Occupational Accidents of Immigrant Workers in Greece

AbstractThe aim of the present work is to portray the current situation regarding the rate of occupational accidents of immigrant workers in Greece. The location of Greece in the South East corner of the European Union and the Balkans places the country as an entry point of immigrant workers from a large number of countries with a significant portion of them originating from Balkan countries including Albania, Bulgaria and Romania. Historically, immigrant workers exhibit increased occupational accidents compared to the average national rate. In general, in periods of rapid economic growth the rate of occupational accidents may be increased and this was observed in Greece during the ‘90s. Unfortunately, after a period of rapid economic growth the Greek economy collapsed and this created a pressure to reduce labour cost and increase the percentage of short-term hired personnel. Under these conditions, immigrant workers may be frequently employed with lower wages, for short-term periods of time, with some of them been “undeclared” employees. According to the Greek national legislation, all occupational accidents are recorded and reported in the Ministry of Labour. Using these data we observed that in Greece, a significant portion of occupational accidents involve immigrant workers. The international experience on this subject indicates that several factors may contribute for the increased rate of occupational accidents of immigrant workers. For example, immigrant workers frequently are hired on a short-term basis and this can increase the occupational risk especially in the first days or weeks of their work. In fact, the occupational risk of both immigrants and native workers is reduced as work experience is increased. Another contributing factor is that immigrants are usually employed in low-skilled and labour intensive jobs that historically portray high occupational risks. Furthermore, a significant portion maybe immigrants with limited verbal and written Greek language communication skills, increasing in this way the probability of occupational accident occurrence. Possible measures to reduce the occupational risks of immigrant workers include the utilization of human resources management tools such as adequate training, reduced overtime and other health and safety initiative