Recycling workers miss fewer days due to physical injuries

However, despite taking fewer days off, those waste and recycling workers suffering from the injuries are likely to be off work for longer than other council workers.

The absence figures are contained in a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) document, entitled Review of sickness absence data in the waste and recycling industry, which looks at data from both the private and public sector.

The results seems to deviate from long-running concerns about a higher level of physical stress being placed on collection operatives, which has seen campaigns launched to raise awareness of the impact of their job (see letsrecycle.com story) or the campaign work has had some success, one health and safety expert said.

The HSE document notes that musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) such as back pain, neck pain and joint pain accounted for a higher number of long-term absences among waste and recycling workers than they do for other public sector employees.

The HSE carried out the work to assess the prevalence of ill health in the waste and recycling sector by analysing records from public and private companies. In total 16 local authorities and two private companies responded to requests for data on absences in 2007 and 2008.

The HSE figures found that the main cause of absence for recycling and waste workers was MSD, which accounted for 21.4% of absences in the public sector and 11% in the private sector. However, this was below the average figure for the public sector as a whole recorded in a Local Government Employers (LGE) Absence survey, which was 22.5%.

Long term

In comparison of the impact of the injuries, the LGE study found that 25.9% of long-term absences (those of 20 working days or more) among all public sector employees were due to MSD compared to 42% for waste and recycling employees.

In addition, days absent due to stress among waste and recycling employees were found to be considerably fewer than the average for all public sector employees.

The study highlighted that stress, which was seen as a prominent factor in absences in the LGE survey with it accounting for 22.6% of absences, was only the reason for 4% of public sector and 2% of private sector absences in the waste and recycling sectors.

Absence

Looking at absenteeism as a whole, the HSE indicated that waste and recycling employees in the public sector had an average of 12.8 days absent each year, with 13.2 days on average for employees categorised as “drivers, loaders or operators”.

This was higher than comparative figures from the LGE Absence survey which found there was an average absence of 9.6 days per employee per year across the public sector as a whole. The HSE claimed that employees carrying out waste and recycling activities comprised around 10% of all local authority staff.

In comparison, private sector employees were found to have an average of 7.0 days absent per employee per year, which was only slightly higher than the average of 6.8 days absent per employee per year recorded by the Engineering Employers' Federation sickness absence survey for 2008.

The Environmental Services Association, a trade body for the waste and recycling sector, is currently collating data on absence through sickness and occupational health risks from data for 2007, which is intended to offer a view of the trends in the private sector.

Cause

The study was carried out using historical data and was commissioned with the intention of running a three-month short-term study looking at the main issues causing absences in the industry (see letsrecycle.com story).

However, the HSE decided not to pursue this avenue due it being uncertain of achieving a representative picture due to the seasonal nature of sick leave (with it being most prominent in January), difficulties for local authorities to collect data such as exact job title and age of employees, and the current varying interpretations of job title and reasons for absence.

The HSE did claim that there were “inconsistencies in methods of recording job roles” and this meant some estimates of absences “may not have been accurate”. In addition, the HSE highlighted that it had not asked for information on the functions of the respondents' sickness pay scheme and explained that this may have affected results.

However, it did state that it expected recording of absences to improve with the implementation in 2010 of a set metric for recording job roles and reasons for absence by advocate body the Waste Industry Safety and Health (WISH) Forum.