European Union Senior Labour Inspectors Committee (SLIC) Campaign on: "Accidents at Work (AAW)"

In March 2024 the Health & Safety Authority, as a member of the European Union’s Senior Labour Inspectors Committee (SLIC), will launch Ireland’s part of the European Campaign for the Prevention of Accidents at Work. 

​This 2023-2024 SLIC campaign, is focused on preventing accidents at work and aims to reinforce the culture of accident prevention both in organisations and among workers. The theme of this campaign is "Improving the prevention of accidents at work" which is aligned with the “Vision Zero” approach to work-related deaths in the European Union.

Accidents at work statistics - There were 3,355 fatal accidents at work in the EU during 2020, a decrease of 53 deaths compared with the year before.

Within the EU, construction, transportation and storage, manufacturing, and agriculture, forestry, and fishing sectors together accounted for almost two-thirds (63.1 %) of all fatal accidents at work and more than two-fifths (44.1 %) of all non-fatal accidents at work in 2020. In 2020, more than one-fifth (21.5 %) of all fatal accidents at work in the EU took place within the construction sector, while manufacturing (15.2 %) had the next highest share. Transportation and storage sector (15.0 %) and agriculture, forestry and fishing (11.4 %) were the only other NACE sections for which double-digit shares of the total number of fatal accidents were recorded.

Aims/objectives of the campaign

• Broadening knowledge on how to carry out the investigation of accidents and deaths at the workplace, in order to identify and address the causes of these accidents and deaths.
• Increasing awareness of the risks related to work-related accidents and injuries, by:
  • providing sector-specific information primarily targeted at small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs);
  • providing guidance for incident investigation procedures;
  • promoting workers and their representatives’ participation in the investigation of work-related accidents and subsequent prevention measures to be adopted;
  • sharing good practices.
• Strengthening enforcement of existing rules and guidelines.

Sectors/ target audiences

The Campaign will be carried out in the following three sectors:

1. Activity sector NACE code Agriculture and forestry Section A 01 and 02
2. Construction Section F 41, 42 and 43
3. Other passenger land transport and Freight transport by road and removal services Section H 49.3 and 49.4

The target audiences of the Campaign are workers, employers, and their representatives in the sectors of activity where the campaign will take place, namely micro, small, and medium sized enterprises (companies with less than 250 workers).

The campaign materials, including useful information documents relating to Incident Investigation and common accident types in the 3 target sectors, can be accessed and downloaded from the European Commission’s CIRCABC public folder.