Employees in the parcel services depots – usually temporary workers and often migrant workers – work under excessively difficult physical conditions. For example, people have to lift too heavy, bend over a lot and reach high and deep. The work pace is also high. Incorrect working postures can cause physical strain and damage to health.
This is evident from inspections at 35 depots of the six largest parcel services that the Dutch Labor Inspectorate visited last year. The Labor Inspectorate mainly inspected for physical strain during the manual processing of the packages.
This has been maintained for all six parcel services. They must make temporary short-term and long-term structural adjustments to reduce physical strain.
The Labor Inspectorate demands a total package of improvements from the entire sector. This concerns, for example, improved ergonomic design, the use of aids, agreements on maximum filling height of carts, maximum weights of packages, recognisability of weight classes, task rotation and training in healthy working methods.
Companies in this industry all face the same challenge. Competition in safe and healthy work is undesirable. The inspectorate believes that it would be good if companies established a joint approach to safe and healthy work and made this a standard in an occupational health and safety catalogue, for example.
Through the occupational health and safety catalogue, the Working Conditions Act gives employers and employees the opportunity to determine how they want to comply with the law within their sector. This allows them to take the industry-specific characteristics into account.
(Re)inspections will be carried out next year. If there are no improvements, enforcement action will be taken (again).
Source: www.emerce.nl
