GENEVA (ILO News) - In addition to rising crime, violence, accidents and terror attacks, firefighters, police, paramedics and others in the public emergency sector in many countries are increasingly facing new challenges as a result of deteriorating working conditions, according to a new report ^* by the International Labour Office (ILO).

The report to the ILO Joint Meeting on Public Emergency Services: Social Dialogue in a Changing Environment , which opens on 27 January 2003 in Geneva, says the rising level of crime, accidents, false alarms and terror acts, along with demographic factors, is placing new and additional demands on workers in the sector. For example, the report notes that fire brigades in New Zealand responded to one-third more incidents over a two-year period.

At the same time, public emergency sector workers must often contend with long working hours, a shrinking workforce and, in many countries, a lack of fundamental workplace rights including the right to strike, the report says.

The study and the meeting reflect new attention being focused on public emergency services in the wake of attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York in September 2001 which killed over 400 firefighters and police officers. The ILO is examining the employment situation in this sector for the first time since a similar ILO meeting on the conditions of work of firefighters took place in 1990.

The ILO report says employment in the sector is increasing slowly and is only keeping pace with rising demand in a few countries worldwide. The situation is particularly favourable in the United States where expenditure for police protection has risen by 260 per cent between 1982 and 1999, while federal expenditure increased nearly six times. As a result the number of police employed in the U.S. rose from 724,000 to 1,017,922 during this period.

In European countries, on the other hand, budgets and employment are being constrained. A fire service platoon in Germany which used to have 22 staff has now been reduced to between eight and 12. In the Greater London area of the UK, some 1,300 jobs in the fire services were reported to have been cut between 1980 and 1999, and the actual strength in the services has consistently been kept below the number of established posts in recent years.

At the other end, the report identifies a country like Mali where one firefighter serves 33,435 inhabitants. In European countries, there is on average one firefighter for every 1,000-1,200 inhabitants.

The report also says that PES workers are increasingly required to work odd and irregular hours to cope with the growing number of emergencies. Again, in the United States, the average hours of work of firefighters is more than 50 hours per week. Firefighters in Japan have to be on duty 60 hours a week, including the rest period, but only 40 of these are counted as actual work.

Emergency workers face "the most hazardous environment, next to that of military personnel in combat", the report says, often risking their lives to save others. The role of these workers requires constant adjustment to changes in technology and the nature of industrial activities, as well as increasing crime and violence.

According to the report, police officers suffer a much higher rate of suicide than other municipal workers, probably due to stress or the inability to cope with it. In the United States, for example, the suicide ratio among police officers accounted for 13.8 per cent of police deaths as opposed to 3 per cent of deaths by suicide in all other occupations. Suicide rates among police in Rome, Italy, are reportedly twice as high as those of the general population.

In addition to such challenges, the report says that in most countries, emergency service workers find their basic rights at work restricted and are often deprived of coverage under labour laws applicable to other workers, even on such fundamental matters as collective bargaining on safety issues. Many countries prohibit or restrict industrial action by PES on grounds that they are essential to the security of society, according to the study. The report outlines acceptable ILO alternatives in such essential services for the protection of people's lives and safety, including adequate, impartial and speedy conciliation and arbitration procedures to safeguard PES workers' interests. Present mechanisms are considered by many in the sector to be too time consuming and unsatisfactory, the report says.

The five-day ILO meeting will review trends in working conditions; safety and health; human resource planning; coordination structures; the state of social dialogue; and rights at work in these services. It will also elaborate a set of guidelines on the issues raised above and, in particular, best practice for safeguarding the health, rights and interests of emergency workers.

* Public emergency services: Social dialogue in a changing environment , Report for discussion at the Joint Meeting on Public Emergency Services: Social Dialogue in a Changing Environment. Document JMPES/2003, International Labour Office, Geneva, 2003, ISBN 92-2-113399-0. Price: 20 Swiss Francs.