Documents Rosenberg, Beth 6 results

"Based on six years spent investigating worker health and safety conditions at U.S. Department of Energy sites that were formerly engaged in the production of nuclear weapons, the authors report on a set of common themes that emerged in their interviews with workers. The initial focus of the authors was on behavior-based safety programs and their investigation revealed deep-seated mistrust of management by workers. The authors discuss the importance of trust issues for worker training and suggest that "creative mistrust" should be cultivated in training programs."

"The decisions that a society makes can lead to workplace and environmental illness and injury. After some years working on the hazards related to exposures to silica and studying interventions to prevent them, the author assesses the results of her efforts. She succeeded in getting silica added to the list of substances regulated under the Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Act, though not easily. And she found some of the obstacles to doing so nonsensical or stubbornly resistant. The next step, she foresees, is leveraging that outcome to ban or limit the use of sand in blasting operations. But in the course of her work, she also has seen that interest in mitigating the dangers of silica, which is strong among medical and public health professionals who rightfully argue that nobody should be made ill today by this completely preventable problem, is tepid among the workers most affected by it. Although they understand the dangers of silica, it is not their main concern, and she understands why. In future work, she concludes, it may be more worthwhile to allow the community of workers to set the agenda and to help them achieve their goals. "

"To control silicosis, we need to understand how change happens in occupational health. Science alone does not drive policy, because we have known the causes of silicosis, and how to prevent it for decades, yet the disease persists. To control occupational disease, we need to enter the social realm of work. To investigate the determinants of a successful silicosis control program, we wrote a social history of the Vermont Granite Industry from 1938 to 1960, examining union journals, newspapers, industry journals, scientific literature and government documents, and interviewing key informants. The crucial factor of the successful program was a strong public health movement to control tuberculosis, rather than pressure to control the occupational disease. Using this lesson, to protect workers from silica exposure now, we chose to regulate silica under an environmental law, the Massachusetts Toxics Use Reduction Act. Science is but one small factor, necessary but insufficient, in policy change. We in occupational health need to hitch onto a stronger movement, currently the environmental movement. Where unions are too weak to demand safe technologies, we need to learn to speak the language of employers, because they may have little idea of the costs of interventions. We need to gather more economic information about the costs of interventions."

"At the invitation of the president of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local #1101, which represents workers at the Domino sugar refinery in Arabi, Louisiana, we met with several union members in the fall of 1998. Our purpose was to investigate workers' perceptions of health and safety conditions in the plant and offer assistance in the amelioration of problems. We conducted in-person interviews, each lasting approximately 30 minutes, with the local union president and twelve members selected by the president. "

"Emotional labor is a subtle but serious occupational hazard that is likely to spread rapidly as the global service economy continues to grow. Emotional labor requires more than just acting friendly and being helpful to customers; the worker must manage his or her emotions to create a company-dictated experience for customers. The practice of emotional labor in an unsupportive work environment produces work-related stress, which has a wide range of potentially serious health effects. Though many employers do not acknowledge the existence of emotional labor, it is a real occupational hazard that may generate life-altering effects on physical and emotional health. While no official regulations or identification standards specify emotional labor as an occupational hazard, some guidelines exist regarding its outcome: occupational stress. Emotional labor should be recognized as an occupational hazard by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), but this hazard does not lend itself to regulation through standards. The business culture that demands its performance is questioned. "