EU experts and Minister of Labour tackle workplace health and safety risks in Cyprus’ hotels and restaurants

EU-OSHA’s report “Protecting workers in hotels, restaurants and catering” reveals that throughout the EU working conditions in this sector are often difficult with long working hours, shift and seasonal work and physically demanding tasks. Risk factors that workers encounter include carrying of heavy loads, working with dangerous substances and exposure to high levels of noise and smoke. The resulting health problems include musculoskeletal disorders, skin diseases and respiratory problems.

The workforce also faces a large number of psychosocial risks: violence, harassment and discrimination – from customers, colleagues and employers – are commonly encountered by workers in the HORECA sector than others. They are more often faced with intimidation (12% versus 8.5%), physical violence (6.5% versus 3.5%) and unwanted sexual attention (8% versus 2%). Moreover, workers in the HORECA sector experience greater discrimination (10.5% versus 6.5%). Workers in pubs, discotheques, nightclubs and bars are particularly at risk.

EU-OSHA’s report includes excellent examples of successful risk prevention. Effective prevention management involves good risk assessment, worker involvement and training in the successful implementation of prevention measures.

The sector employs a high proportion of relatively unskilled young and migrant workers who often face more unfavourable conditions than native workers. Another EU-OSHA publication ’Working safely in a multicultural HORECA sector’ identifies the main problems they face and provides practical solutions.

EU-OSHA has developed a wide range of material on health and safety in this area, including good practice factsheets which can all be found in a dedicated section of the EU-OSHA website.

Further reading

• Factsheet: ‘Protecting workers in hotels, restaurants and catering’ http://osha.europa.eu/en/publications/factsheets/79/view