THE NUMBER of workers suffering from stress has increased this year according to a new survey by the TUC.

Three in five workers (58 per cent) now complain of being stressed at work, an increase of two per cent from 2002.

The main reasons cited for this include increased workloads, changes at work, staff cuts, long hours and bullying.

The survey of union safety reps revealed that stress levels vary in workplaces of different sizes and between the public and private sector.

The bigger the workforce the greater the levels of stress. While 58 per cent of workers complained of stress overall, the figure rose to 63 per cent in businesses with over 1,000 employees.

The TUC claims that stress at work costs the UK economy £7billion each year through sick pay, lost production and NHS costs.

It accounts for 6.5 million lost working days. Stress is greater in the public sector, where nearly two thirds (64 per cent) of public sector workers complained of stress at work, compared to less than half (48 per cent) in the private sector.

The TUC said the survey offers little evidence that anything is being done to tackle the main causes of stress at work. The top five causes (cited above) remaining as big a problem in 2004 as they were in the previous survey of 2002.

TUC general secretary Brendan Barber said: "The fact that people are more stressed than ever before is bad news for workers and bad news for business.

"We know that long hours and dense workloads are stressful. We know that workers want a better work/life balance, yet some employers insist on trying to squeeze every last drop of sweat out of their workforce.

"A stressed employee is not a productive employee. "Things like failure to replace staff are bad for workers, their families and the employers' productivity.

"Unless bosses start to seriously tackle stress and the causes of stress then they will continue to lose many days every year to workers off sick and many hours of productivity from their demoralised workforce."