Abstract:

The activities of the European Union (EU) in regard to occupational health and safety have its legislative foundations in Article 153 of the EU Treaty [1, 4]. In the 28 member states of the EU (EU-28), 2015 recorded over 3.2 million workplace accidents which invoked at least 4 day work leaves and 3,876 deaths. The authors of this analysis present the issue of workplace accidents based on the examination of incidents in large foodstuff plants of the Lodz voivodship i.e. food processing businesses that have been continuously active for the five year period of 2008-2012. The analysis determines the correlations between months, hours, seniority, workstations, and workplace accidents. In the examined five year period (2008-2012), the incidence of workplace accidents in the foodstuff industry rose by 29%. The analysis results indicate that most workplace accidents occur in March, May and July i.e. the months when the foodstuff sector has its most intensive activity. The majority of accidents occurred to people who were employed at a given position for less than a year. The results further indicated that those workplace accidents happened to individuals employed in physical work positions.