TUC calls for action on rehabilitation

The TUC has warned that government plans to cut the sickness absence due to workplace injury and illness by 30% by 2010 have no chance of success without a major expansion in the rehabilitation services available to victims.

Every year 25,000 people leave work altogether because of work-related injury or illness and tens of thousands of days of work are lost. But the biennial survey of safety reps 2000 showed that still only 23% of employers provide access to rehabilitation for injured workers. The TUC is calling on the government to make it a legal requirement that employers develop a rehabilitation policy.

Launching a TUC report on rehabilitation, Restoring to health, returning to work, at a conference organised by the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, TUC senior policy officer Owen Tudor said: "Employers have a legal duty to prevent injury and illness and a legal duty to pay compensation where they fail, but no duty to get the people they injure back to work and back to fitness. Rehabilitation is the missing link."

Restoring to health, returning to work, a report of three conferences held by the TUC on rehabilitation, is available from the TUC, Congress House, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3LS, price £25.00, or £5.00 for unions.