The more stressful the workplace, the greater the likelihood that employees will suffer from fatigue, anxiety, headaches, insomnia, dizziness, panic attacks, depression, cardiac disorders, backache and other muscular syndromes, with a resultant rise in workplace injuries and absences.

Fatigue - a common outcome of stress at work, is known to increase the incidence of accidents at work and/or travelling to and from work.

The DIR/AWIRS 1995 survey of Australian workplaces found that 50% of employees experienced increased stress in their jobs, 59% reported increased effort, and 46% increased pace of work.

While national Workers' Compensation figures record that only 4% of total claims for 1994-95 were for "mental disorders", the DIR/AWIRS survey found that 26% of employees had taken time off work for stress in the previous 12 months.

The ACTU survey has found that over 24% of employees have taken time off due to stress at work. Of these, 72% had used ordinary sick leave, 20% had used some form of recreational leave, 4% had used other leave, and only 4% had claimed Workers' Compensation.

Stress claims in the public sector alone cost the nation more than $35 million last year. Workcover NSW recorded a 10% increase in the incidence of stress at work from 1991 to 1995.

Government responses to the increasing numbers of people experiencing stress at work have been to make it more difficult to claim compensation for stress.

Stress causes more than half the headaches that people suffer.

The ACTU survey has found that 73% of people suffer headaches, 70% report continual tiredness, 59% have difficulty sleeping, 66% feel angry, and 61% feel depressed as a result of stress at work.

There is growing confirmation of the role of stress in heart disease, hypertension, sudden death, skin and gastrointestinal and muscular disorders, and diminution of the immune system - leaving people susceptible to diseases including cancer.

From 1990 to 1994, stress claims in the NSW public sector more than quadrupled from 340 to 1,366. The cost of these claims increased almost sevenfold from $5.6 million to $35.7 million.

With an increase from 816 to 1,543, the number of stress claims in the Commonwealth sector nearly doubled over the four years from 1989.90 to 1993.94. Comcare Australia estimates that, if trends continue, the number will increase to 3,283 by 1997/98.

An extensive study by Comcare found that most of the problems presented as occupational stress were primarily associated with human resource management. Despite this, stress is primarily regarded as a workers' compensation issue. This simply medicalises and legalises the problem, creating an antagonistic situation with little incentive for people to look for creative solutions in the workplace.

A survey of stress in 2.500 teachers identified workload, restructuring and feelings of powerlessness and anxiety among the overarching issues. Nearly two thirds of respondents reported implementing new curricula as stressful. Over half the teachers surveyed said that their lack of influence decisions regarding their work was a major cause of stress. Nearly one in five reported a medically diagnosed stress disorder.

The American Institute of Stress reports that between 75% to 90% of visits to doctors are related to stress, 60% to 80% of accidents on the job are related to stress, and 40% of staff turnover is due to stress at work.

In 1996, the British Institute of Management reported "an estimated 270,000 people take time off work every day because of work-related stress. This represents a cumulative cost in terms of sick pay, lost production and NHS charges of seven billion pounds annually.

A Health and Safety Executive supplement to the 1990 Labour Force Survey in Britain, found an estimated 183,000 workers believed they had suffered from work-related stress, depression and anxiety in the preceding year, and 105,000 believed that the condition was caused, not merely made worse, by work.

The total cost to the British economy of mental health and stress problems is estimated at five billion pounds a year - equal to total annual losses through theft and many, many times the cost of strikes.

A 1992 survey of company managers and directors conducted by the British mental health charity MND, found that 63% believed that problems at work caused as much or more stress for their workforce as personal problems.

A 1993 report by the Warwick Business School’s Industrial Relations Research Unit, found hospital staff "privately cite stress as a reason for absence from work, but disguise it as something else to their employers to avoid the risk of damaging their careers".

Those making it to work are not necessarily fit for the job. A June 1995 survey by the British Institute of Personal and Development found three quarters of employees feel obliged to turn up even when they are ill.

In Sweden, a new legal provision outlaws "offensive discrimination at work". In Germany, campaigns on "mobbing" and "pyschoterror am arbeitsplatz" - psychoterror at the workplace - have been running for some time.