Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2004-01-14-Speech-3-316"
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"en.20040114.9.3-316"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, there have indeed been many initiatives, including in the Member States, aimed at stopping harassment and taking preventive action against it. I still recall – as I think we all can – the initiative launched in Germany 30 years ago, which aimed to humanise the working environment and our recent discussion of a communication from the Commission on modernising the organisation of work. We also remember how the Belgian Presidency took an initiative to improve the quality of work, but all that was not enough.
I can understand you when you say, Commissioner, that the Member States assess and evaluate these things differently, but we cannot fail to see that all industrialised nations have the same problem. I agree with Mr Andersson when he says that this is not about the 8% of workers investigated by Eurofound in Dublin – amounting in any case to 12 million employees – but, unfortunately, about the way in which this phenomenon is on the increase and the figures are rising. The fact that people are working under greater pressure in many sectors, including the services sector, makes harassment a bigger and more difficult problem. I therefore agree with all my fellow-members of the Group of the Party of European Socialists on the need for a legal framework. Necessary though they are – I am in agreement with that – awareness campaigns are not enough!
Commissioner, we know how bold you are when it comes to dealing with the inertia of certain Member States. We know that it will be more difficult to submit legislation on this than on such things as a ban on asbestos or protection against noise. We know, too, that many major companies have their own rules already – I know that Volkswagen does, and so do others. There are many of them, but most have nothing yet, and the majority of employers have not yet recognised how many euros they are losing as a result of time lost because workers are off sick, because of reduced motivation, because people become resigned to their lot, because they become less enthusiastic about work or lose their enthusiasm altogether – all of this caused by harassment. The fact is that if employers were to acknowledge this, we would not be having these problems. Since we do, though, we need to create a legal framework, and the protection of workers from occupational hazards is Europe’s responsibility. The task is ours, and we should get on with it."@en1
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