Mobile applications and socio-sexual networking websites are used by outreach workers to respond synchronously to questions and provide information, resources, and referrals on sexual health and STI/HIV prevention, testing, and care to gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men. This exploratory study examined ethical issues identified by online outreach workers who conduct online sexual health outreach for GB2M. Semi-structured individual interviews were conducted between November 2013 and April 2014 with online providers and managers to explore (...) the benefits, challenges, and ethical implications of delivering online outreach services in Ontario, Canada. Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim. Thematic analyses were conducted, and member-checking, analyses by multiple coders, and peer debriefing supported validity and reliability. Four themes emerged on the ethical queries of providing online sexual health outreach for GB2M: managing personal and professional boundaries with clients; disclosing personal or identifiable information to clients; maintaining client confidentiality and anonymity; and security and data storage measures of online information. Participants illustrated familiarity with potential ethical challenges, and discussed ways in which they seek to mitigate and prevent ethical conflict. Implications of this analysis for outreach workers, researchers, bioethicists, and policy-makers are to: understand ethical complexities associated with online HIV prevention and outreach for GB2M; foster dialogue to recognize and address potential ethical conflict; and identify competencies and skills to mitigate risk and promote responsive and accessible online HIV outreach. (shrink)

Research on the `meaning of work', especially concerning the Global South, is scarce. This paper aims to reduce this scarcity by applying critical realist meta-theory to the work and life history interviews of workers in Sri Lanka. A key discovery is that finding meaning in life through work is a personal emergent power and that, as such, it explains the way that individuals consciously manoeuvre their life-journeys towards a desired end - a modus vivendi - in a dialectic which (...) involves both emergent structural change (morphogenesis) and agency. This paper also reveals that Margaret Archer's theory of reflexivity, based on interviews with Western individuals, cannot be transferred rigidly to the reflexivity of Global South individuals, and therefore more work on reflexivity within this context is required. This paper therefore makes a theoretical contribution to the existing meaning of work scholarship, and it extends existing understandings of the concepts of reflexivity and emergence. (shrink)

This paper asks whether workers’ experience of working with new technologies and workers’ perceived threats of new technologies are associated with expected well-being. Using survey data for 25 OECD countries we find that both experiences of new technologies and threats of new technologies are associated with more concern about expected well-being. Controlling for the negative experiences of COVID-19 on workers and their macroeconomic outlook both mitigate these findings, but workers with negative experiences of working alongside and (...) with new technologies still report lower expected well-being. (shrink)

Recent scholarship on gender and the state suggests that women's agency has been critical to the formation of welfare policy. Yet, nations with strong, mobilized feminist movements do not necessarily develop the most supportive welfare policies. By historically analyzing the emergence of British and French family allowance policy, the author suggests that the key to this conundrum lies in the interaction between women's movements and the value given to women's paid and unpaid labor. Woman-friendly state policy requires an active women's (...) movement and ideologies valuing women's paid and unpaid labor. In addition, women's movements must be able and willing to strategically use those ideologies to pursue their goals. (shrink)

In pediatric emergency rooms (ERs), social workers must navigate diverse responsibilities including acting as advocates and liaisons between families and multidisciplinary treatment teams, providing compassionate support to families in crisis, and assessing for and reporting any suspicions of child abuse or neglect. These potentially contrasting roles can place social workers at the center of dealing with ethical dilemmas and advocating against ethical violations, such as bias and discrimination toward families. This qualitative study seeks to gain insight into (...) ethical issues commonly encountered in pediatric ERs by exploring the perspectives of 23 social workers at Level 1 trauma centers in the United States. Thematic analysis was used to develop major themes and subthemes related to ethical violations, dilemmas, and best practices in pediatric ERs. Major themes emerged related to unfair treatment of families (with subthemes of bias, discrimination, and compassion fatigue), ethical dilemmas (with subthemes of cultural issues, safety and system issues), and promoting ethical practices (with subthemes of self-awareness, advocacy, and efforts to change the system). This study provides important insights into ethical issues in pediatric ERs as experienced by social workers and can inform efforts to improve the quality and equity of care for all families in pediatric ERs. (shrink)

The COVID-19 outbreak has placed extraordinary demands upon healthcare systems worldwide. Italy's hospitals have been among the most severely overwhelmed, and as a result, Italian healthcare workers' well-being has been at risk. The aim of this study is to explore the relationships between dimensions of burnout and various psychological features among Italian healthcare workers during the COVID-19 emergency. A group of 267 HCWs from a hospital in the Lazio Region completed self-administered questionnaires online through Google Forms, including (...) the Maslach Burnout Inventory, Resilience Scale, and Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale Short Form. Cluster analysis highlighted two opposite burnout risk profiles: low burnout and high-risk burnout. The high-risk group had lower resilience and greater difficulties in tolerating the uncertainty than the low-burnout group. A set of general linear models confirmed that both IU subscales, prospective and inhibition, moderated the relationship between resilience and burnout. In conclusion, the results showed that individual levels of resilience and one's ability to tolerate uncertainty have been significant factors in determining the impact of the COVID-19 emergency on HCWs. The use of emotional strategies that allow individuals to stay in a critical situation without the need to control it appears to protect against burnout in these circumstances. (shrink)

Drawing on the narratives of young lower-middle-class women employed in cafés, call centers, shopping malls, and offices in Delhi, India, in this paper I identify malleability or “plasticity” of the body as an important feature of contemporary service work. As neophyte service professionals, young women mold themselves to the middle-/upper-class milieu of their workplaces through clothes, makeup, and body language. Such body plasticity can be experienced as enabling: Identifying with the image of the “New Indian Woman,” young women enter the (...) bourgeoning service economy. However, they also experience this body plasticity as threatening; bodily changes to meet the requirements of work can, at times, feel inauthentic as well as be read as promiscuous by others. I draw attention to how women appraise plastic bodies as both generative of change and a site of labor discipline, thus offering insights into the relationship among bodies, social inequalities, and contemporary service work. (shrink)

The radical changes deriving from the COVID-19 emergency have heavily upset some of the most familiar routines of daily work life. Abruptly, many workers have been forced to face the difficulties that come with switching to remote working. Basing on the theoretical framework proposed by the Job Demands-Resources model, the purpose of this paper was to explore the effect of work overload, on behavioral stress, meant as an outcome linked to the health impairment process. Furthermore, the aim of (...) the study was to explore the mediating role of job crafting, considered as a second-order construct consisting of two dimensions in the abovementioned relation. Participants were 530 workers experiencing remote working or work-from-home during the first COVID-19 lockdown in Italy. Hypotheses were explored by using three different latent variables, measured reflexively through indicators on a 5-point scale, extracted from validated questionnaires. Data analysis was performed through Structural Equation Modeling; to test the mediation, bootstrap validation was computed. Results showed that the mediation of job crafting was partial. More specifically, the direct effect between work overload and behavioral stress was positive; moreover, the indirect, negative effect through the mediation of job crafting was also significant. Therefore, results showed that job crafting can play a crucial role as a protective factor supporting the activation and adjustment of suitable resources; these resources can be useful to deal with the negative effects of work overload, particularly under the condition of heavy remote working and use of technologies, on individual outcomes. Starting from the current global scenario of the pandemic that has not yet ceased its effects, the study suggested decisive theoretical and practical implications. Accordingly, findings extended the current trends in occupational health psychology research, with special reference to the mainstream topic “work and COVID-19” in the Italian context. Finally, results can give suggestions to companies engaged in managing change, recommending that they build a collaborative workplace at the individual and collective level to implement job crafting interventions and enrich the personal and organizational resources of workers, which is useful cope with the current demands. (shrink)

The context of Covid-19 has offered an unusual cultural landscape for examining how workers view their own position relative to others, and how individuals respond to prolonged exposure to workplace stress across different sectors and cultures. Through our recent work tracking the well-being of frontline workers in the UK and Ireland, we have uncovered additional psychological factors that have not been accounted for in previous models of occupational stress or burnout. In recent months, frontline workers have worked (...) to protect the community from the threat of SARS-CoV-2 and, simultaneously, have evaluated their perceptions of collective efforts of others as either congruent or incongruent with collective goals : we call this novel aspect solidarity appraisal. These frontline workers have been hailed as heroes, which we argue has led to the creation of an implicit psychological contract between frontline workers and the public. Here, the heroes are willing to “go above and beyond” for the greater good, with the expectation that we do our part by adhering to public health guidelines. Where frontline workers perceive incongruence between the words and actions of others in working toward collective goals this drives negative affect and subsequent burnout. In this perspective article, we evaluate the cultural context of the pandemic in the UK and Ireland and suggest important socio-cultural factors that contribute to perceptions of solidarity, and how this may relate to burnout and worker welfare during and beyond the pandemic context. (shrink)

The risk and crisis communication process in public health emergencies (PHERCC, public health emergency risk and crisis communication) matrix, as proposed by Spitale, Germani, and Biller-Andorno (2...

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities, including among the healthcare workforce. Based on recent literature and drawing on our experiences of working in operating theatres and critical care in the UK’s National Health Service during the pandemic, we review the role of personal protective equipment and consider the ethical implications of its design, availability and provision at a time of unprecedented demand. Several important inequalities have emerged, driven by factors such as individuals purchasing their own personal protective equipment, inconsistencies between (...) guidelines issued by different agencies and organisations, and the standardised design and procurement of equipment required to protect a diverse healthcare workforce. These, we suggest, have resulted largely because of a lack of appropriate pandemic planning and coordination, as well as insufficient appreciation of the significance of equipment design for the healthcare setting. As with many aspects of the pandemic, personal protective equipment has created and revealed inequalities driven by economics, gender, ethnicity and professional influence, creating a division between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ of personal protective equipment. As the healthcare workforce continues to cope with ongoing waves of COVID-19, and with the prospect of more pandemics in the future, it is vital that these inequalities are urgently addressed, both through academic analysis and practical action. All data relevant to the study are included in the article. (shrink)

This article analyses MNCs, worker identity and the ethical vulnerability caused by over-reliance on expatriate managers and under-reliance on local managers, who are often undervalued. It is argued that MNCs not only need but also have an obligation to assess local managers’ knowledge and contributions as having not only operational and market values, but also institutional value. Local managers both give access to and form part of local social capital and the treatment they receive is an element in the CSR (...) performance of the MNCs. Recognition of the value of equal treatment creates an ethical imperative that the barriers of cultural difference be overcome. We see such an approach towards local managers as more fully taking into account the human rights of these local managers. Such a holistic approach is increasingly relevant for MNCs in the 21st century, as MNCs increasing globalize into new large emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India and China. (shrink)

In the United States the Civil Rights Movement emerging after World War II ended Jim Crow racism, with its legal segregation and stigmatization of black people. Yet black people, both in chattel slavery and under Jim Crow, had provided abundant labor subject to racist terror; they were workers who could be recruited for work others were unwilling to do. What was to replace this labor, which had been the source of so much wealth and power? Three federal initiatives helped (...) to create new workers without rights: the welfare reform law of 1996 and the changes in immigration and crime law and policy both starting in the mid-1960s. These changes re-created vulnerable labor, disproportionately marked and stigmatized as black or Mexican. These workers create a central strength of U.S. imperialism: cheap food. Because workers without rights have an important function in a capitalist economy, a society where all workers can flourish is not capitalist but communist. (shrink)

Digital technology is playing an increasingly visible role in the organisation of many people’s work—as well as large parts of their lives more broadly. The concerns of emancipatory technology studies, or other critical accounts of technology, are often focused on finding alternative uses of technology. In many workplace contexts—from call centres to platform work—the imperatives of capital are deeply written into these technologies. Yet at the same time, many capitalist technologies are playing a key role facilitating emerging workers’ struggles. (...) For example, in the case study examined here, Deliveroo drivers rely on communication technologies like WhatsApp to organise against algorithmic management. Drawing on an ongoing workers’ inquiry, this paper seeks to consider what a workerist approach to digital technology can add to these debates. The paper outlines the challenges and opportunities for a “digital workers’ inquiry,” considering how this approach combines research with organising. The argument is divided into two main parts: first, the need for inquiries in digital work and the importance of these and second, how the process of inquiry and co-research (and the methods these involve) can be adapted and refined with digital technology. By starting the critique of technology from the workplace, this paper proposes a workerist account of how technologies can be destroyed or re-appropriated, starting from a reading of workers’ struggle. (shrink)

Paul Gomberg ABSTRACT: In the United States the Civil Rights Movement emerging after World War II ended Jim Crow racism, with its legal segregation and stigmatization of black people. Yet black people, both in chattel slavery and under Jim Crow, had provided abundant labor subject to racist terror; they were workers who could be recruited...

ABSTRACT Cornelius Castoriadis is one of the most important democratic thinkers in the second half of the twentieth century, and his theory of autonomy and the self-instituted character of society are fundamental to many post-Marxist theories of democracy. The role of the council system in Castoriadis' work, though, has rarely been investigated, and his analysis of the twentieth century workers' councils of has seldom been connected to his important concepts of autonomy and the instituting power. The article remedies this (...) lack of engagement with Castoriadis' analysis of the council system and argues that the emergence of workers' councils in Castoriadis' own lifetime, during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, provided a crucial impetus for his formulation of a theory of autonomy. Moreover, the article argues that the role of the council system in Castoriadis' work provides a privileged vantage point in order to nuance the critique – voiced by for example Jürgen Habermas and Claude Lefort – that Castoriadis exclusively valorise constituent politics without properly appreciating the importance of ordinary politics. Contrary to this interpretation, the article demonstrates how Castoriadis look to the councils to understand how democratic politics entails both freedom to act anew and the need for institutional structure. (shrink)

The U.S. doctrine of employment-at-will, modified legislatively for protected groups, is being less harshly applied to managerial personnel. Comparable compensation is not otherwise available in the U.S. to workers displaced by technology. Nine pairs of arguments are presented to show how fundamentally management and labor disagree about a company's responsibility for its former employees. These arguments, born of years of labor-management debate, are kaleidoscopic claims about which side has what power. Ultimately, however, not even both together can solve without (...) creative public intervention the emerging problem of massive technological unemployment — the other side of the corporate dream of profit without payrolls. (Originally published as "Displaced Workers: Whose Responsibility?" in Social Policy and Conflict Resolution, eds. T. Attig, D. Callen, and R.G. Frey, Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green Studies in Applied Philosophy VI, 1984.). (shrink)

Healthcare workers are often assumed to have a duty to work, even if faced with personal risk. This is particularly so for professionals. However, the health service also depends on non-professionals, such as porters, cooks and cleaners. The duty to work is currently under scrutiny because of the ongoing challenge of responding to pandemic influenza, where an effective response depends on most uninfected HCWs continuing to work, despite personal risk. This paper reports findings of a survey of HCWs conducted (...) across three National Health Service trusts in the West Midlands, UK, to establish whether HCWs’ likelihood of working during a pandemic is associated with views about the duty to work. The sense that HCWs felt that they had a duty to work despite personal risk emerged strongly regardless of professional status. Besides a strong sense that everyone should pull together, all kinds of HCWs recognised a duty to work even in difficult circumstances, which correlated strongly with their stated likelihood of working. This suggests that HCWs’ decisions about whether or not they are prepared to work during a pandemic are closely linked to their sense of duty. However, respondents’ sense of the duty to work may conflict with their sense of duty to family, as well as other factors such as a perceived lack of reciprocity from their employers. Interestingly, nearly 25% of doctors did not consider that they had a duty to work where doing so would pose risks to themselves or their families. (shrink)

Most academic papers on ethics in pandemics concentrate on the duties of healthcare professionals. This paper will consider non-professional healthcare workers: do they have a moral obligation to work during an influenza pandemic? If so, is this an obligation that outweighs others they might have, e.g., as parents, and should such an obligation be backed up by the coercive power of law? This paper considers whether non-professional healthcare workers—porters, domestic service workers, catering staff, clerks, IT support (...) class='Hi'>workers, etc.—have an obligation to work during an influenza pandemic. It uses data collected as part of a study looking at the attitudes of healthcare workers to working during a pandemic to suggest the philosophical arguments explored. These include: being in a position to do good, the ethics of work, competing obligations to family members and in particular to children and the obligations of citizens in a state of national emergency. We also look at whether compulsory measures are justified to support a national health service during a health emergency. We conclude that even if they are, compulsion should not be restricted to non-professionals who happen to be working in the health service at the time. Rather, compulsion involving a larger pool of people with the relevant skills and abilities is more equitable. (shrink)

Following the offshoring of production to developing countries by transnational corporations, unions and non-governmental organisations have criticised working conditions at TNCs' offshore factories. This has led to the emergence of two different approaches to operationalising TNC responsibilities for workers' rights in developing countries: codes of conduct and global agreements. Despite the importance of this development, few studies have systematically compared the effects of these two different ways of dealing with workers' rights. This article addresses this gap by analysing (...) how codes of conduct and global agreements both independently and interactively affect workers' rights. We do this based on a qualitative study of the Sri Lankan operations of a Swedish TNC in Sri Lanka, and on interviews with union and NGO representatives actively involved in codes of conduct and global agreements. Our results indicate that global agreements independently address all the aspects included in codes of conduct, while also addressing additional, more process-oriented aspects of workers' rights. Hence, on their own, global agreements seem to comprise the superior approach to promoting workers' rights. Furthermore, our results indicate that promoting codes of conduct has negative interactive effects on global agreements. Based on these results, we argue that the current focus on codes of conduct is counterproductive for the promotion of workers' rights. (shrink)

John Milbank's The Future of Love is a compilation of essays written over the last twenty-five years from which a nuanced political theology takes shape. As a collection of essays, it is impossible to find here a single unitary voice, but nor is that the point. The point, I believe, is to give a sample of Milbank's tripartite method of critique, which incorporates literature, theology, and philosophy. From this sample a string of interwoven arguments emerge: the need to prioritize excellence (...) over efficiency in all walks of life; that this demands a hierarchy of values; that a hierarchy of values…. (shrink)

The freedom and right to associate carries distinct meanings in different systems of industrial relations, giving rise to distinct institutions. Where bargaining is based on grassroots association, rates of membership in trade unions and coverage of collective agreements are low. Where bargaining is actively endorsed by the state, high rates of membership are matched by considerable coverage. Over the last two decades, some countries, four of which are studied here, have gone through a process that I designate as hybridization, in (...) which a gap emerges between a rapidly declining rate of membership and persistent relatively high level of coverage. The Article accounts for the growing gap between coverage and membership and its implications. On the basis of extensive interviews with trade union officials, organizers, works councils’ members, Labor Chamber representatives, academics and journalists in the four countries, the Article further seeks to document and explain new organizing practices at two levels. First, why do unions seek to organize, despite persistent power accorded to collective agreements by the state? Second, which strategies are used for current recruitment and organizing practices? The discussion highlights the ongoing tension that is folded in the meeting of institutions that are aimed at sustaining the centralized system of bargaining and social partnership, with the dynamics that are characteristic of raising membership levels. Some best practices that seek to address this tension are identified, but are also characterized as difficult to emulate and extend as a general practice. (shrink)

The emergence of so-called ‘gig work’, particularly that sold through digital platforms accessed through smartphone apps, has led to disputes about the proper classification of workers: Should platform workers be classified as independent contractors (as platforms typically insist), or as employees of the platforms through which they sell labor (as workers often claim)? Such disputes have urgency due to the way in which employee status is necessary to access certain benefits such as a minimum wage, sick pay, (...) and so on. In addition, classification disputes have philosophical significance because their resolution requires some foundational account of why the law should make a distinction between employed and freelance workers in the first place. This paper aims to fill this foundational gap. Central to it is the idea that employment involves a worker ceding certain freedoms in return for a degree of security, at least with respect to income. Insofar as the misclassification objection has force against digital platforms, it is when a platform is attempting to have it both ways: Workers are giving up freedom but not being granted a proportionate increase in security. As I shall explain, this approach offers some flexibility as to how actual disputes might be resolved – justice may be indifferent between whether platforms offer greater security or permit workers greater freedom, provided they do at least one of these things. (shrink)

This article examines new patterns of workplace inequality that emerge as transgender people are incorporated into the global labor market. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 41 transgender call center employees in the Philippines, I develop the concept “purple-collar labor” to describe how transgender workers—specifically trans women—are clustered, dispersed, and segregated in the workplace and how their patterned locations in social organizational structures serve a particular value-producing function. These patterned inclusions, I argue, come with explicit and implicit interactional expectations about (...) how “trans” should be put to work in the expansion and accumulation of global capital. In this way, the study examines the production and extraction of queer value and the folding of trans women’s gendered performances into commercial exchange. Data show how the affective labor of transgender employees is used to help foster productivity, ease workplace tensions, and boost employee morale. This study of transgender employment experiences opens new lines of inquiry for understanding gender inequalities at work, and it builds on scholarship that combines political economy approaches with transgender studies. (shrink)

Craft food and beverage makers regularly emphasize transparency about the ethical, sustainable sourcing of their ingredients and the human labour underpinning their production, all of which helps elevate the status of their products and occupational communities. Yet, as with other niche ethical consumption markets, craft industries continue to rely on employment conditions for agricultural workers that reproduce inequalities of race, class, and citizenship in the dominant food system. This paper interrogates the contradiction between the exaltation of craft cidermakers’ labour (...) and the devaluation of farmworker labour by assessing how craft beverage actors make sense of inequalities facing manually skilled agricultural workers. Through a focus on the emerging craft cider industry, this paper draws on in-depth interviews and ethnographic data with a range of urban and rural cider actors in the Pacific Northwest. I find that actors in the craft cider industry engage with inequalities affecting farmworkers through three main patterns: Justifications of the status quo; Supply chain fog; and Misgiving/critique. By using an analytical framework that integrates critical agrarianism and the politics of sight, this study provides insights into both barriers and opportunities to redistribute social recognition and material rewards across food supply chains. (shrink)

The Ebola epidemic in Western Africa has highlighted issues related to weak health systems, the politics of drug and vaccine development and the need for transparent and ethical criteria for use of scarce local and global resources during public health emergency. In this paper we explore two key themes. First, we argue that independent of any use of experimental drugs or vaccine interventions, simultaneous implementation of proven public health principles, community engagement and culturally sensitive communication are critical as these (...) measures represent the most cost-effective and fair utilization of available resources. Second, we attempt to clarify the ethical issues related to use of scarce experimental drugs or vaccines and explore in detail the most critical ethical question related to Ebola drug or vaccine distribution in the current outbreak: who among those infected or at risk should be prioritized to receive any new experimental drugs or vaccines? We conclude that healthcare workers should be prioritised for these experimental interventions, for a variety of reasons. (shrink)

For the past two decades, agricultural workers in regions of Central America have reported an epidemic of chronic kidney disease of undetermined etiology (CKDu) that is not associated with established risk factors of chronic kidney disease. Several hypotheses have emerged, but the etiology of CKDu remains elusive and controversial. The aim of this literature review was to describe the potential risk factors of CKDu in Mesoamerica and implications for the U.S. agricultural worker population. PubMed and CINAHL databases were searched (...) for articles published between 2000 and 2018 that examined CKDu in Mesoamerica; 29 original studies were included in this review. CKDu is a multifactorial disease that is often asymptomatic with hallmark characteristics of elevated serum creatinine and blood urea nitrogen (BUN), low glomerular filtration rate, electrolyte abnormalities, and non-nephrotic proteinuria. Reducing the global prevalence of CKDu will require more robust studies on causal mechanisms and on interventions that can reduce morbidity and mortality in vulnerable populations. (shrink)

The literature on migrant care workers has tended to place little emphasis on the multiple relationships that migrant carers form with care recipients, employers/managers and work colleagues. This article makes a contribution to this emerging field, drawing on data from qualitative interviews carried out with 40 migrant care workers employed in the institutional and domiciliary care sectors in Dublin, Ireland. While the analysis revealed generally positive carer—care recipient relationships, significant racial and cultural tensions were evident within the vertical (...) and especially the horizontal relationships in the care workplace. The article argues that these findings highlight the need for additional research on the relationships formed in the long-term care sector and further theorizing on the meaning and importance of the affective components of care work within increasingly commodified care markets. (shrink)

Since around 2010, a workers’ history of science has emerged as a distinct set of research questions and professional practices. More than a consolidation of prior concepts, the workers’ history of science attends to resource distribution both in sites of science in the past and in present-day historians’ sites of training and labor—the university, the library, the research organization, the professional meeting, and more. To understand the timing and trajectory of the workers’ history of science, it is (...) helpful to look at the history of “mutual aid.” This example clarifies, first, how the workers’ history of science is enlivening the historiography of science: by bringing to the past a form of analysis that was actively politically suppressed in the workplaces of history in the United States after World War II. It also shows how the workers’ history of science can, in alliance with other movements, gradually transform the political economy of the profession—through small but consequential decisions about how to organize our shared professional worlds. (shrink)

In twentieth century Europe and the USA, industrial relations, labour, and workers' rights issues have been handled through collective bargaining and industrial agreements between firms and unions, with varying degrees of government intervention from country to country. This industrial relations landscape is currently undergoing fundamental change with the emergence of transnational industrial relations systems that complement existing national industrial relations systems. Despite the significance of this ongoing change, existing research has only started to explore the implications of this change (...) for how workers' rights are governed around the globe. This paper addresses this gap by outlining an agenda for future research into the transnational governance of workers' rights. Fulfilling such a research agenda would be both challenging, as it requires combining the so far divergent industrial relations and business ethics research streams, and rewarding, as it provides ample scope for promising future research. (shrink)

Introduction:Healthcare workers facing the threatening COVID-19 can experience severe difficulties. Despite the need to evaluate both the psychological distress and positive protective resources, brief and reliable assessment tools are lacking.Aim:Study 1 aimed at developing a new assessment tool to measure psychological distress and esteem in healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Study 2 aimed to explore and compare the psychological reactions of healthcare workers of the COVID-19 and the non-COVID-19 wards.Methods:In Study 1, psychologists created 25 items based (...) on their clinical experience. A preliminary qualitative evaluation selected the best 15 items for the new tool assessing the COVID-19 psychological impact with 2 scales: psychological distress and esteem. The CPI-HP was administered to 110 healthcare professionals to study its psychometric properties and the internal structure with exploratory graph analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Study 2 compared two groups of healthcare professionals of the COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 departments.Results:In Study 1, the CPI-HP showed satisfying psychometric properties, and the two-factor structure was confirmed with good fit indices. In Study 2, the two groups of healthcare workers showed comparable levels of psychological distress and resilient coping, but the COVID-19 group displayed significantly higher esteem and appreciation of the experience.Discussion:All operators showed high psychological distress during the emergency, but the COVID-19 group reported higher resources, probably due to stronger group cohesion and greater esteem, perceived meaning, and own work value.Conclusion:Assessing the psychological distress and resources of healthcare professionals with specific tools is important. Psychological interventions should promote their psychological health. (shrink)

This study examined female sex workers’ evaluation of ethically relevant experiences of participating in an HPV4 vaccine clinical trial conducted in Lima, Peru. The Sunflower Study provided all participants with HPV testing, treatment for those testing positive, and access to the vaccine for all testing negative. Themes that emerged from content analysis of interviews with 16 former participants included the importance of respectful treatment and access to healthcare not otherwise available and concerns about privacy protections, the potential for HIV (...) stigma, and poststudy abandonment. (shrink)

An account is given of the emergence of the concept of work as a basic component of mechanics. It was largely an achievement of engineer savants in France during the Bourbon Restoration , with Navier, Coriolis and Poncelet playing the major roles. Some aspects of the eighteenth-century prehistory are described, and also concurrent developments in French engineering. The principal problem areas were friction, hydraulics, machine performance and ergonomics, and especially in the last context the developments became involved with social and (...) even philosophical movements in the 1820s. Education played an important role throughout; several of the principal sources are textbooks. (shrink)

This volume recognizes and addresses the health care issues of prisoners, to establish best practices and to learn about approaches to these challenges from around the world. It presents new evidence on several emerging and classical prison health issues. The first goal of this volume is to address emerging issues related to health in prison. Second, it presents the most recent research-based evidence and translates it to the practice. The third goal, is that it allows for sufficient diversity while also (...) incorporating updates of some important already recognized prison health. The volume discusses prisons and the life and well-being of prisoners and staff, after growing problems as drug misuse (incl. tobacco smoking), infectious diseases (HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, STIs and TB), psychiatric problems, inadequate and unhealthy living conditions (incl. nutrition), overcrowding of prisons. These are addressed adequately in order to meet the international requirements of equivalence of health care. The scope of this volume is at the same type specific and diverse enough to cover the interests of a large audience that includes many types of practitioners involved in health-related issues in the field of prison health care, such as psychologists, nurses and prison administration officers responsible for health care, legal professionals and social workers. (shrink)

This article examines the St. James Infirmary, a nonprofit occupational health and safety clinic for sex workers in San Francisco, to consider how particular organizational spaces and practices may challenge gender ideologies in the United States—in this case, of women sex workers as “victim-criminals.” Drawing empirically from multimethod qualitative research and theoretically from feminist institutionalism, I indicate how the SJI’s broader institutional context has produced a victim-criminal ideology of women in prostitution. Next, I consider the SJI’s organizational emergence (...) and operations to argue that, by deploying particular spatial-discursive practices and operational procedures, nonprofits with legacies of activism may draw from these to challenge dominant gender ideologies, even as they work alongside the broader institutional structures that promote them. Although single case studies like the SJI cannot establish broad theoretical generalizations and propositions, I use it to build knowledge and highlight important lessons about nonprofits, gender, and institutional change. (shrink)

The present study examined the factors influencing job satisfactionin the context of factory workers in Malaysia. The major purpose of thestudy was to identify the main problems faced by those factory workers. Thestudy also aimed to examine the influence of demographic variables on jobsatisfaction and the relationships of family income, individual well-being, andperceptions of the working environment with overall job satisfaction amongthose factory workers. A survey was distributed among 551 factory workers working in the Klang Valley (...) area. Results from the survey indicated that thetwo main problems faced by the factory workers are, fear of the influx offoreign workers that may threaten their jobs, and the relatively low pay, takinginto account the high cost of living in the Klang Valley. Findings also indicatedthat while gender and race did not significantly influence perceptions of theworking environment and job satisfaction, job positions did. Those working assecurity and logistics staff were significantly more satisfied with their workingenvironment than those holding administrative or technical/production posts.Job satisfaction also varied significantly across job positions; those working insecurity and logistic positions were significantly more satisfied with their jobscompared to the other employees. Finally, using hierarchical linear regression, with familyincome as the control variable, the findings suggested that both individualwell-being and perceptions of the working environment emerged as positive.Both of these are significant predictors of perceived job satisfaction amongfactory workers. The implication of these findings will be discussed within theframework of organizational satisfaction and individual well-being. (shrink)

China’s export-led manufacturing model has been built on extensive exploitation of its migrant workforce under a despotic labor regime, but the methods of control have shifted considerably during the past decade and a half. This article examines new modes of domination over Chinese factory workers, based on fieldwork conducted while the author was living with workers at a foreign-invested garment factory in southern China. The article shows how mechanisms to control the workers are embedded today not only (...) in directly coercive practices but also in a new shop floor culture with affective personal ties and implicit bargaining in wage systems. Against the scholarly literature of management controls that emphasizes rupture and discontinuity between labor regimes, this article argues that China’s emerging labor regime, here referred to as “conciliatory despotism,” inherits despotic features of the labor regime exercised in the 1990s but adds new normative measures of soft control that seek to conciliate worker resentments. This hybrid form of management control represents a stage in China’s evolving labor-management relations in which workers possess more implicit power and can push management into greater concessions than previously. (shrink)

In recent decades, there have been major changes in the organisation of social reproduction. As middle-class women have entered the workforce in large numbers, and state provision of childcare and other welfare services has been scaled back under neo-liberalism, there has been an unprecedented outsourcing of household labour to the market. The resulting commodification of social reproduction has not liberated women from the demands of housework but has largely shifted this work away from women in the Global North towards migrant (...) women workers from poor and heavily indebted countries of the Global South. At the same time, there has also been a huge increase in internal migration within Global South countries, as newly wealthy middle classes in the cities are being serviced by poor rural women. Commodified domestic labour relies on the existence of gendered and racialised migrant workers. This article examines the domestic workers’ strike as an effective and urgent mode of political action given the massive and growing concentration of migrant women in domestic work. This requires a reassessment of earlier feminist strategies based on a nuclear family model and current advocacy strategies that, influenced by foundations, have rejected the strike tactic in favour of limited legal strategies. This article draws on my empirical research on domestic workers’ movements in the USA and India in order to highlight emerging strategies of labour movements. (shrink)

In recent years, anthropologists have built a rich body of ethnography on the experience of addiction, including important cultural critiques of treatment systems. Yet little has been written from the perspective of those who work in the everyday to help others recover from substance abuse. In this article, I reflect on my labor as a clinical social worker providing therapy for homeless women and men who struggle with addiction. Building on the eloquence of those who seek to recover, recovery poets, (...) I demonstrate how the work of a team of frontline workers operates in a particular intersubjective realm that creates different conditions for understanding addiction and recovery than does anthropological fieldwork. By detailing the labor of recovery as I performed it using different evidence-based therapies to permit the emergence of a new consciousness, I aim to bring to center stage the complex labor of frontline workers so that their working conditions will be taken into account more often in anthropological work on addiction and treatment. (shrink)

Workplaces have transformed over the past decades in response to global forces. This case study of a Mexican-owned multinational corporation compares employee perceptions of a new work culture required to confront these demands. Employees are expected to work long hours and to produce results, obtain the right skills and knowledge, and exhibit proactivity. Drawing on extensive qualitative data, this article theorizes what the expectations mean for women and men employees. The competitive culture reinforces inequality because expectations are grounded in the (...) gendered “ideal worker” narrative. However, tensions ensue for the company that is partly characterized by paternalism yet requires a competitive work culture. The study uncovers a hybrid organizational logic with gendered assumptions undergirding a hidden inequality as professional women navigate the emergence of the glass ceiling in the global south. (shrink)

Following the offshoring of production to developing countries by transnational corporations (TNCs), unions and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have criticised working conditions at TNCs' offshore factories. This has led to the emergence of two different approaches to operationalising TNC responsibilities for workers' rights in developing countries: codes of conduct and global agreements. Despite the importance of this development, few studies have systematically compared the effects of these two different ways of dealing with workers' rights. This article addresses this gap (...) by analysing how codes of conduct and global agreements both independently and interactively affect workers' rights. We do this based on a qualitative study of the Sri Lankan operations of a Swedish TNC in Sri Lanka, and on interviews with union and NGO representatives actively involved in codes of conduct and global agreements. Our results indicate that global agreements independently address all the aspects included in codes of conduct, while also addressing additional, more process-oriented aspects of workers' rights. Hence, on their own, global agreements seem to comprise the superior approach to promoting workers' rights. Furthermore, our results indicate that promoting codes of conduct has negative interactive effects on global agreements. Based on these results, we argue that the current focus on codes of conduct is counterproductive for the promotion of workers' rights. (shrink)

We report key themes arising from a postgraduate workshop organized by the King's Interdisciplinary Discussion Society (KIDS) held in April 2011. KIDS believe that health is a phenomenon that transcends disciplinary boundaries, and therefore issues relating to health care and medical ethics are best addressed with an interdisciplinary approach. The workshop, entitled ‘Everyday Ethics and Primary Healthcare’, included poster presentations and oral presentations from participants from a range of disciplines and occupational backgrounds which highlighted the challenges faced by primary health-care (...) workers. Three common themes emerged: the impersonal and cumbersome work environment that can result from the encroachment of rationalizing tools; the tension between ‘ethical practice as an ongoing sensibility’ and ‘ethical practice as “box-ticking”’; and the contested nature of what constitutes ‘health’. Participants felt that the interdisciplinary perspective was helpful in elucidating the various ethical issues arising in primary health care. (shrink)

Currently whole world is facing immense crisis caused by the unprecedented pandemic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). This pandemic with its unique features has raised distinct ethical issues and the whole scenario has altered according to its pressing novel features. This paper aims to analyze the emerging ethical issues raised by the recent worldwide pandemic outbreak of SARS-COV-2. I have differentiated and analyzed the unprecedented emerging ethical issues from three aspects. First, there are ethical issues which arise due to the sudden (...) imposition of preventive measures such as isolation, quarantine, and social distancing by public health authorities. It is indeed problematic to suddenly adopt the ‘new normal’ in our usual social life. Secondly, there are moral dilemmas which occur when physicians and health care workers try to maintain just allocation of the limited medications to treat large number of patients. Finally, the challenge of policy makers on the effective implementation of the policies that gain trust from people. Here, the role of administrative policy makers is to recognize the moral values in decision-making within the ethically challenging situations when the usual approved behaviors are dangerous to others. I analyze the importance of the virtue of solidarity, benevolence, honesty, and equity to deal with this crisis. (shrink)

In twentieth century Europe and the USA, industrial relations, labour, and workers’ rights issues have been handled through collective bargaining and industrial agreements between firms and unions, with varying degrees of government intervention from country to country. This industrial relations landscape is currently undergoing fundamental change with the emergence of transnational industrial relations systems that complement existing national industrial relations systems. Despite the significance of this ongoing change, existing research has only started to explore the implications of this change (...) for how workers’ rights are governed around the globe. This paper addresses this gap by outlining an agenda for future research into the transnational governance of workers’ rights. Fulfilling such a research agenda would be both challenging, as it requires combining the so far divergent industrial relations and business ethics research streams, and rewarding, as it provides ample scope for promising future research. (shrink)

À partir d’une approche anthropologique des prises en charge médicales de la tuberculose et du paludisme, ainsi que des conceptions et usages de la prévention dans des milieux urbains d’Afrique de l’Ouest , ce texte interroge la nature du métier de soignant. Après nous être penchés sur les spécificités de ce type d’étude anthropologique en milieu médical, nous nous attachons à décrypter les processus d’occultations des singularités du malade qui caractérisent les messages et discours de prévention. Dans les structures de (...) santé, sont étudiées les négociations des normes de diagnostic et de traitement à l’œuvre ; les attitudes des soignants qui oscillent entre sur- et sous-estimations des risques sanitaires ; et le hiatus entre la demande et les besoins réels de formations continues. Enfin, nous nous penchons sur la rencontre entre les soignants et les malades qui peut se trouver transformée par les spécificités de la maladie et de son traitement. On constate alors que les fondements de la professionnalisation tendent à disparaître au profit d’un mode de régulation du rapport au malade, au collègue et plus largement au savoir médical qui témoigne de l’émergence d’une culture soignante qui est, de fait, une culture organisationnelle. Elle se caractérise à la fois par la délégation des tâches à des non-professionnels, la production et la résolution des conflits mettant en évidence des réseaux clientélistes ainsi que par une routinisation des gestes.Drawing on an anthropological approach of tuberculosis and malaria care in West African cities , and on an analysis of prevention modes, this paper examines the characteristics of medical work. We first examined the conditions of an anthropological field study in health care centres. The concealment of both patients’ singularities and populations’ specificities targeted in the prevention messages were then studied. The negotiation of diagnosis and treatment standards, and the under- and over-estimations of nosocomial risks were also analysed. We also focused on the gap between demands and actual needs for training, and on the relationships between health care providers and patients, which can be modified by the specificities of the disease. We noticed a decay of professionalization, a kind of regulation of relationships between health care workers and patients, and among medical staff, which expresses an emerging medical culture, which is also an organizational culture. Its main features are the delegation of tasks to non-professionals workers, a strategy of conflict management based on clientelism, and the development of routine action. (shrink)