These three letters - MSD - mask the leading cause of occupational illness in Europe. According to a wide European survey on working conditions, 25% of European workers suffer from back pain and 23% from muscular pain. These particularly incapacitating pathologies seriously undermine the physical and psychological health of victims, to say nothing of their economic consequences at both individual and community level. Workers suffering from MSD very often have to change profession or even quit working prematurely.

This brochure presents a summary of the current scientific knowledge of this complex group of pathologies, examines the connection between MSD and changes in the organisation of work and proposes ideas for a necessary trade union mobilisation against this exploding health problem.