Interview with Jukka Takala

Jukka Takala succeeded Hans-Horst Konkolewsky as director of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work at the end of September. Dr Takala, who has worked in the safety and health field for almost three decades, joined the Agency from the International Labour Organisation where he was director of the Programme on Safety and Health at Work and the Environment (SafeWork).

‘I’m really pleased to be living in Bilbao. It will be a big change after living for more than 20 years in Geneva but my first impressions are really positive,’ says Dr Takala. ‘As well as the professional challenge of the work, I will have to learn about the culture, food and wine of the region. I’m a curious person so I want to learn new things, and also a new language. My Spanish is very, very limited at the moment.’

Dr Takala also hopes to learn some Basque: ‘As a Finnish speaker, the pronunciation of Basque does not sound too difficult. The language interests me.’
 
Annually, more than 150,000 fatalities in the European Union are caused by work-related accidents and diseases. What can the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work do to reduce this terrible toll?
‘The vast majority of work-related fatalities and illnesses are preventable. If you look at the best and worst countries or best and worst companies in various sectors, there’s a big difference in the number of deaths at work. That’s clear evidence that most of those fatalities could be prevented.

‘A key role of the Agency is to raise awareness of workplace risks and, just as importantly, disseminate information on to how to prevent them. Europe’s occupational safety and health challenges are too complex to be tackled by a single organisation, or even a single country. The Agency is able to bring together the best information, insights and thinking in the field from Europe and other parts of the world.’

What are your immediate priorities as you start work at the Agency?
‘We have to build and maintain a preventive safety and health culture that permeates all society. Such a culture must be based on the right to a safe and healthy work environment, on the principle of prevention, and on a systems approach. Safety and health prevention is not a one-off project — it is continuous, systematic work. We also have to enhance EU and Member State safety and health programmes.’

What do you consider are the Agency’s main strength and weakness?
‘Our strong point is that we are free to talk and work with practically anybody, whether it’s governments, employers or workers. Our weakness is that there are many players in this field. We deal with 27 Member States, the European Commission and the European Parliament, thousands of companies and million of workers. To get our message across, especially to the smaller companies, is a big challenge.’

What are the most important lessons about workplace safety and health you learned from your time at the International Labour Organisation’s SafeWork programme?
‘None needs to reinvent the wheel. There are an awful lot of ideas, experiences and examples of good practice around the world that we can learn from. We don’t have to learn everything the hard way or experience all the fatalities ourselves before we can start building a safety and health culture. Another issue is that involving the social partners in a tripartite set-up is vital. It may take more time to involve workers, employers and their organisations but it is a guarantee for success.’

Why are you interested in safety and health at work, and why does it matter?
‘Safety and health is one of the major problems in our workplaces, but it’s an area in which we can make a big difference. It’s a moral and ethical issue, but it’s also about company productivity and competitiveness. And, poor safety and health conditions at work contribute to unemployment, sickness absence, long-term disabilities and early retirement.’

Despite the continued decline in the numbers of agricultural workers, farming continues to have more than its fair share of accidents. What is the problem with European agriculture?
‘Agriculture is a high-risk sector with exposure to a wide range of hazards. Moreover, the enterprises are mainly small, often found in some of the most distant areas of Europe, and typically have a diverse workforce that includes the very young, very old, migrant, and seasonal workers. Often the protection measures are poor or do not exist at all. It’s hard for us to reach them, but we have to find new ways of getting our message across.’

How safe is the Spanish workplace?
‘Spain has a fairly high level of workplace accidents and diseases, but one of the reasons for this is that it has a very comprehensive reporting system. Another point is that agriculture, which is a high-risk sector, is very important in Spain. There’s also a lot of construction, another high-risk occupation, because Spain is a rapidly developing economy. You can’t compare Spain, say, with the UK, which is pretty much a service economy. Better measures are needed for both while not necessarily similar.’

How can the Agency improve safety in the construction sector?
‘We’ve had a number of different campaigns in construction but we still need to put a lot of effort into the sector. You certainly need rules and regulations, but you also need to offer models of good practice and information to the poorer performing Member States and employers. We need to build a health and safety culture in construction. That itself is a much more demanding task due to constantly changing conditions, a large number of contractors and a mobile workforce.

‘We are also looking at how risks may be “designed out” by architects and planners so there are fewer hazards facing the workers once work on site begins.’

How successful was the Agency’s 2005 Europe-wide campaign on work-related noise?
‘Looking from the outside, I think it got a clear message across in all of the 27 Member States. It was a simultaneous effort from governments, industry and workers’ organisations, and that made the message much stronger.’

Migrant workers are often employed in the riskier sectors. How can you improve their health and safety?
‘Clearly, there’s migration from poorer to richer countries and, once there, migrants tend to stay poorer. But there is an economic incentive for migration and we should not deny that this is the case. You cannot simply stop migration.
 
‘Having said that, migrant workers are often over-represented in the so-called “3D jobs” - dirty, dangerous and demanding - and in high-risk sectors such as agriculture, construction, healthcare and transport. Their work is often characterised by uncertainty, poor working conditions and low wages. This is a major problem all over Europe.’

The promotion of workforce mobility is an EU strategic objective. How does the Agency support this objective?                  
‘It’s another challenge for us. We have to reach people who may not be using their mother tongue in their new country or who do not understand safety warning symbols. If we could build a Europe-wide culture of safety and health that would help to look after mobile workers.’
 
Up to 56,000 deaths in the EU can be attributed to hazardous substances at work such as asbestos. What can the Agency do to reduce this figure?
‘This is a key issue for us. We are getting a good picture of accidents from across Europe, but we do not get proper data about the impact of dangerous substances.  We have to improve this information. This is one of the key fact-finding efforts to be followed by the Agency’s Risk Observatory.

‘The elimination of exposure is the answer for any dangerous substance, whether it is asbestos, passive smoking at work or carbon monoxide from traffic. Legislation dealing with asbestos was passed in the 1970s, and since 2005 there has been a general ban on the production and marketing of asbestos. An EU-wide campaign is currently focussing on the demolition, maintenance, removal and disposal of asbestos-containing products. This “management” of the existing asbestos in place will be a long-lasting task’

How can companies be persuaded that money spent on safety and health is an investment, and not just another cost to be avoided?
‘Of course, companies should protect their workers for legal and ethical reasons. However, demonstrating a business case can help them go beyond basic legal requirements. Bigger companies have already identified safety and health as a key business issue - those Member States that have the best conditions of work also have the highest productivity. The challenge for us is to get the smaller companies to adopt the same measures. We have to convince them that in the long run competitiveness depends on a motivated, healthy workforce.’

The Agency has set up a Risk Observatory to anticipate ‘new and emerging risks’. What are the risks that most need its attention?
‘The main principle of the Agency is to put prevention first. Evidence from one place can become a method of prevention in another, and that’s why we have a Risk Observatory.

‘But the observatory doesn’t only look at known problems such as accidents and dangerous substances, it also identifies potential problems such as avian flu or emerging technologies such as nanoscience. The latter could be beneficial for society and industry but, since its development outpaces our understanding of the implications for occupational safety and health, it may pose new hazards to workers.’

How can the Agency keep an ageing workforce safe and healthy?
‘We have to look at the whole lifetime of the working population and ways to keep people working healthily until retirement age. In my own country, 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.’

Eighteen to 24-year-olds are at least 50% more likely to have a non-fatal accident in the workplace than older workers. What is the Agency’s Safe Start campaign for young people in 2006 is doing to help?
‘We all share responsibility for protecting young people at work. Employers are legally responsible for the health and safety of their workers. But young people themselves have responsibilities as well as rights, and there’s more they can be doing to make sure that they and their colleagues stay safe. But this is also an issue for parents, for health and safety professionals like us and for the education community.’

What plans do you have for the European Week for Safety and Health at Work in October 2006?
‘The high point of the Safe Start campaign is the European Week for Safety and Health at Work from 23 to 27 October, which is an annual series of events on a health and safety theme. We’re encouraging schools and colleges - as well as businesses and other organisations - to get involved.’

Musculoskeletal disorders are a major work-related problem. What is the Agency doing to tackle this issue?