Brussels, 16/07/2001 (Agence Europe) - By adopting the own-initiative report by Jan Andersson (Sweden, PES) on "moral harassment in the workplace", the EU's Committee on Social Affairs and Employment calls on European institutions, Member States and the social partners to pay increased attention to this serious problem in professional life, which is a real danger for human health and often leads to illnesses linked to stress, and to actively combat it. This report will be debated at the mini-session in Brussels in September (19 and 20 September).
Referring to a recent survey by the Dublin Foundation, the parliamentary committee notes that 8% of workers in the EU - or 12 million people - declare that they have been the victims of moral harassment in the workplace in the course of the past twelve months. The frequency of violence and harassment in the workplace varies greatly between Member States (in addition, in some countries few cases have been reported) and differences exist both legally and culturally. The MEPs consider that: 1) the European Commission should produce a Green Paper for March 2002 with a detailed analysis of the situation and, for October 2002, present an action programme based on that analysis; 2) psychological and psycho-socio factors of the working environment should be integrated in the EC's strategy on health and safety at work, as well as in the Green Paper on the social liability of companies (that should be published next week); 3) the Council and Commission should include quantitative indicators concerning harassment at work in the quality indicators for employment to be presented to the Laeken Summit.
Regarding legislative measures, the parliamentary committee considers that in its current form, the framework-directive on health and safety at work is not applicable to harassment in the workplace. It thus calls on the Commission to consider a clarification or extension of the field of application of this framework-directive or else to draft a new directive on combat harassment.