This piece outlines an argument against recent changes in U.S. immigration policy that aim to give priority in admissions to skilled workers rather than family members seeking unification. I argue that democratic states have a moral obligation to admit individuals seeking unification with family members, rather than give priority to skilled workers.

The paper describes supportive actions for users of NC machine tools. From the technical point of view, this comprises new input/output media for interaction with the machine as well as new software tools for help systems. From the organisational point of view, concepts for group work are to be supported and a methology for participation of users in the development process is suggested. A software tool for job order planning is presented which combines organisational and technical aspects. One of the (...) aims of the research reported here, is to explore options of systems which keep the human expert in the loop of shopfloor production. (shrink)

This article compares the moral significance of two types of immigration, that which is based on the unification of citizens and non-citizens and that which is based on the skilled labor needs of the receiving society. I assess the interests of both citizens and non-citizens affected by each of these types of inflows and argue that unification admissions should be given priority over skilled workers but states retain a qualified moral permission to incentivize skilled worker migration.

This doctoral thesis within applied ethics consists of four articles together with a cover essay. All articles concern the ethics of skilled health worker emigration from under-served and resourcepoor regions, often referred to as ‘medical brain drain’. Methodologically, the thesis utilizes normative ethical theory to analyse the justifiability of temporary or long-term emigration restrictions, such as compulsory health service programmes, that are employed by developing countries with the aim of safeguarding their needs for health care provision. Such programmes restrict (...) the mobility of individual health workers and give rise to conflicts between different types of rights and interests. -/- The ethics of skilled worker emigration warrants an exploration of the ethical implications of such restrictive programmes for different stakeholders, such as the under-served countries and health workers; and a clarification of the rights and duties of the concerned parties. This thesis provides a thorough analysis and clarification of such rights restrictions and offers theoretically and empirically grounded recommendations as to how they ought to be managed. Rights theory and accounts of individual responsibilities are employed to assess the acceptability of restrictive health service programmes. -/- In brief, the thesis (a) discusses the conditions under which individual health workers may have responsibilities to attend to the basic health needs of a population, (b) explicates the rights at stake such as the freedom of movement and the right to exit, (c) offers insight into what it means to restrict one’s right and its implications and (d) suggests ways for conflicting rights and interests to be balanced and resolved. Taken together, the thesis presents a nuanced approach towards individual responsibilities in under-served contexts and an improved understanding of the right to exit as well as the implications of restricting the right. The thesis also contributes to the ethics of skilled worker emigration with a discussion on the responsibilities of skilled workers when the other parties do not fulfil their fair share of responsibilities. (shrink)

One of the ways to address the effects of skilled worker emigration is to restrict the movement of skilled workers. However, even if skilled workers have responsibilities to assist their compatriots, what if other parties, such as affluent countries or source country governments, do not fulfil their fair share of responsibilities? This discussion raises an interesting problem about how to think of individual responsibilities under partial compliance where other agents (including affluent countries, developing states, or (...) other individuals) do not fulfil their fair share of responsibilities. What is fair to expect from them? Taking health worker emigration as a case in point, I discuss whether the individual health workers’ fair share of responsibilities to address basic health care needs decreases or increases when the other parties do not fulfil their share. First, I review the responsibilities that different stakeholders may hold. Second, I argue that there are strong reasons against increasing or decreasing health workers’ fair share of responsibilities in a situation of partial compliance. I also argue that it is unfair for non-complier states to enforce health workers to fulfil their fair share or take up the slack. (shrink)

Using perceptions of human resource managers of top management's attitude toward corporate social responsibility, a survey of private sector firms (n=407) revealed that over half of those that employed basic-skill deficient employees took legal or economic views of corporate social responsibility toward these workers. These attitudes were confirmed by organizational policies. Employers with social obligation tendencies were less likely to undertake proactive programs such as basic skill training, deskilling, or related supervisory training. Corporate philosophies were almost independent of organizational (...) variables. One exception was manufacturing firms that were more likely to take a legal-economic view of illiterate employees; however, the relationship was weak. Little evidence was found that skill shortages or union pressures are resulting in corporate proactive programs. Implications for research and practice are discussed. (shrink)

This article reviews and brings together two literatures: classical political economists’ views on the skilling or deskilling nature of technological change in England, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when they wrote, are compared with the empirical evidence about the skill effects of technological change that emerges from studies of economic historians. In both literatures, we look at both the skill impacts of technological change and at the “inducement mechanisms” that are envisaged for the introduction of new technologies. Adam Smith (...) and Karl Marx both regarded the deskilling of the labour force as the predominant form of biased technical change, but other authors such as Charles Babbage also took account of capital-skill complementarities and skill-enhancing effects of technological change. For Smith, the deskilling bias was an unintended by-product of the increasing division of labour, which in his view “naturally” led to ever more simplification of workers’ tasks. As opposed to Smith, Marx considered unskilled-biased technical change as a bourgeois weapon in the class struggle for impairing the workers’ bargaining position. Studies of economic historians lend support to Marx’s hypothesis about the inducement mechanisms for the introduction of unskilled-biased innovations, but have produced no clear-cut empirical evidence for a deskilling tendency of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century technological change as a whole. Industrialization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries rather led to labour polarization, by simultaneously deskilling a large part of the workforce and raising the demand for some high-skilled workers. (shrink)

With a focus on end-of-life discussion in aging and chronically ill populations, this book offers insight into the skill of communicating in complex and emotionally charged discussions. This text is written for all clinicians and professionals in the fields of healthcare and public health who are faced with questions of ethical deliberation when a patient's illness turns from chronic to terminal. This skill is required to manage care well in an age of advanced technology, and numerous autonomous choices. With a (...) palliative care and ethics focus, the manuscript provides case studies illustrating issues which occur in the acuity and chronicity of end of life. Clear tools for clinicians, such as scripting and "the advance care planning video library" are included. The book focuses on the unique concept of outpatient ethics, including readmission prevention and shortened length of stay through good communication for clinicians who will be required to conduct this discussion with patients. The ethical undertone in this text provides a perfect opening for application in healthcare ethics classes, both in fields of public health and healthcare. Medical scholars and physicians, nurse practitioners and physician's assistants, as well as social workers, both in practice and training, will benefit from this text. (shrink)

Low-skilled migrants in wealthy receiving states are routinely subordinated across a range of social contexts. There is a rich philosophical literature on the inferiorizing effects of “crimmigration”—that is, the growing criminalization of unauthorized migrants and the state’s use of uniquely harsh law enforcement methods against them. Yet there is less interest in the existing racialized division of migrant labor. Low-skilled Latino/a/x migrants disproportionately perform “dirty” and “difficult” work that citizens do not wish to perform. Theoretically, this division of (...) labor is compatible with a more permissive immigration system that legally admitted far larger numbers of low-skilled migrants to continue “doing the dirty work.” Indeed, many have assumed the desirability of such a system. Against this, I argue that “crimmigration” and the racialized division of migrant labor cannot be conceptually disentangled. Rather, they are mutually constitutive in reproducing background conditions that constrain the social equality of low-skilled migrants, as well as others perceived to be such. “Crimmigration” has not only excluded migrants, but enabled states to include them on socially unequal terms: as an instrumental and fungible source of cheap labor. Drawing on Alasia Nuti’s valuable observation that “banal” historical mechanisms like stereotypes and social scripts can play a crucial role in maintaining present-day injustice, I show that stereotypes of migrants as workers in low-skilled occupations, as well as the expectation that they continue to take on those jobs, also profoundly undermine immigration justice. (shrink)

This article conceptualizes the evolution of the German political economy as the codevelopment of technological and institutional change. The notion of skill-biased liberalization is introduced to capture this process and contrasted with the two dominant theoretical frameworks employed in contemporary comparative political economy scholarship—dualization and liberalization. Integrating theories from labor economics, the article argues that the increasing centrality of high skills complementary in production to information and communications technology has weakened the traditional complementarity among specific skills, regulated industrial relations, and (...) generous social protection in core sectors. The liberalization of industrial relations and social protection is shown in fact to be instrumental for high-end exporting firms to concentrate wages and benefits on increasingly important high-skilled workers. Strong evidence based on descriptive statistics, union and industry documents, and twenty-one elite interviews is found in support of the article’s alternative perspective. (shrink)

Aging at work is a dynamic process. As individuals age, their motives, abilities and values change as suggested by life-span development theories (Kanfer & Ackerman, 2004; Lang & Carstensen, 2002). Their growth and extrinsic motives weaken while intrinsic motives increase (Kooij, De Lange, Jansen, Kanfer, & Dikkers, 2011), which may result in workers investing their resources in different areas accordingly. However, there is significant individual variability in aging trajectories (Hedge, Borman, & Lammlein, 2005). In addition, the changing nature of (...) work, the evolving job demands, as well as the available opportunities at work may no longer be suitable for older workers, increasing the likelihood of person-job misfit. The potential misfit may, in turn, impact how older workers perceive themselves on the job, which leads to conflicting work identities. With the traditional job redesign approach being a top-down process, it is often difficult for organizations to take individual needs and skills into consideration and tailor jobs for every employee (Berg, Dutton, & Wrzesniewski, 2010). Therefore, job crafting, being an individualized process initiated by employees themselves, can be a particularly valuable mechanism for older workers to realign and enhance their demands-abilities and needs-supplies fit. Through job crafting, employees can exert personal agency and make changes to the task, social and cognitive aspects of their jobs with the goal of improving their work experience (Wrzesniewski & Dutton, 2001). Building on the Life Span Theory of Control (Heckhausen & Schulz, 1995), we posit that job crafting, particularly cognitive crafting, will be of increasing value as employees age. Through reframing how they think of their job and choosing to emphasize job features that are personally meaningful, older workers can optimize their resources to proactively redesign their jobs and maintain congruent, positive work identities. (shrink)

In India, more than ninety percent of the workforce is informal. In spite of this enormous percentage of informal workers, these workers remain invisible to law and policy circles. One of the reasons for such exclusion and invisibility is the absence of unionism involving informal workers. In order to overcome this invisibility, informal workers are increasingly organizing into associations that are different from traditional trade unions. These organizations devise their strategies and their legal statuses in view (...) of the atypical characteristics of informal activities. In this Article, I document some of these organizations of self-employed informal workers in India – their characteristics and functions. On this basis, I contend that these organizations offer a model for collective action by informal workers. I argue that these associations are a sui generis organization of informal workers, and could become a precursor to solidarity-based collective initiatives by informal workers globally. In the backdrop to this proposition, I analyze the role of law in promoting such aggregation of informal workers in furtherance of their collective action. I argue that while organizations of informal workers in India employ the existing legal framework to the best of their advantage, the law fails to recognize some of their status as workers, thereby creating hurdles towards informal workers’ collective action. A small farmer works on her own farm. In tough times, she also works on other farms as a laborer. When the agriculture season is over, she goes to the forest to collect gum and other forest produce. Year round, she produces embroidered items either at a piece rate for a contractor or for sale to a trader who comes to her village to buy goods. Now, how should her trade be categorized? Does she belong to the agricultural sector, the factory sector, or the home-based work sector? Should she be categorized as a farmer or a farm worker? Is she self-employed or is she a piece-rate worker? Because her situation cannot be defined and contained neatly in a box, she has no work status and her right to representation in a union is unrealized. She is denied access to financial services or training to upgrade her skills. The tyranny of having to belong to a well-defined “category” has condemned her to having no “identity.” — Ela R. BhattEla R. Bhatt, We Are Poor but So Many: The Story of Self-Employed Women in India 17. (shrink)

A feminist analysis of the Basque Mondragon system of industrial cooperatives suggests that women fare somewhat better in cooperatives than in private firms in employment, earnings, and job security. Market phenomena and the family as basic economic unit affect women workers negatively, as does increasing professionalism in the technical core of the system. Similarities in gender stratification and segregation in capitalist, socialist, and cooperative workplaces call into question the ability of all three to deal adequately with gender equality. Full (...) workplace democracy may depend on the distribution of goods and services based on need rather than work or the wage, socialization of homework and child care, degendering of technical and scientific knowledge, its dissemination as widely as possible throughout the workplace and the community, and the inclusion of all members of the community in major decisions. The article ends with modest suggestions for alleviating one pervasive problem in large industrial cooperatives—the concentration of technical and scientific skill among a few, primarily men. (shrink)

G. A. Cohen, in his ‘The Structure of Proletarian Unfreedom,’ addresses the classical Marxist claim that workers are forced to sell their labour power under capitalism. This claim has been the object of much debate and controversy. Cohen brings his very considerable analytical skills to bear on this question with the result that he supports, in distinctive but non-conflicting ways, both sides of the controversy. On Cohen’s analysis this claim is ambiguous, i.e., the term ‘proletariat’ has two importantly different (...) senses. In the distributive sense, workers need not be coerced, but in the collective sense, they are coerced, i.e., each individual worker is free to leave the working class, but the class of workers' as a whole does not possess a similar freedom. In this paper, I will argue that Cohen’s argument does not establish that the proletariat qua individuals are not forced to sell their labour power. It will also be argued that, in fac;t, there is no definite answer to the question of whether or not workers are forced to sell their labour power. Freedom and coercion are matters of degree, for the relevant range of cases, and, hence, it is not appropriate to ask whether or not the workers are coerced. I will, however, attempt to show that, contrary to the spirit of Cohen’s thesis, proletariat as individuals suffer from a diminished degree of freedom in the sale of their labour power. (shrink)

The COVID-19 pandemic has intensified the extent to which economies in the developed and developing world rely on gig workers to perform essential tasks such as health care, personal transport, food and package delivery, and ad hoc tasking services. As a result, workers who provide such services are no longer perceived as mere low-skilled laborers, but as essential workers who fulfill a crucial role in society. The newly elevated moral and economic status of these workers (...) increases consumer demand for corporate social responsibility regarding this stakeholder group – specifically for practices that increase worker freedom and rewards. We provide algorithmic tools for online labor platforms to meet this demand, thereby bolstering their social purpose and ethical branding while better protecting themselves from future reputational crises. To do so, we advance a managerial strategy rooted in moral self-awareness theory in order to leverage customers’ virtuous self-perception and increase gig-worker freedom. (shrink)

There is a consensus that the effects of medical brain drain, especially in the Sub-Saharan African countries, ought to be perceived as more than a simple misfortune. Temporary restrictions on the emigration of health workers from the region is one of the already existing policy measures to tackle the issue—while such a restrictive measure brings about the need for quite a justificatory work. A recent normative contribution to the debate by Gillian Brock provides a fruitful starting point. In the (...) first step of her defence of emigration restrictions, Brock provides three reasons why skilled workers themselves would hold responsibilities to assist with respect to vital needs of their compatriots. These are fair reciprocity, duty to support vital institutions, and attending to the unintended harmful consequences of one’s actions. While the first two are explained and also largely discussed in the literature, the third requires an explication on how and on which basis skilled workers would have a responsibility as such. In this article, I offer a vulnerability approach with its dependency aspect that may account for why the health workers in underserved contexts would have a responsibility to attend to the unintended side effects of their actions that may lead to a vital risk of harm for the population. I discuss HIV/AIDS care in Zimbabwe as a case in point in order to show that local health workers may have responsibilities to assist the population who are vulnerable to their mobility. (shrink)

Following the success of editions one and two, this revised, updated and extended edition of _Social Skills in Interpersonal Communication_ will continue as the core textbook for students of interpersonal communication. The professional groups for whom these skills are most important include counsellors, psychiatrists, doctors, nurses, social workers, psychologists, teachers, occupational and speech therapists, physioptherapists and industrial personnel. New chapters in the third edition include the increasingly popular area of interpersonal influence and there is a chapter on the theoretical (...) basis of the authors' approach. (shrink)

Many nations in the developing world invest scarce funding into training health workers. When these workers migrate to richer countries, particularly when this migration occurs before the source community can recoup the costs of training, the destination community realizes a net gain in resources by obtaining the workers' skills without having to pay for their training. This effect of health worker migration has frequently been condemned as 'poaching' or a case of theft. I assess the charge that (...) the rich nations of the world poach the resources of the developing world through the active recruitment of migrants. I argue that the charge of poaching is misguided in these cases. The misuse of the term poaching is particularly troubling as it distracts attention away from the many actual moral wrongs taking place through the process of health worker migration and objectifies health workers. (shrink)

Because of the gradual aging of the population, hospital facilities for socio-sanitary care of the elderly are quite scarce relative to the very high number of elderly people present in the country. This has pushed a high number of families to privately hire home-care workers. The scientific literature gives a picture of the psycho-physical risks that this type of profession is exposed to; however, there is still a need for a more systemic reflection with regard to representations about their (...) role and competences. The aim of the present study is to outline the representations of the role and the skills it requires from home-care workers’ point of view. We reconstructed how home-care workers perceive and define the profession, and understand the necessary skills required from their point of view. Our results show that the professional profile of home-care workers still remains poorly defined and that professionals themselves struggle to find value and recognition, and to articulate what the skill set they develop is formed of. (shrink)

In the early 1920s, a time of significant technical change in the lumber industry, hundreds of African American workers migrated from the South to work in the mills of Siskiyou County, in northern California. White workers, who dominated working-class politics in the western timber industry, understood this as the arrival of the South in the western woods. This involved the construction of a historically particular logic of racial privilege founded on local understandings of technical and environmental change, labor (...) organization, and the broader political economic experience of the U.S. working class. The specific racism of the moment demonstrates how labor relations, occupational opportunities, and skill not only reflect racial politics but are simultaneously manipulated to produce and naturalize racial stratification. (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)

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)

There is a recent interest in the ethics of high-skilled worker emigration through which the limitations of the right to exit are discussed. Insightful arguments have been made in favour of the emigration restrictions on skilled workers in order to tackle the deprivations in developing countries. However, there is still a need for clarification on how we can understand, discuss and implement limitations of a right from a normative perspective. Significantly, how we understand the limitation of a (...) right might determine how we approach such limitations – both in terms of the process of assessing the limitations and in terms of their implications. In this paper, I identify two distinct ways to understand limitations of the right to exit with respect to losses associated with health worker emigration, while also pointing to their implications for restrictive policies: as a matter of scope, and as a matter of weight or emergency, which requires a compensatory scheme for the individual right holders. While the emergency restrictions seem to be a point of convergence in the literature, what defines an emergency and the nature of the compensation still warrant exploration. To that end, I also discuss from a normative perspective what might constitute a public emergency that would give states a prima facie prerogative to regulate temporary limitations on the exercise of the right to exit. In addition, I briefly introduce the implications of emergency restrictions, with a particular focus on compensatory schemes for individual right holders. (shrink)

A description of how microelectronics and robotics are tending to increase unemployment, followed by comparisons between the social policies of Western European countries and the United States with reard to this problem. A conclusion points out the need for a social philosophy of technology that acknowledges workers' rights.

Migrant farmworkers dominate the horticultural workforce in many parts of the Minority (developed) World. The ‘manual’ work that they do—picking and packing fruits and vegetables, and pruning vines and trees—is widely designated unskilled. In policy, media, academic, activist and everyday discourses, hired farm work is framed as something anybody can do. We interrogate this notion with empirical evidence from the Sunraysia horticultural region of Australia. The region’s grape and almond farms depend heavily on migrant workers. By-and-large, the farmers and (...) farmworkers we spoke to pushed back against the unskilled tag. They asserted that farmworkers acquire knowledge and skills over time and that experienced farmworkers are valuable—their value being brought into sharp relief against accounts of inexperienced farmworkers’ errors. Our interviewees provided rich insights into farmworkers’ engagements with crops and the intricacies of picking and pruning well. Far from being bereft of knowledge and skills, they recognised that experienced farmworkers bring benefits. They improve productivity, product quality and ultimately profits. This is especially so when open communication channels exist across the farm hierarchy, when experienced farmworkers’ insights are taken seriously by their employers. Our research is informed by organisational studies literature and scholarship on craft/making. Like factory floor workers and artisans, experienced farmworkers bring accumulated knowledge and skills to their work, gained through repeat performance. They reflect on and adjust their activities in dialogue with their materials and the environment. Experienced farmworkers demonstrate care, dexterity and judgement. They are not unskilled, and they are more than labouring bodies. (shrink)

I am very grateful to the five commentators for taking the time to respond to my article ‘The Active Recruitment of Health Workers: A Defense’.1 I have learned a great deal from each of their commentaries, and I am sorry to say that I will be unable to address all their important comments and criticisms in detail. In this response, I will focus on replying to the commentators’ major objections.In my paper, I suggested that the emigration of health (...) class='Hi'>workers from poor countries might not have harmful effects on health outcomes in general, or may only have relatively small negative effects in a wide range of cases. Several commentators challenge my analysis. Carwyn Rhys Hooper suggests that it is prima facie plausible that the emigration of health workers causes harm, and that there is insufficient evidence to reject this claim.2 Gilian Brock3 and Iain Bassington4 argue that my paper failed to consider the full range of possible harms that the active recruitment of health workers brings about. These commentators are correct in that we need more evidence about the effects of migration, and that it may be too soon to arrive at the all-things-considered judgment that the emigration of health workers does not generally enable serious harm.Nonetheless, I believe that the active recruitment of health workers is still permissible. For one thing, I am less confident than Brock that the empirical research on skilled migration clearly establishes that the migration of skilled professionals causes harm to sending countries. There is a sizable body of empirical research that is inconsistent with many of Brock's claims. It is not obvious that the emigration of skilled workers depletes human capital in the sending country.5 ,6 In fact, there is evidence that the opportunity to emigrate …. (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)

Compulsory (health) service contracts have recently received considerable attention in the normative literature. The service contracts are considered and offered as a permissible and liberal alternative to emigration restrictions if individuals relinquish their right to exit via contract in exchange for the state‐funded tertiary education. To that end, the recent normative literature on the service programmes has particularly focused on discussing the circumstances or conditions in which the contracts should be signed, so that they are morally binding on the part (...) of the skilled workers. However, little attention is devoted to the relevance of the right to exit for the debate on compulsory service programmes. In this paper, I argue that even if the service contracts are voluntary, and thus the would‐be medical students voluntarily relinquish their right to exit, the reasons behind the right should be taken into account for the contracts to be morally valid. A clear understanding of the right to exit is a must in order not to breach its basic components and for the service contracts to be morally binding. To that end, I provide two accounts of the reasons to value the right to exit by presenting Patti Lenard's discussion of the right to exit and by reconstructing James Griffin's account of human rights. I conclude by offering brief ethical considerations for compulsory health service programmes grounded in the reasons to value the right to exit. (shrink)

France’s 35-hour workweek is one of the boldest progressive reforms in recent years. Drawing on existing survey and economic data, supplemented by interviews with French informants, this article examines the 35-hour week’s evolution and impacts. Although commonly dismissed as economically uncompetitive, the policy package succeeded in avoiding significant labor-cost increases for business. Most 35-hour employees cite quality-of-life improvements despite the fact that wage moderation, greater variability in schedules, and intensification of work negatively impacted some—mostly lower-paid and less-skilled—workers. Taking (...) into account employment gains, the initiative can be considered a qualified success in meeting its main aims. (shrink)

This paper examines how middle managers in the long term care sector use the discourse of professionalism to create ‘appropriate’ work conduct of care workers. Using Watson’s concept of professional talk, we study how managers in their daily work talk about professionalism of vocationally skilled care workers. Based on observations and recordings of mundane conversations by middle managers, we found four different professional talks that co-exist: appropriate looks and conduct, reflectivity about personal values and ‘good’ care, methodical (...) work methods, competencies. Jointly, these professional talks constitute an important discursive resource for middle managers to facilitate change on the work floor. Change involves the reconfiguration of care work and different managerial-worker relations. Middle managers use professional talks in both enabling and disenabling ways vis-à-vis care workers. Based on these findings, we suggest a more nuanced portrayal of the relationship between managers and professionals. Rather than being based on an intrinsic opposition, i.e. ‘managers versus professionals’, this relationship is flexibly reconstructed via professional talk. (shrink)

The superfluous and systemic problem of fraud and corruption in South African universities has intentionally paralysed internal control measures that detect and combat corruption. This reality has been aggravated by the deployment of unskilled workers in strategic positions in universities, driving the corruption agenda and frustrating those skilled quality employees capable of operating the systems that detect and combat corruption. This article explores employees’ experience and knowledge in previously disadvantaged universities relating to operating systems that enable the detection (...) and prevention of fraud and corruption. This paper further attempts to assess whether these universities employ and retain knowledgeable and quality employees who can operate these systems. The qualitative multi-case study was conducted using a sample of 20 middle and senior managers, with data collected through interviews. The study generated five themes from the research findings, which appear to have allowed the corrupt practices to occur. These include, first, intentionally paralysed internal control systems and processes; second, the deliberate employment and retention of incompetent employees; third, the inconsistent application of policies and practices which favour those driving the corruption agenda; fourth, the lack of the requisite knowledge and skills; and lastly, the absence of retention and succession plans, with those who are ethical being isolated and purged from the corrupt system. This study has not been explored previously and therefore adds value to theories and realities of corruption in universities. The research also contributes by shedding light on the extent of organised and systemic corruption in South African universities, assisting decision-makers in implementing the appropriate interventions to combat corruption. (shrink)

This essay interrogates the motives of eighteenth-century European naturalists to alternately show and hide their laboring-class fossil suppliers. Focusing on rare moments of heightened visibility, I ask why gentlemen naturalists occasionally, deliberately, and even performatively made visible the marginalized science workers on whom they crucially depended but more typically ignored or effaced. Comparing archival fragments from elite works of natural history across a considerable stretch of time and space, including Italy, France, Switzerland, Britain, Ireland, Germany, Spain, and French, Spanish, (...) and British America, this essay sketches the contours of a disparate group of people I term ‘earth workers’: laborers of very low social rank, such as quarrymen, shepherds, ditch-diggers, and fieldworkers, whose daily labor in and on the earth enabled the discovery of subterranean specimens. At the same time, archival traces of laboring lives ultimately reveal more about the naturalists who created them than they do about the marginalized laborers whose lives they faintly record. Cultural norms of elite masculinity and scholarly self-presentation in the Republic of Letters help us to understand why some eighteenth-century naturalists felt they had to publicly disavow a form of labor that would come to be recognized as a crucial and skilled part of scientific fieldwork in the modern era. Compared to other kinds of invisible labor that historians of science have brought into view, the social meaning of earth work rendered it uniquely visible in some ways and uniquely invisible in others. (shrink)

Developing countries are endeavoring to advance into the 21st century information age. Their progress, however, is hamstrung by the dire lack of trained, skilled and knowledgeable IS workers who are able to interact with online and off‐line information sources. These countries can tap from the rich intellectual capital lying dormant within the ranks of disabled people to boost the pool of IS workers in their societies. However, before developing countries can draw on the information systems capabilities of (...) disabled workers, these workers themselves must be able to function at par with their able‐bodied counterparts as information workers. This presupposes the availability of special‐purpose information systems devices and approaches developed for disabled users. In this paper, therefore, we examine several issues that are pertinent to IS and disabled people in developing countries, and propose an integrated infrastructure to enhance the interaction of disabled people with on‐line information sources. The study includes issues related to the suitability of different interaction methodologies and technologies for people with disabilities. Additionally, we propose the design of customized interfaces that can be used by disabled people to develop Web‐based database applications and to access and query on‐line databases. (shrink)

Recent changes in the organizational culture of nonhuman animal sheltering, coupled with attitudes that are more progressive toward companion animals, have made shelters into resources rather than last resorts. Consequently, shelter workers need the "people skills" to communicate to a public that urgently needs accurate information about animal behavior and training. This poses a difficulty for workers drawn to working with animals but who find themselves working with people. Based on participant observation and informed by social psychology and (...) the sociology of emotions, this study articulates three primary dimensions of shelter workers' interactions with clients: Narrative Knowing, Emotion Management, and Deference. From the analysis of these dimensions, the paper then draws conclusions about the individual costs of shelter work and suggests practical steps that workers and animal care organizations could take to recognize and reduce these costs. (shrink)

In keeping with an already entrenched paradigm, international trade in tasks exerts upward pressure upon skilled workers’ wages in both home and host countries. Yet certain empirical evidence from intra-European trade shows that sometimes things occur in reverse, that is high skilled workers’ wages in home countries may decline as a result of offshoring, an outcome that looks like an inverse “maquiladora effect”. I try to show that such deviations do not fly in the face of (...) mainstream theory but rather, they reflect the different conditions under which offshoring is performed today as compared to the ones prevailing two decades ago. (shrink)

Background Professional care workers face ethical issues in long-term care settings (LTCS) for older adults. They need to be independent and responsible, despite limited resources, a shortage of skilled professionals, global and societal changes, and the negative reputation of LTCS work. Research aim Our aim was to describe the care workers’ lived experiences of ethical issues. The findings can be used to gain new perspectives and to guide decision-making to improve the quality of care, occupational well-being and (...) nursing education. Research design Focus group interviews were analyzed using a hermeneutic-phenomenological method. The analysis comprised three steps: naïve reading, structural analysis, and comprehensive understanding. Participants and research context We randomly sampled LTCS service providers in Finland and 53 care workers with different educational backgrounds from seven organizations participated in focus group interviews in 2021. Ethical considerations This was a sensitive study, which was connected to the participants’ individual views of the world, professional ethics and social and health care legislation. The participants' provided informed consent and their anonymity was guaranteed. Findings Care workers spoke about their lived experiences of ethical issues in an emotional way, using practical examples. They talked about how they were experts at caring and advocating for residents, balanced the responsibilities of their different roles, and defended their work to the wider society. The care workers said that ethical aspects of their work were too difficult to solve on their own. There were elements of their working environment and practices that caused unnecessary strain and they needed the commitment of managers, organizations, and society to solve ethical issues in LTCS. Conclusions Ethical issues were related to the well-being of both residents and care workers and reflected both internal and external pressures. Some issues could not be resolved by individuals and needed input from managers, organizations, and society. (shrink)

This paper presents the problem of workers lay off and loss along with their exit from the organization its key competencies - skills and knowledge. Importance of management of key competencies was described. The paper also presents outplacement as a way to maintain core competencies even during reducing the human resources within the enterprises.

Despite the fact that there is unmet demand for nurses in health services around the world, some nurses migrate to destination countries to work as domestic workers. According to the literature, these nurses experience contradictions in class mobility and are at increased risk of exploitation and abuse. This article presents a critical discussion of the migration of nurses as domestic workers using the concept of ‘global care chain’. Although several scholars have used the concept of global care chains (...) to illustrate south to north migration of domestic workers and nurses, there is a paucity of literature on the migration of nurses to destination countries as domestic workers. The migration of nurses to destination countries as domestic workers involves the extraction of reproductive and skilled care labor without adequate compensatory mechanisms to such skilled nurses. Using the case of the Canadian Live‐in Caregiver Program, the study illustrates how the global movement of internationally educated nurses as migrant domestic workers reinforces inequities that are structured along the power gradient of gender, class, race, nationality, and ethnicity, especially within an era of global nursing shortage. (shrink)

Women account for 70% of healthcare workers, so their role has been – and still is – fundamental in addressing and managing the current pandemic event caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Far from being an opportunity to highlight the importance of women in the field, the healthcare crisis, together with lockdown policies and care responsibilities, have contributed to increase the gender gap. To study the depiction of women healthcare professionals, this paper analyses 401 cartoons on the COVID-19 pandemic that (...) depict healthcare workers. Most represent doctors as men and nurses as women, in roles subordinate to men. The representation of women is also impacted by stereotypes that do not contribute to better reflect the roles and professional skills of women in the healthcare field today. (shrink)

This article examines the connections between employment agencies, ethics and migrant workers. The article identifies three approaches adopted by agencies towards ethics and migrant workers, namely, ‘business case’, ‘minimal compliance’ and ‘social justice’ approaches. Through case studies of three agencies in the UK, the article explores the potential and limitations of each of these approaches for meeting the needs of migrant workers. The article points to the limitations of both the business case and ‘minimal compliance’ approaches, stemming (...) from tensions between the attempt to put in place ethical approaches towards the employment of migrant workers and the imperatives of the competitive strategies being pursued by agencies. The article points to the potential for social enterprise agencies to effectively meet the needs of migrants. These agencies can focus on more than just the first transition of migrants into the labour market; can formalize transitions within the labour market and link people to jobs that are more appropriate to their skills and experience, as a means of preventing the perpetuation of skill underutilisation. (shrink)

The pervasiveness of domestic employment in the South African context gives rise to the question as to why women not only enter into, but remain in, such an undervalued work situation, and whether they are ultimately able to exit this sector. Contextualising the sectoral engagement of domestic workers as a transitional work-life cycle characterised by impoverishment, limited alternatives, acceptance of the work context, and future directedness, with individual transition through these phases determined by a unique set of circumstances, female (...) domestic workers’ lived experience of their work-life cycle was explored within the framework of an interpretivist research design. Non-probability respondent-driven self-sampling was employed to select 20 participants, most of whom were representative of families with a long history of sectoral involvement, particularly along the female line. Dense, non-numerical data was generated through in-depth interviewing. Inductive data explication was conducted with the aid of MAXQDA. The findings confirmed the existence of an institutionalised culture of engagement within the sector perpetuated from one generation to the next. Hardship and an urgent need for survival leave many with little option but to enter and remain within the sector. Despite negative societal perceptions of the sector, those within it take pride in their work and view their engagement as an enabling tool to better their future prospects and those of their families. Attempts to exit the sector are unsuccessful due, in part, to a limited formal education and skills repertoire. Domestic workers are thus entrapped within a never-ending cycle of sectoral engagement, with the possibility of exiting the sector remaining merely a dream for many. (shrink)

The German discussion about experience-guided work has led to the question of how work experience can be regarded within the process of designing technical artifacts. This paper offers a solution for the area of skilled maintenance work. Some considerations about the nature of experience and about the problems skilled workers have in aquiring work competences within computer aided production environments are introduced in order to illustrate the design philosophy: A decision-support-system is described which stimulates workplace learning by (...) enabling previous and present users of the system, including maintenance staff and shop floor workers, to exchange and build on experience. (shrink)

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)

Purpose This study aims to explore the potential of mobile assistive technology as a vocational tool for blind workers. Specifically, it investigates: Can MAT-enabled BW to perform better at the workplace and will insight into MAT-enabled capabilities impact employer perception regarding BW employability. Design/methodology/approach Exploratory case study which draws on theories of fit to analyze observational and interview data at an organization familiar with employing, training and referring BW. Findings MAT can increase blind worker job fit, positively impacting their (...) performance, self-reliance and managerial perceptions regarding their employability. Research limitations/implications A conceptual framework is articulated which expands current literature on fit to better account for the assistive potential of mobile technology for differently abled workers. Practical implications The positive impact of MAT on managerial perceptions of BW fit and employability can inform the regimes of employers, job skills trainers, vocational rehabilitation specialists and policy makers. Social implications Insights on the use of MAT as a vocational tool can reduce the systemic workplace disenfranchisement of blind people. Originality/value This paper presents novel theory which accounts for the impact of MAT on the job fit of differently abled workers. (shrink)

The paper aims to provide evidence on consistent condom use dynamics among sex workers in Central America between 1997 and 2000, and to examine the most important predictors of use behaviour important for policy and programme interventions in the region. Data on 3500 sex workers, 1500 from 1997 and 2000 from the year 2000, were analysed. The samples represented sex workers in low socioeconomic neighbourhoods who met their clients at known sex establishments or by the roadside. Sex (...) workers were more likely to have used condoms consistently in 2000 than in 1997 (Odds Ratio (OR)=1·4, p[less-than-or-equal]0·05). Sex workers who discussed condoms with their partners or lovers used them consistently with all clients more than those who did not (OR=1·3, p[less-than-or-equal]0·10). Knowledge of condom advantages had a positive influence on consistent use. Sex workers who reported using condoms to prevent pregnancy or STDs used them consistently with all clients more than those who did not (OR=1·2, and 1·3 respectively, p[less-than-or-equal]0·10). The source of condoms is an important predictor of consistent condom use. Sex workers who bought condoms from health establishments or from brothels used them consistently more than those who did not (both OR=1·3, p[less-than-or-equal]0·10, and p[less-than-or-equal]0·05, respectively). Self-efficacy had a positive effect on consistent condom use. Sex workers who reported that they would use condoms even if clients offered to pay more for unprotected sex used them consistently with all clients more than those who did not (OR=1·8, p[less-than-or-equal]0·001). The findings suggest that having condom skill is positively related to condom use. Sex workers who had all four skills used condoms more consistently than those who had none (OR=1·6, p[less-than-or-equal]0·01). In order to increase consistent condom use and avert more incidences of HIV/AIDS and other STIs, programme interventions need to use the most efficient way to provide quality information, and provide repeated training on condom negotiation and use skills to sex workers. (shrink)

Sharing and helping are important issues in ethical research. This study proposes a model based on flow theory by postulating key antecedents as the critical drivers of knowledge sharing and interemployee helping. Flow is the holistic sensation that employees feel when they act with total immersion and engagement, facilitating individuals' reciprocal activities such as knowledge sharing and interemployee helping. In the proposed model, knowledge sharing is influenced by flow experience directly and also indirectly via the mediation of interemployee helping. Accordingly, (...) the flow experience is influenced simultaneously by four exogenous factors related to individuals' perception about their work: work skills, self-fulfillment in challenges, perceived control, and vividness. This study contributes to the knowledge management literature by extending flow theory to the area of knowledge sharing and interemployee helping, by validating idiosyncratic antecedent drivers of the flow theory, and by performing a practical operationalization of the flow experience. This research also provides managerial implications for business leaders to boost their employees' ethical behavior in terms of sharing and helping. (shrink)