Colleagues, Here (inserted below) is a short article from Personnel Today (January 2013) which discusses the impact of job strain on the cardiovascular health of older male workers.
Work stress linked to heart attack risk in older men
Older men with stressful jobs and little power to make decisions are more likely to suffer with heart disease than their peers with less job strain, according to a study published in Occupational Medicine, the journal of the Society of Occupational Medicine.
The researchers from University College Cork found that older male workers who had had a heart attack or had unstable angina were four times as likely to have high job strain as those that did not.
Job strain, or the combination of high job demands and low control at work, has long been associated with coronary heart disease, but this latest research looked specifically at its effects in the older workforce.
Intriguingly, it found there was a clear difference between younger and older workers - the association was not found in younger people.
Lead author Vera McCarthy said: "This study is important as it provides information on older workers necessary to inform policy-makers, clinicians, OH physicians and employers."
The society argued that as the UK's working population ages, employers will need to make work more attractive and feasible for older workers, implementing changes that enable them to work up to and beyond state pension age.
To this end, investing in OH services will become increasingly important in keeping people economically active and helping to ensure that older workers remain healthy and fit, it added.
"Employers need to ensure that they are looking after the health of their older employees, making the necessary adjustments and being flexible about the jobs they do and their working practices," said society president Dr Richard Heron.
According to Mondragon, its business
philosophy is contained in its corporate values statement: Co-operation, Participation, Social Responsibility and Innovation. “The
Corporation’s Mission combines the core goals of a business organization
competing on international markets with the use of democratic methods in its
business organization, the creation of jobs, the human and professional
development of its workers and a pledge to development with its social
environment” (1,5).
Mondragon
seeks to maintain worker participation in decision-making through worker-shared
ownership and its “one worker one vote” system. After a probation period,
workers are given the option to become members, meaning they can vote in the
annual General Assembly (1,2). The membership fee is €13,400 (equal to approximately
one year’s pay/profit which is the company’s income after non-labor costs) and
can be borrowed from Mondragon’s co-operative bank where monthly and year-end
losses are credited or debited (5).
Each
worker’s vote in the general assembly carries the same weight regardless of
placement or title within the coop. This is the key to democracy within the
company. The general assembly controls production, income spread and elects
members of the board. The elected board of directors then appoints management
as well as a watchdog council to monitor management (8).
Another
way in which Mondragon promotes egalitarianism is through it’s fixed ratio
between upper management and workers wages which cannot exceed 70 percent of
the equivalent in other companies in the market and is generally 3:1 to 5:1
before taxes (2). “For instance, the CEO of the entire Mondragon Corporation
earns only 9 times as much as the lowest paid worker in the entire complex”
(5). As a consequence of Mondragon’s policies, the lowest pay is generally higher than the
local equivalent for similar work.
This
social structure has led to a healthy and robust company, even in the face of
economic downturns. Spain has gone through several troublesome periods over the
last 20 years. In the 1980-83 recession the Basque
country lost 20% of its jobs. Many companies in the area were forced to lay-off
heavily or close. Yet there were very few layoffs at Mondragon during this
time, helping to stabilize the region’s economy (8). In order to avoid lay-offs, workers voted
to take an 11% pay decrease, paid time off or be reassigned to other working
factories. In 2008 worker-owners
at the struggling Fagor appliance co-operative elected to give up their
Christmas bonuses and cut their overall pay by 8% in order to spare layoffs and
secure the competitiveness of their company (6).
What seems the
most profound about Mondragon’s policies is its focus on the sustainable
relationship of mutual benefit between worker and company. In contrast to most
capitalist companies, whereby the measure of a successful company is almost always
based on maximum profitability, the cooperative model offers an alternative approach
that supports democracy in the workplace through an egalitarian voting system, while
at the same time promoting job security for worker-members, social justice and
community responsibility (10% of Mondragon profits go back into the community)
(4,7).
So much is wrong
with the way work is presently organized in America, you could look in almost
any direction and find something terribly amiss. Part of this is surely due to
the steady pressure of globalization on the world’s companies to compete as
they strain against a slumping economy. We have a serious problem in the
world of today’s work.
Can a business
survive/stay competitive in these volatile times without sacrificing their own
worker’s health and financial security? Are there any viable alternatives to
the current business model? We believe there are. These come in the form of
companies and organizations which have gotten something right in terms of
working out the balance between their bottom line and the health, safety and
personal growth of their labor force. These companies recognize that their
assets are weighed not only in gold, but also in the health, longevity and
productivity of their workers.
Mondragón
Co-operative Corporation (MCC) is one of these. MCC is the world’s largest
worker cooperative. A multinational company based in the Basque region of
Spain (7th largest company in Spain), with 256 different businesses under
it’s umbrella, 80,000+ employees (each cooperative supporting anything from 6
to 2,000 workers), 43 schools, one college, and more than $4.8 billion of
business annually in manufacturing, services, retail and wholesale
distribution, Mondragon has become one of the world’s most successful story of
a worker-owned company (1,4).
How did it
become so successful and on what principles is it built? The Basque region has
a long history of organized labor in the form of craftsman guilds, but it wasn’t
until 1941 when a priest called José María Arizmendiarriet arrived and,
seeing the need for education free and open to all began a democratically run
Polytechnic School (1,2).
In 1956, the
threat of unemployment in the area from the shutdown of a local factory that
manufactured petrol-based heaters and cookers led José María Arizmendiarriet to
encourage several students (and workers) from his school to purchase and manage
it themselves. ULGOR, now called Fagor Electrodomésticos, was the result (3,4).
Mondragon’s
following first cooperatives founded the Caja Laboral Popular credit
co-operative bank, helping to secure the financial success and independence of
the company. It was the Business Division of Caja Laboral that served as the
catalyst for the evolution of MCC into what it is today. In our next blog we
will describe how Mondragon’s workers relate to the company and to each other
(2,3).
Last Friday, only 12 days
after the riot at Foxconn’s
Taiyuan factory which involved thousands of workers, 3,000 to 4,000 workers at
Foxconn’s Zhengzhou plant walked off the job when fights broke out between
quality control inspectors and line workers (1,2).
Workers at the plant were reportedly
being subjected to work intensification as the plant struggled to meet demand
for the recently released iPhone 5. Already operating under tight deadlines and
high quotas, Apple responded to iPhone consumer complaints about cosmetic
defects to the phones’ outer cover by pressuring Foxconn to increase quality
regulations at the plant
(2,3).
This created tensions
between line workers and quality control inspectors as heightened quality
standards mean fewer
products leave the production line and volume targets are harder to meet. Li
Qiang, of China Labor Watch, points out that "they have such high
expectations for these products, even if you raise the demands a little bit it
makes a huge difference to the pressure on the workers”(3,4). China Labor Watch also
found that lack of additional training, paired with already inadequate training,
exacerbated the issue. Some workers were also reportedly upset by having to
work though China’s weeklong national holiday (which began on September 30th and ended on the 7th of October) in order to
meet production demands for the new iPhone (3).
Foxconn denies forcing
people to work and points out that workers who “volunteered” to work on the
holiday received additional compensation as required by the government.
This strike comes at a difficult time
for Apple - having just released the iPhone 5 this September. Though Foxconn
maintains that the strike did not halt production on the phone, China Labor
Watch reports that several lines manufacturing the phone stopped production
while workers protested (1,4).
So, here is a very
straightforward example of how the needs of American consumers directly affect
the quality of life of the Chinese workers assembling our products.Apple Corporation and Foxconn - as well as the American consumer - may each
want to assign responsibility elsewhere, but they are all in some way profiting
off of this process.
The following poem appeared in the
Monthly Review Vol. 64 No. 4 from September 2012. We liked it so much we took the liberty of reproducing it here.
by Marge Piercy
Unemployed: soon invisible, after a while, unemployable, unwanted, with your future eroding along with confidence, sense of self, the family cracking along old fault lines. And what do you do? Age.
Out of work: out of security, out of value, out of the routine that organizes the days, out of health insurance, out of the house when the mortgage can’t be paid, out on the street, out of society, out of luck.
Your job was shipped overseas. Your job and two others are being done now by one frantic worker. A robot replaced you. Your company was bought and demolished.
Somebody elected you superfluous, a discard. Somebody made money; somebody bought a yacht with your old salary. Some- body has written you off, somebody is killing you.
At night when you can no longer sleep, don’t blame your- self. What could you have done? Nothing. Choices were made to fatten dividends, bloat bonuses, pay for a new trophy wife and private plane.
You did nothing wrong except your birth. Wrong parents. Wrong place. Wrong race. Wrong sex. If only you’d had the sense to be born to the one percent life would be truffles today.
Recent events in China involving the workforce at Foxconn
facilities indicate that, despite efforts to ameliorate unhealthy working
conditions, a great deal of dissatisfaction remains (1,2).
Observers of these events throughout the world are
curious and concerned about what is happening. Below you will find a
proposed symposium to be held at the APA-NIOSH Work and Health Conference in
Los Angeles May 16-19 2013 to which, we hope, representatives of the
various organizations responsible for these conditions including Apple
Corporation and Foxconn Corporation as well as the Fair Labor Association
(hired by Apple to investigate events at Foxconn's Chengdu, Guanlan, and
Longhua facilties), CLW and SACOM will appear and present their views on
the matter.
Working Conditions in Multinational Corporations: The Case
of Foxconn in China
The processes of globalization – the steadily increasing
inter-dependency of world economies, production, trade, technology and culture
– is having a enormous impact on work, work organizations and the health of
working people. The benefits to many people in terms of opportunities
for employment and consequent rising standards of living have been quite
clear for a number of decades. Recently, some negative consequences of
globalization have become visible. The need for corporate profitability
drives globalization, technology and workplace organizational changes resulting
in more competition, restructuring and downsizing, off shoring and outsourcing,
more precarious work and increased job insecurity, as well as increased
intensification and time pressure at work. It appears Western corporations
often outsource their manufacturing activities along with their occupational health
and safety concerns resulting in having workers in countries with fewer labor
production rules working in more dangerous jobs.
The consequences of these processes for the mental and
physical well-being of workers have recently received considerable attention.
For example, a great deal has been written about the working conditions
for factory workers at various Foxconn manufacturing facilities in China during
the past 3 years after a series of 14 suicides occurred during 2010 at the
Shenzhen manufacturing facility in southern China - the manufacturing location
for the iPhone manufactured by Apple Corporation. The reasons for the
fatalities remain unclear today but they occurrence resulted in much media
speculation as to the quality of the working conditions at Foxconn in general.
They were described in one report as like a "labor camp".
Foxconn has initiated a number of changes at their plants including increasing
wages for employees as well as requiring workers to sign a legally binding document guaranteeing
that they (and their descendants) would not sue the company as a result of any
unexpected death, self-injury or suicide. The attention garnered by
the news of the suicide deaths appears to have prompted several customers
including Apple Corporation to initiate an investigation into conditions at
Foxconn plants in which they retained the services of the Fair Labor
Association to conduct an extensive investigation of the plant. Long reports
were issued by the FLA as well as by Chinese organizations including China
Labor Watch and SACOM (Students and Scholar against corporate
misbehavior). Despite the attention and the changes introduced by
Foxconn, conflict between workers, security and management at these plants
appears to be increasing.
The goals of this panel are to examine recent events at
Foxconn the employer of over 1 million Chinese working people (the majority
recent migrants from rural farming areas of China) as follows:
1. To
describe conditions in Foxconn factories - including factory life, hours, pay,
living conditions
2. To
increase our understanding of how and why these conditions exist at Foxconn
including the connections to globalization in general
3. To
examine efforts to improve working conditions at Foxconn
4. To
understand obstacles at Foxconn to creating healthy working conditions
5. To
examine the connection between conditions in China and working conditions (changing)
in the U.S.
We will invite panel participants from the following
organizations so as to obtain multiple perspectives on conditions at the
Foxconn Shenzhen facility.
1. Foxconn Corporation - Hon Hai Precision Industry
Co., Ltd. (trading as Foxconn)
is a Taiwanese multinational electronics
manufacturing company headquartered in Tucheng, New Taipei, Taiwan. It is the world's
largest maker of electronic
components. It employs more than one million workers, mostly in
China.
2. Apple - The largest publicly traded corporation in the
world. The company has over 60,400 permanent full time employees and more than
250,000 employees at other companies such as Foxconn.
3. Fair Labor Association - FLA - The mission of the
Fair Labor Association is to combine the efforts of business, civil society
organizations, and colleges and universities to promote and protect workers’
rights and to improve working conditions globally through adherence to
international standards.
4. China Labor Watch (CLW) was founded in 2000. China Labor
Watch is an independent not-for-profit organization. In the past ten
years, CLW has collaborated with unions, labor organizations and the media to
conduct a series of in-depth assessments of factories in China that produce
toys, bikes, shoes, furniture, clothing, and electronics for some of the
largest U.S. companies.
5. SACOM – Students and Scholars Against Corporate
Misbehavior is a nonprofit organization founded in Hong Kong in June 2005.
SACOM originated from a students’ movement devoted to improving the labor
conditions of cleaning workers and security guards under the outsourcing
policy.
6. A voice of a Foxconn Chinese worker (if this is
possible).
7. A representative American Academic researcher
familiar with Foxconn and conditions there.
The panel will use the following format. Each speaker will
be given 10-15 minutes to address broadly the following similar questions.
a. Why did so many workers commit suicide in 2010 and
2011?
b. What are working conditions like at the Foxconn factory
in Shenzhen, Guandong province?
c. How many hours do workers put in during an average
week and what are they paid.
d. What can be done to improve conditions at the
facility?
Each panelist will be given a maximum of 15 minutes to allow
for discussion including questions and comments from the audience.
During the past year we have devoted a
number of blogs to discussing working conditions, as they currently exist in
China, specifically at the Foxconn plant used to manufacture several Apple
products. We’d now like to turn our attention to the rapidly deteriorating
working conditions in the United States; first by enumerating briefly what
we’ve already learned are contributing factors to unhealthy work in the U.S. and
second by contrasting, combining, and complementing this knowledge with what is
currently going on – for better or worse – in different workplaces across
America.
So, what do we know contributes to or constitutes
an unhealthy workplace?
For a very long time (over a hundred
years now) chemical
and physical exposures (e.g. heat, cold, dangerous working conditions) have
been recognized as risk factors to the health of working people. This
recognition resulted in a societal consensus in the passage of the OSHA Act in
1970 which regulates safety standards in U.S. workplaces and also marked the
creation of our National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health which
funds research into working conditions.
Despite
efforts to improve the work environment from legislation like OSHA, illnesses
and disability at work from many causes are on the rise. Part of this is due to
the processes of globalization - the steadily
increasing inter-dependency of world economics, production, trade, technology
and culture – which is having an enormous impact on work, work organization and
the health of working people (we have been discussing these issues in our
reporting on Foxconn in earlier blogs). There is now increasing competition
among nations and between corporations, as resources grow scarcer. The ongoing
need for corporate profitability drives globalization, technology and changes
in workplace organization resulting in more competition, restructuring and
downsizing, outsourcing, more precarious labor and increased job insecurity, as
well as increased time pressure and intensification of work (1).
These changes in work organization, in turn, give
rise to psychosocial stressors such as job strain, effort-reward imbalance,
emotional labor, threat-avoidant-vigilant work, organizational injustice, as
well as increased demands in the form of long work hours, contingent work,
shift work which increase stress and can lead to chronic illnesses, including
mental and physical health problems. Psychosocial stressors play an important
role in promoting CVD risk factors, such as obesity and hypertension. Many of these
work stressors are especially prevalent among drivers (bus, taxi, and truck) as
well as health workers who are exposed to noxious combinations of long work
hours, intensification of work, inadequate training, lack of support and
emotional labor leaving them prone to anxiety, burnout, depression and
hypertension.
The
psychosocial work environment has only
recently begun to be acknowledged as a serious risk to worker’s health. The psychosocial work environment refers to the
interaction between the individual worker and various aspects of the work
environment. The
primary way researchers have looked into this subject has been to examine the way work is organized
– e.g., how hard one has to work (i.e., the workload), the amount of control a
person has over how their work gets done, whether a person experiences
injustice or unfair treatment at their workplace, has employment security,
works long hours or in shifts, etc. When a worker perceives threats at work
this can create a stress response which, over time research has found, can
cause increasingly deleterious effects on one’s health.
For instance,
Karasek’s Job Strain Model posits that employees in jobs that are high in
demands and low in control (high strain) are likely to experience stress which
results in deleterious health. Research has shown that jobs characterized as “high
strain” over time put a physiological strain (e.g. increased blood pressure) on
workers that can result in a range of serious and chronic physical health
conditions such as musculoskeletal disorders, hypertension, chronic back pain,
heart disease, stroke, Type II diabetes, and even death are just a few of these
(3).
Other posited
psychosocial models present us with a related but different picture. There appear
to be a number of pathways through which the organization of work creates
stress and illness in workers. While Karasek’s model referenced above has received
the most research, a great deal of evidence also supports Johannes Siegrist’s Effort-Reward Imbalance model which describes the unhealthy relationship
between workers and the work environment as springing from a “mismatch between
high workload (high demand) and low control over long-term rewards” [58, p.
1128] (2).
Researchers
have also begun to look at the affects of work involving having to maintain a
high level of vigilance in order to avoid (usually life-threatening) disasters.
This is referred to as Threat-Avoidant Vigilant work and is common among drivers as well as airplane pilots and air
traffic controllers. There is also
mounting evidence as to the noxious affects of Emotional Labor on worker health. Simply stated, emotional labor
involves work that requires a person to interact emotionally with customers/others
by having to suppress their true emotions or fake appropriate ones. Organizational injustice and low social support have also been shown to be of great importance to
worker health (4).
These
psychosocial stressors listed above are by no means a comprehensive list and for those readers as yet unacquainted with research on these very
important topics, we urge you to look into it further at our website: http://www.unhealthywork.org where numerous articles can be found on these topics. There is also
links to a number of related websites. Another excellent source for information
on work exposures and psychosocial stressors is our new book, available for
purchase here at Baywood Publishing, called Unhealthy Work: Causes, Consequences, Cures.
In subsequent blogs we will report on recent
research findings and news stories that highlight the increasingly unhealthy
working conditions in the U.S.
References:
1. Schnall PL, Dobson M, Rosskam E,
Editors Unhealthy Work: Causes, Consequences, Cures. Moutsatsos C. Chapter 2:
Economic Globalization and It’s Effects on Labor, Baywood Publishing, 2009, pgs
26-34.
(For further discussion of
Globalization read Chapter 2)
2. Schnall PL, Landsbergis PA, Baker D.
Job Strain and Cardiovascular Disease. Annual Review of Public Health;
15:381-411,1994. Schnall PL, Landsbergis PA, Schwartz JE, Pickering TG. Job
Strain and Hypertension.
3. Karasek RA, Theorell T. 1990. Healthy
Work. New
York: Basic Books
4. Schnall PL, Dobson M, Rosskam E,
Editors Unhealthy Work: Causes, Consequences, Cures. Chapter 6: The Workplace
and Cardiovascular Disease, Baywood Publishing, 2009, pgs 89-101.
