Hard work

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1946: Supplementary food card for heavy workers in the British Occupation Zone : 62.5 g fat

Under heavy work refers to activities, the great physical effort required.

The concept of hard work in labor law has special significance for hardship allowances in current pay , increased entitlement to social benefits and questions of incapacity for work due to excessive stress in the workplace, and occupational safety , because a stressful work environment requires higher safety measures.

To define hard work

There are different approaches to defining the term:

  • An occupational medical definition for physically strenuous activities is, for example: " Heavy physical work is defined as work that requires the simultaneous use of large muscle groups , that is, involves using more than 60% of the skeletal muscle mass." It is also referred to as full-body work. The workload of physical exertion is further subdivided into moderate physical work (such as sawing wood), difficult physical work (construction work), and very difficult physical work (carrying heavy weights).
  • A physiologically measurable definition of the momentary exposure is based on the consumption of oxygen, related to time and body weight, with the definition 1 MET ( metabolic equivalent )  = about 3.6 ml O 2  × kg −1  × min −1 : Heavy work is then 6 –8 METs and heavy work at more than 8 METs.
  • Another common definition comes from times when an adequate supply of food was sometimes problematic. It starts with the work energy turnover . Threshold values ​​are e.g. B. specified in the Austrian Heavy Labor Ordinance. According to the classification by Triebig et al. For men, the energy expenditure for hard work is between 4,200 and 5,700 kJ / shift (13–17 kJ / min) and for women between 4,200 and 5,700 kJ / shift (9–12 kJ / min). That is roughly double the basal metabolic rate, i.e. the need for physical rest without metabolizing food solely for maintaining body functions. If the work energy turnover is higher, the work is considered "very difficult" and should not be allowed from an ergonomic point of view.

In addition, there are regulations for assessing the difficulty of work, which run over the working hours , for example regular working time over the 8 hours per day that is usual today, or irregular or regular night work .

In view of the very individual, among other things, age and gender- dependent work demands on the same loads , one has often gone over to using the heartbeat frequency to assess the workload. Which is then for full body work endurance limit specified by 105-110 / min.

Special regulations

In international use, ISO 11228 defines the lifting, holding, carrying, pulling and pushing of loads. The European standard is EN 1005 .

The key feature method for “lifting and carrying loads” and “pulling and pushing loads” is recognized as a basic method for risk assessment , for example in the sense of the Load Handling Ordinance . The load weighting is determined using the tables separately for men and women. Here, the gender-related differences with regard to body dimensions, physical performance requirements, biomechanical resilience and work-related compensation mechanisms are taken into account.

In Austria, when assigning tasks to employees, employers must take into account their suitability in terms of safety and health ( Section 6 Employee Protection Act ). The Heavy Labor Ordinance and the Hackler Regulation regulate professional activities that count as heavy labor. Affected employees can claim an earlier retirement date.

Others

In 1925 the research center for heavy industrial work was founded in Gelsenkirchen .

literature

  • Heinz Frauendorf: Stress, strain and musculoskeletal findings during heavy physical work; integrative stress study . Ed .: Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health . Economic development NW, Bremerhaven 1997, ISBN 3-89429-863-4 .
  • Gerd Heuchert: diseases of the spine with heavy physical work and whole-body vibrations; Explanations of the new BK numbers 2108, 2109, 2110 and the EC directive 90 269 EEC (lifting and carrying loads) . Economic development NW, Bremerhaven 1993, ISBN 3-929306-04-2 .
  • Roy Martina: Emotional balance. From hard work to effortlessness. The way to inner peace and healing . 3. Edition. Burgrain, Koha 2002, ISBN 3-929512-25-4 (English: Emotional balancing . Translated by Silvia Autenrieth).
  • Adolf Wallichs , Walther Poppelreuter , Carl Arnhold: Labor research in heavy industry . Report on the activities of the research center for heavy industrial work of the United Steelworks AG from May 1925 to May 1929. Verlag Stahleisen, Düsseldorf 1930, DNB  579102971 .
  • Manfred Wannöffel: Heavy work (=  FORUM industrial monument preservation and history culture . Issue 1). Klartext Verlag, 2008, ISSN  1436-7661 , DNB  019443366 , From "Shift in the shaft" to "Working on the chain": Heavy work in Ruhr mining before the end, p. 30-34 .

Individual evidence

  1. a b c Juri Wakula: Kurt Landau (Ed.): Lexikon Arbeitsgestaltung. Best practice in the work process . 1st edition. Ergonomia-Verlag, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-87247-655-5 , physical hard work, p. 745 f .
  2. Walter Rohmert, Joseph Rutenfranz (Ed.): Practical work physiology . Gunther Lehmann (greeting), with contributions by Ernst Haider. 3. rework. Edition. Thieme , Stuttgart / New York 1983, ISBN 3-13-370103-7 .
  3. ↑ Difficulty of work . In: Spectrum of Science (Ed.): Lexicon of Nutrition , read on July 23, 2011.
  4. Gerhard Triebig, Michael Kenntner, Rainer Schiele: Health: Handbook of Theory and Practice. 3., completely reworked. Edition Gentner, Stuttgart 2011, p. 491.
  5. Günther Eissing: Holger Luczak, Walter Volpert (ed.): Manual of ergonomics . With the collaboration of Thomas Müller. Schäffer-Poeschel, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-7910-0755-6 , Energetics, p. 360 .
  6. a b Load handling. Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs , October 23, 2015, accessed on December 15, 2015 .
  7. ^ German statutory accident insurance (ed.): Instructions for use in preventive occupational medicine . July 2009 ( publications.dguv.de [PDF; 688  kB ; accessed on April 2, 2013] BGI / GUV-I 504-46).
  8. Federal Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs and Consumer Protection (Ed.): Brief assessment of manual load handling, lifting, holding, carrying . Vienna September 2013 ( Arbeitsinspektion.gv.at [PDF; 1.8  MB ; accessed on September 19, 2016]).
  9. International Association for Social Security (Ed.): Manual load handling - lifting, holding, carrying, pulling, pushing . Verlag Technik & Information eK, Bochum 2010, ISBN 978-3-941441-57-6 ( PDF; 750 kB (web archive) [accessed on December 8, 2015]).
  10. WorkSaveNB (Ed.): Ergonomics Guidelines for Manual Handling . 2nd Edition. 2010 (English, worksafenb.ca [PDF; 1.5 MB ; accessed on April 2, 2013]).
  11. a b State Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (Ed.): Instructions for the assessment of working conditions when lifting and carrying loads . 4th edition. LV 9. Saarbrücken 2001, ISBN 3-9807775-0-2 ( PDF; 1 MB [accessed December 8, 2015]).
  12. a b State Committee for Occupational Safety and Health (Ed.): Instructions for the assessment of working conditions when pulling and pushing loads . LV 29. Saarbrücken 2002, ISBN 3-936415-25-0 ( PDF; 1.7 MB [accessed December 8, 2015]).
  13. The KIM instrument - key feature method. EU-OSHA , archived from the original on November 6, 2013 ; accessed on September 23, 2019 .
  14. List of professions for women and men with “hard physical labor”. (PDF; 53 kB) Austrian Social Insurance , November 2018, accessed on September 23, 2019 .
  15. d-nb.info research center for heavy industrial work