Remember the dead, fight for the living!
The International Trade Union Congress has announced that this year’s International Workers’ Memorial Day is focussed on work-related stress.
The UK workforce is experiencing record levels of stress with mental health problems accounting for half of all sickness absence. 22 million days were lost to stress in 2024/25. In the most recent TUC survey, 8 out of 10 safety reps cite stress as the main health and safety concern at work.
Low paid and low status workers tend to experience the highest rates of work-related stress. Work-related stress is particularly acute in the public sector after 16 years of ongoing austerity and pay cuts.
Employers like to treat work-related stress as an individual problem that can be solved (at best) by a token offer of free counselling and wellbeing initiatives or (at worst) by demanding workers simply “toughen up”. But the HSE is clear that stress is caused by the way work is organised. The main causes of work-related stress is our bosses’ incessant demand for more and more work, for less and less reward and the great inequalities of power that exist in working relationships. Left unchecked, the boss’s power at work makes us ill.
According to the latest figures around a million workers are suffering from stress, anxiety or depression. Stress also causes life-threatening heart disease and can signifcantly weaken the immune system. In the most extreme cases, work-related stress leads to suicide. About 10% of all suicides are thought to be work-related: about 600 a year.
The HSE acknowledges that work-related stress can cause or exacerbate suicidal thoughts and feelings but rejects its reporting, investigation and prevention under the Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurences Regulations (RIDDOR. The HSE has a consultation out at the moment on RIDDOR reporting. We can best acknowledge International Workers Memorial Day by demanding the HSE amends RIDDOR to make worker suicide reportable, subject to investigation and ensure employers to take measures to prevent it.
As isolated individuals we are powerless to do anything about stress at work. But through solidarity and organisation at work, through strong unions, we can assert our interests and power over the way work is organised. Only through union organisation can we build a united front against bullying and discrimination, resist unreasonable workload and unnecessary changes, win job security and create a safer and healthier workplace for all.
London Hazards Centre Activists will be joining the Unite event at the Building Workers Statue, Tower Hill from 10:30am on Tuesday 28th April. Join us.
