Occupational Safety and Health in the Czech Republic

Part IV: Occupational health services

As for monitoring, occupational health services are important, not to determine disease or injury in a worker and to arrange appropriate treatment, or to select for particular work activities, but to verify that controls are in place and working. If controls are adequate the workforce will not be in ill-health because of their work. Occupational safety and health services range from the simple to the complex. At a minimum they usually address the immediate needs of injured or ill employees by providing first aid and response to accidents. More elaborate services may include medical surveillance programmes and provision for in-house medical capability. In addition, some companies are focussing on off-the-job safety and health through employee wellness or employee assistance programmes, especially for alcohol and drug abuse. There are different types of health examinations and different means of ensuring that workers do have health check ups. The aim of this section is to determine what is available in the way of occupational health services at the workplace in the Czech Republic now.

Figure 17. Workplaces of different industries that were missing health examinations

Energy means energy, electricity, gas and water supply

Health examinations at the workplace are common practice in the Czech Republic, being carried out in 91.4%80.6% of the workplaces surveyed. They were more common in primary production and manufacturing workplaces than in construction, energy and services (See figure 17).

The biggest offenders were workplaces in the retail and wholesale industry, where fully 40% of the workplaces did not carry out any health examinations. In research and development, 33% of the workplaces failed to provide health examinations, 22% in hotels and catering, 19% in education, and 17.4% in the energy, electricity, gas and water supply industries. On the other hand, all workplaces employing more than 500 people provided health examinations. This figure goes down to 87% of those employing less than 50 people.

All workplaces where health examinations were conducted had pre-employment checkups, whereas checkups for workers on leaving the company took place in only 50% of the units surveyed - a case of relinquishing responsibility once a worker leaves a company? Continuing periodic health examinations are advisable for some work-related diseases and injuries and exposures known to be associated with disease, including those with long latency periods..

Figure 18. Workplaces where certain occupational health measures were conducted when the health examination was carried out by different health professionals

Usually, health examinations were carried out by a company doctor or nurse (in 54.7% of cases) and/or by a private health professional (in 52.3%). Health examinations carried out by a union doctor or nurse were not common (4.9%), and took place mainly in mining and quarrying. Occupational health services for a group of undertakings conducted the examinations in 23.6% of the workplaces surveyed.

Private health professionals who conducted the health examinations were less likely to check the general hygiene of the workplace or advise workers on health issues than were company doctors or nurses or occupational health services for a group of undertakings (See figure 18).

37.5% of the respondents said that improvements were made to the workplace after the results of health examinations. 30.4% said that improvements were not made and 32.1% did not know if improvements were made or not. Transferring the worker to another job after a health examination was common, with 64.5% of the respondents saying that individual workers were sometimes transferred, and 15.8% that workers were sometimes fired after health examinations.

Figure 19. Workplaces of different industries where workers were sometimes fired or transferred to other jobs after the health examination

Energy means energy, electricity, gas and water supply

Firing was more common in public-owned enterprises than in other property forms: in 21% of the public-owned enterprises, workers were sometimes fired after health examinations. In workplaces which belonged to a company that was foreign-owned to some degree firing was less common than average. The survey found that in primary production workplaces, both firing (in 27.5%) and transferring to other jobs (in 88.6%) were much more common than in other industries (See figure 19).

Results of health examinations were given to the worker concerned in 78.2% of the workplaces surveyed, but to the union in only 16.1% of the workplaces. In 8% of the workplaces, results were not given to the worker concerned, and in 13.8% of the cases the respondents did not know. However, there were some industries where the percentage of workplaces where the results were not given to the worker concerned was much higher. For example, 27.8% of the workplaces in the hotel and catering industry did not give health examination results to individual workers (although 50% of the respondents in this sector could not say if the results were given to the person concerned). Likewise, in business services and education, the percentage of workplaces where people did not receive their results was high.

Concerning the provision of health examination results to the union, the percentage was much higher than the 16.1% mentioned above in transport and communications (27.6%), food, beverages and tobacco (25%), research and development (22.2%) and construction (21.9%).

In 72% of the workplaces, workers were tested for alcohol and in 5% for illegal drugs. Alcohol and substance abuse is a safety, health and productivity issue and as such should be an important part of trade union concerns.

71.8% of the companies kept health records but only 3.1% of the unions did. The percentage for union records is surprisingly low considering that in 12.3% of the workplaces health examination results and the results of workplace monitoring were given to the union. Record keeping by companies was much lower in the service sector, with only 55% of workplaces in the wholesale and retail trade keeping records, 55.6% in hotel and catering, and 44% in research and development.

According to the respondents, 82% of the workplaces reported work-related injuries, and 66.9% work-related illnesses to the authorities at the national level. (The questionnaire did not distinguish between those injuries and diseases which had to be reported and other injuries and diseases.) 81.8% of the respondents said that their union had access to this information. Again, reporting to the authorities was much below these figures in the wholesale and retail trade and hotel and catering services. It was also below this in agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing.


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