Blue-collar stressors. workplace stress, reforms, and prospects.

Details

• Personal Author:
  Shostak AB
• Description:
  Stress in the worklives of America's 35 million workers appears to have three major sources: anxiety over joblessness (actual or threatened); anxiety over workplace accidents or work linked illnesses (present day or prospective); and anxiety over work role insults to one's adulthood (real or imagined). Linked together here are a time honored stressor (job insecurity), a relatively new concern (job safety and health protection as a right), and a third topic so slippery and modish (job linked self-esteem) as to cause psychological stress in the mere effort to pin it down, much less to address it constructively. As important as these items are, they fall in place of significance behind the fear of being forced on welfare, being disabled or killed at work, or being denied the prerogatives of adulthood as a worker. Taken together these three stressors sorely tax blue-collar workers in America and abroad, and indicate the need for a remedial reform task likely to confound industrial health personnel for decades. While progress in reform strikes advocates as considerable, and includes the likes of new campaign issues (flextime arrangements), old campaign issues (lifetime work guarantees), and fresh legislative aids (OSHA), resistance remains dominant. It is suggested that prospects appear small for significant occupational stress reduction in the foreseeable future. How and why this is so in the case of job loss fears, safety and health fears, and self esteem misgivings is explored in some depth.
• Subjects:
  Accidents, Occupational Age Factors Delivery Of Health Care Farmers Healthcare Disparities Mental Health Nervous System Occupational Health Race Factors Safety Sex Characteristics Surveys And Questionnaires

  More +
• Keywords:
  Contract-210-77-0041 Industrial-factory-workers NIOSH-Publication Occupational-psychology Occupations Psychological-factors Psychological-stress
• Publisher:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Document Type:
  Text
• Funding:
  Contract
• Genre:
  Conference/Symposia Proceedings
• Place as Subject:
  New York ; Ohio ; OSHA Region 2 ; OSHA Region 5
• CIO:
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)
• Division:
  DBBS - Division of Biomedical and Behavioral Sciences
• Topic:
  Workplace Safety & Health
• Location:
  North America
• Pages in Document:
  73-85
• NIOSHTIC Number:
  nn:00086196
• Citation:
  Reducing occupational stress: proceedings of a conference May 10-12, 1977, Westchester Division, New York Hospital - Cornell Medical Center. McLean A; Black B; Colligan, Michael J., eds. Cincinnati, OH: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, Public Health Service, Centers for Disease Control, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, DHEW (NIOSH) Publication No. 78-140, 1978 Apr; :73-85
• Editor(s):
  McLean A ; Black B ; Colligan, Michael J.
• Federal Fiscal Year:
  1978
• Peer Reviewed:
  False
• Collection(s):
  National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health
• Main Document Checksum:
  urn:sha-512:37ca6bc6e3f0ad3c90ce49926fa6794e9e1fc466deb4967e0c64af0ad190c889236300daa959d7fcf362da0324ea2d69368c6e0be5ca74069920ce3e1e77c707
• Download URL:
  https://stacks.cdc.gov/view/cdc/178904/cdc_178904_DS1.pdf
• File Type:
  [PDF - 799.72 KB ]