Chronic diseases as predictors of labour market attachment after participation in subsidised re-employment programme: a 6-year follow-up study.

BACKGROUND: Little is known about the work patterns of re-employed people. We investigated the labour market attachment trajectories of re-employed people and assessed the influence of chronic diseases on these trajectories. METHODS: The study was based on register data of 18 944 people (aged 18-60 years) who participated in a subsidised re-employment programme in Finland. Latent class growth analysis with zero-inflated Poisson was used to model the labour market attachment trajectories over a 6-year follow-up time. Multinomial logistic regression was used to examine the associations between chronic diseases and labour market attachment trajectories, adjusting for age, gender, educational level, size of town and calendar year in subsidised re-employment programme. RESULTS: We identified four distinct labour market attachment trajectories, namely: strengthening (a relatively stable attachment throughout the follow-up time; 77%), delayed (initial weak attachment increasing later; 6%), leavers (attachment declined with time; 10%) and none-attached (weak attachment throughout the study period; 7%). We found that severe mental problems strongly increased the likelihood of belonging in the leavers (OR 3.61; 95% CI 2.23 to 5.37) and none-attached (OR 3.41; 95% CI 1.91 to 6.10) trajectories, while chronic hypertension was associated with none-attached (OR 1.37; 95% CI 1.06 to 1.77) trajectory. The associations between other chronic diseases (diabetes, heart disease, asthma and arthritics) and labour market attachment trajectories were less evident. CONCLUSIONS: Re-employed people appear to follow distinct labour market attachment trajectories over time. Having chronic diseases, especially mental disorders appear to increase the risk for relatively poor labour market attachment.

Perceived Working Conditions and Sickness Absence - A Four-year Follow-up in the Food Industry.

OBJECTIVES: To analyze the association between changes in perceived physical and psychosocial working conditions and change of sickness absence days in younger and older (< 50 and ≥ 50 years) food industry employees. METHODS: This was a follow up study of 679 employees, who completed working conditions survey questionnaires in 2005 and 2009 and for whom the requisite sickness absence data were available for the years 2004 and 2008. RESULTS: Sickness absence increased and working conditions improved during follow-up. However, the change of increased sickness absence days were associated with the change of increased poor working postures and the change of deteriorated team spirit and reactivity (especially among < 50 years). No other changes in working conditions were associated with the changes in sickness absence. CONCLUSION: Sickness absence is affected by many factors other than working conditions. Nevertheless, according to this study improving team spirit and reactivity and preventing poor working postures are important in decreasing sickness absence.