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23 April, 2001Seminar discusses how to meet the growing challenges posed by stress and burnout.
GLOBAL: Speaking at the IMF/SIF Seminar on Stress and Burnout, taking place in Djurönäset, Sweden, on April 23-24, Mari-Ann Krantz, president of the Swedish non-manual workers' union SIF and president of the IMF Non-Manual Workers' Department, said that among the issues of particular importance for non-manual workers which need to be addressed is the psycho-social working environment for these workers and the ever-increasing proportion of non-manual workers who are on long-term sick leave because of stress and burnout. Organising non-manual workers into trade unions remains a high priority for the trade union agenda.
Krantz believes the IMF Non-Manual Workers' Department has an important role to play when it comes to trade union approaches to the psycho-social working environment for non-manual workers worldwide, as together the group will be enabled to evolve methods which, "even if they do not provide complete solutions, will constitute a shared point of view on how to tackle this problem."
Addressing the seminar for the IMF Secretariat, Anne-Marie Mureau commented that the way work is organised changes considerably when one goes from North to South, however "there are a number of common threads which link the high prevalence of stress and burnout to changes taking place on the labour market, due partly to the effects of economic globalisation. And economic globalisation affects us all."
It was time, she said, to raise the issue of stress in a worldwide context and give it a higher profile. It was necessary to envisage ways and means to meet the challenge posed by this problem. What should the trade union response be and how can it be translated into practical policy-making? Had programmes been developed to help workers, had legislation been passed? There had to be more public awareness of the problem.
Krantz believes the IMF Non-Manual Workers' Department has an important role to play when it comes to trade union approaches to the psycho-social working environment for non-manual workers worldwide, as together the group will be enabled to evolve methods which, "even if they do not provide complete solutions, will constitute a shared point of view on how to tackle this problem."
Addressing the seminar for the IMF Secretariat, Anne-Marie Mureau commented that the way work is organised changes considerably when one goes from North to South, however "there are a number of common threads which link the high prevalence of stress and burnout to changes taking place on the labour market, due partly to the effects of economic globalisation. And economic globalisation affects us all."
It was time, she said, to raise the issue of stress in a worldwide context and give it a higher profile. It was necessary to envisage ways and means to meet the challenge posed by this problem. What should the trade union response be and how can it be translated into practical policy-making? Had programmes been developed to help workers, had legislation been passed? There had to be more public awareness of the problem.