Introduction

Stress has become one of the principal by-products of the modern workplace. Although the economy has begun to pick up over recent months, millions of people remain worried about their jobs and income as a result of the coalition government’s austerity programme and the rise of insecure and precarious work.

Thousands more jobs remain at risk in the public sector as a result of government spending cuts; wages continue to fall behind the cost of living; and many thousands of workers are now employed in insecure work — including (based on conservative estimates) more than half a million workers who are now employed on zero-hours contracts.

Research shows that workers who lose their jobs suffer from stress and are at serious risk of mental health problems such as depression. For those workers left behind the knowledge that heavy cuts are still to come can also have tangible effects on their well-being. In February 2014, Capita, a company that provides employee support to more than 800 companies, said the number of calls they received regarding work-related stress had risen by around 10% in the last year and were continuing to rise. Restructuring and redundancies were a common theme.

General union Unite points out that employers often attribute stress to individual problems caused by factors outside work and normal day-to-day pressures, such as domestic and family problems, difficulties with transport, health, or even noisy neighbours. But work is still one of the main causes of stress and can intensify any problems caused by personal factors.

There is official guidance on tackling work-related stress, including the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) Stress Management Standards, but such advice can often tend to accept the existing balance of power in the workplace, allowing management the power to dictate the pace and practices of the labour process.

There is also a tendency for employers to focus on individuals, when in fact collective solutions are needed. The TUC is warning against a new management buzzword, “resilience”, where employers try to make workers more able to withstand stress rather than attacking the root of the problem to make workplaces healthier. This is why a trade union approach, emphasising collective action, is necessary to successfully tackle stress and mental health at work, and the role of trade union reps in this process is central.

Safety reps have a key role to play in ensuring that an employer takes their responsibilities to tackle work-related stress seriously. Dealing with stress shows that health and safety is not divorced from the rest of a union’s industrial activity and can help to improve other aspects of industrial relations and the working environment.

This booklet aims to provide reps with information, advice and guidance written from a trade union perspective together with practical examples of how unions and reps have tackled work-related stress across a range of industrial and service sectors and in a variety of workplaces. The booklet examines:

• the scale of the problem, the causes of stress at work and its consequences, both in financial terms and in terms of ill-health, for organisations and for workers;

• the impact of the coalition government’s austerity policies and public spending cuts on stress and mental health at work, and how unions are taking action to protect workers;

• the law in relation to work-related stress, examining the Health and Safety at Work etc Act 1974, relevant health and safety regulations and the Equality Act 2010, as well as landmark legal decisions and recent case law;

• HSE guidance on tackling stress, particularly the Stress Management Standards; and

• action taken by unions and their representatives to tackle work-related stress from national to workplace level.