Many of those killed in accidents were migrant workers.
He said many issues had to be addressed in relation to workforces as agency research had shown. For instance, lower back disorders affected 60-90 per cent of people at some point in their life; at any one time, 15-42 per cent were affected. More than one in four workers was affected by work-related stress in the European Union.
Issues like noise levels, he said, needed to be looked at too because an estimated one-third of Europe's workers - more than 60 million people - were exposed to high levels of noise for more than a quarter of their working time.
He said research showed that states which failed to invest in proper occupational health and safety plans ended up spending a far higher proportion of GDP on work-related injury and illness.
"The International Labour Organisation estimates that work-related illness and accidents cost up to 10 per cent of GDP in Latin America, compared with just 2.6 per cent to 3.8 per cent in the EU," he said.
"There is a vast amount of evidence to show that if nothing else it is good business practice to look after the workforce properly. It makes sound economic sense apart from the moral and ethical reasons why this should happen."