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According toVolti: "The nature of the work being donehas a lotto do with how the worker feels about it." Please explain what he means by this? How does this relate to your own sense of satisfaction or dissatisfaction at work?
In many workplaces, employees are treated as interchangeable parts who are there to do a job--no more, no less. At the other extreme are "greedy institution" that demand total involvement of the individual (the whole person) into a work role. Although neither one may seem desirable to you, would you prefer an occupation or job that leans in the direction of greater or lesser involvement? Why?
Is there an inherent conflict with workers and management? Under what circumstances can the two parties work together to the advantage of both?
12 Life on the Job II The Perils and Pressures of Work In the previous chapter, we saw how work can provide a number of benefits in addition to a wage or salary. Yet, as anyone who has put in time at work knows, even good jobs have their occasional unpleasant tasks and situations, and for many other kinds of work, the on-the-job problems can outweigh the rewards by a substantial margin. This chapter will survey some of the major woes engendered by work, along with the conditions that give rise to them. The story will not be of unrelenting gloom, however, as the chapter will note some efforts to improve life on the job and will conclude with a brief discussion of job satisfaction among workers today. Work May Be Hazardous to Your Health The workplace can be a danger zone that reflects and sometimes extends the perils of everyday life. People usually don’t go to work worrying about being a crime victim, but it happens more often than might be thought. According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, from 1993 to 1999, an average of 1.7 million people were victims of violent crime at work or while on duty. Even worse, from 1992 to 2006, a yearly average of 800 men and women were murdered while at work.1 As might be expected, police officers, corrections officers, and taxi drivers are the most likely to be murdered.2 Many more workers have died from other causes while on the job; according to the U.S. Department of Labor, the number of workers who died in 2009 as a result of work-related injuries was 4,340, which comes out to 3.3 deaths per 100,000 workers.3 Highway accidents involving truckers and other drivers were the leading cause of job- related deaths, followed by falls, homicides, and being struck by objects.4 A few industries have much higher rates of accidental deaths than the overall average. In 2009, the category encompassing agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting had the dubious distinction of having the highest fatality rate, at 26.0 per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers. Next came mining, at 12.7 per 100,000. Other particularly dangerous sectors were transportation and warehousing (12.1 per 100,000) and construction (9.7 per 100,000).5 The least dangerous sector encompassed educational and health services, with 0.7 worker fatalities per 100,000 employees.6 In regard to particular occupations, the highest fatality rates in 2009 were found among fishers and related fishing workers, at 200.0 fatalities per 100,000 full-time equivalent workers—more than 60 times the average for the workforce as a whole. Other occupations with much higher than average fatality rates were, in descending order, logging workers; aircraft pilots and flight engineers; farmers and ranchers; roofers; structural iron and steel workers; refuse and recyclable material collectors; industrial machinery installers, maintainers, and repairers; driver/sales workers and truck drivers; and construction workers.7 https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/books/9781483342412/epub/OEBPS/ch12.html#fn1 https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/books/9781483342412/epub/OEBPS/ch12.html#fn2 https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/books/9781483342412/epub/OEBPS/ch12.html#fn3 https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/books/9781483342412/epub/OEBPS/ch12.html#fn4 https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/books/9781483342412/epub/OEBPS/ch12.html#fn5 https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/books/9781483342412/epub/OEBPS/ch12.html#fn6 https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/books/9781483342412/epub/OEBPS/ch12.html#fn7 Less serious on-the-job injuries also pose a considerable threat to workers. In total, 4.14 million American workers suffered nonfatal injuries in 2009 while on the job, which translates to 3.9 injuries for every 100 full-time equivalent workers.8 As with the figures for on-the-job fatalities, injury statistics differ markedly according to industry and occupation. In general, jobs in the manufacturing sector are more dangerous than those in the service sector, with 4.3 injuries per 100 full-time equivalent workers in the former and 3.4 in the latter. There is, however, a considerable spread within the service sector. Some services such as finance and insurance have only 0.8 injuries per 100 workers, a sharp contrast to the 11.1 to 100 ratio for workers employed in nursing and residential care facilities, which is considerably higher than the one for truck driving—4.6 to 100.9 Photo 12- 1 Victims of the Triangle factory fire, a catastrophe that took the lives of 146 young women in 1911 SOURCE: ©Bettmann/CORBIS. Statistics on workplace injury and death are troubling, but far worse is the situation in developing countries, where there may be little or no oversight of the workplace by governments or other agencies concerned with worker safety, such as insurance firms. In 2005, the International Labor Office reported that every year, 2.2 million people around the world die of work-related injuries and illnesses, the great majority of which are in the developing world. And, stunning as it is, this number may actually underreport the number of fatalities by a substantial margin.10 One of the worst examples is China, where rapid industrialization and an impressive rate of economic growth have been accompanied by a high incidence of job-related deaths and injuries. According to government figures, 963,976 accidents occurred on Chinese worksites in 2003, and 136,340 workers were killed.11 Appalling though these figures are, the actual number is likely to be much higher because local officials and the families of victims often are bribed in order to prevent them from reporting on-the-job fatalities.12 https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/books/9781483342412/epub/OEBPS/ch12.html#fn8 https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/books/9781483342412/epub/OEBPS/ch12.html#fn9 https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/books/9781483342412/epub/OEBPS/ch12.html#fn10 https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/books/9781483342412/epub/OEBPS/ch12.html#fn11 https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/books/9781483342412/epub/OEBPS/ch12.html#fn12 Stress at Work In addition to causing physical injuries and even death, a job that poses physical hazards can also induce the psychological condition known as “stress.”13 But even a job that is not dangerous in a physical sense can be highly stressful. Some degree of job-related stress is not necessarily a bad thing. A challenging set of tasks may be stressful, but the stresses they induce also may promote a high level of performance.14 But beyond a certain point, stress becomes an overwhelmingly negative aspect of working life that has been implicated in a number of physical and psychological ailments, such as depression, high blood pressure, and lower back pain, along with alcoholism and drug abuse. In addition to being a personal problem, stress also has been costly to employers; according to the American Institute of Stress, each year in the United States, $300 billion, or $7,500 per employee, is spent on stress-related compensation claims, reduced productivity, absenteeism, health insurance costs, direct medical expenses, and employee turnover.15 Work-related stress can be brought on by a great number of conditions: poor pay, tyrannical supervisors, petty regulations, unpleasant working conditions, the fear of job loss, uncooperative coworkers, difficult customers and clients, lack of recognition, and so on. A monotonous job can also be a source of stress. A particularly stressful type of job is one that is monotonous and uninteresting but still requires steady concentration, such as data entry and assembly line work.16 Having inadequate resources to do a job adequately is another source of stress. For many jobs, one of the most crucial resources is time, and time pressures are a leading cause of stress, as anyone who has faced a deadline can attest. Power and authority also are important resources that may be inadequate for the tasks at hand. One potentially stressful situation occurs when workers need to effect changes in people or things but lack the authority to do so, perhaps because their hierarchical position within the organization is not commensurate with what they are expected to accomplish. Finally, as will be explored in some depth in Chapter 14, workers’ lives extend beyond the workplace, and trying to balance the competing demands of work and family can be profoundly stressful. Stress is not randomly distributed. Certain occupations are more stressful than others, and stressful work situations are not always offset by higher wages or salaries. At the same time, having a good-paying position that is well up in the organizational hierarchy does not necessarily result in elevated stress levels. In fact, the opposite seems to be the case. Low-wage occupations that afford little control over the work environment are associated with elevated risks of hypertension, cardiovascular disease, and mental illness.17 The health perils that may come with being at the lower end of a workplace hierarchy are underscored by a recent study of British government officials. Contrary to what might be assumed, one key indication of stress—the elevation of blood pressure during working hours—was found to be more pronounced among low-status workers than among high-status workers. Even more ominously, the lower-level workers had higher death rates than higher-level workers did, even when other variables such as age were taken into account.18 When the stress level is too high for too long, a worker becomes a candidate for what is popularly known as “burnout.” This condition can be defined as a psychological and/or physical breakdown that renders a worker incapable of effectively doing his or her job. Burnout is the result of the interaction of individual psychological states on one hand and organizational structures and processes on the other. Vulnerability to burnout differs from individual to individual, but certain group characteristics seem to affect the propensity to suffer from this condition. For example, younger workers seem to be more vulnerable, perhaps because they lack the supportive social connections of older workers.19 Also likely to experience stress-induced burnout are men and https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/books/9781483342412/epub/OEBPS/ch12.html#fn13 https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/books/9781483342412/epub/OEBPS/ch12.html#fn14 https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/books/9781483342412/epub/OEBPS/ch12.html#fn15 https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/books/9781483342412/epub/OEBPS/ch12.html#fn16 https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/books/9781483342412/epub/OEBPS/ch14.html https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/books/9781483342412/epub/OEBPS/ch12.html#fn17 https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/books/9781483342412/epub/OEBPS/ch12.html#fn18 https://jigsaw.vitalsource.com/books/9781483342412/epub/OEBPS/ch12.html#fn19 women with a “Type A personality,” which is characterized by aggressiveness, a strong need for achievement, and an unrelenting sense of urgency. Although they may be quite productive, Type A men and women often have a low level of perceived control. This, in turn, can induce feelings of stress that may be accompanied by stress-induced physical and psychological ailments.20 A real or perceived lack of control is only one of the workplace conditions that may promote burnout. All the other conditions that produce stress can culminate in burnout. Although stress and burnout usually are characterized as individual psychological problems, they also have a clear social and organizational dimension. The way work is structured, especially in terms of the balance between responsibilities and access to adequate resources, will have a large influence on feelings of stress and proclivities toward burnout. In James O’Toole and