This publication is a collection of selected papers from the 3rd International Symposium on Work Ability Promotion of Work Ability Towards a Productive Aging.

It addresses the Work Ability Index (WAI) as an index for evaluating work ability, developed by the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health as a tool for evaluating work ability of workers. The ICOH SC for Aging and Work has promoted the use of this index through international conferences, publications and other means and by constructing an international database based on this index. As a result, today the WAI is used in 25 languages. WAI is becoming an international and multi-cultural technique.

This book is a collection of papers that discuss, from a variety of angles, the goal of developing a truly international standard tool that can be used in common internationally, taking into account differences in circumstances among countries, striving towards a common guideline that exceeds national and regional boundaries and can be used for the diagnostic evaluation of work ability and employability.

Trade Unions in a Neoliberal World is the first book to provide readers with an authoritative and comprehensive assessment of the impact of New Labour governments on employment relations and trade unions. This innovative text locates changes in industrial politics since the 1990s in the development of globalization and the worldwide emergence of neoliberalism. The advent of Tony Blair's government in 1997 promised a new dawn for employment relations. In this rigorous but readable volume, a team of experienced and respected contributors explain in detail how the story has unfolded. This book looks at all aspects of New Labour's policies in relation to employment relations and trade unionism. The first half of Trade Unions in a Neoliberal World presents an overview of industrial politics, the evolution of New Labour and an anatomy of contemporary trade unionism. It discusses relations between the Labour Party and the unions and the response of trade unionists to political and economic change. The second part contains chapters on legislation, partnership, organizing, training, strikes and perspectives on Europe.

This collection calls for improved technical communication for the public through an embodied, situated understanding of environmental risk that promotes social justice. In addition to providing a series of chapters about recent issues on risk communication, this volume offers a diverse look at methodological practices for students, researchers, and practitioners looking to address embodied aspects of crisis and risk that incorporate UX, storytelling, and dynamic text. It includes chapters that bring embodiment to the forefront of risk communication, highlighting the cycle of content creation, dissemination, public response and decision making, continuing iterations of educational efforts, and recovery, toward increasing adaptive capacity as a whole. In addition, this work directs necessary attention to overcoming perceptual difficulties, memory lapses, definitional differences, access issues, and pedagogical problems in the communication of risks to diverse publics. This collection is essential reading for scholars and can be used as a supplemental text or casebook for courses in technical communication, environmental communication, risk and crisis communication, science communication, and public health.

This book is a study of contemporary changes in French employment relations and management. It includes an overview of the origins of the present employment institutions and practices as well as a critical appreciation of French work sociology, but its main focus is on the evolution of the French political economy of work at the start of the 21st century. Based on a combination of original research and findings from recent studies into French employment relations and the working practice of French firms, it provides both an essential source for comparative purposes and an original approach to understanding change.

The poignant rise and fall of an idealistic immigrant who, as CEO of a major conglomerate, tried to change the way America did business before he himself was swallowed up by corporate corruption. At 8 a.m. on February 3, 1975, Eli Black leapt to his death from the 44th floor of Manhattan's Pan Am building. The immigrant-turned-CEO of United Brands-formerly United Fruit, now Chiquita-Black seemed an embodiment of the American dream. United Brands was transformed under his leadership-from the "octopus," a nickname that captured the corrupt power the company had held over Latin American governments, to "the most socially conscious company in the hemisphere," according to a well-placed commentator. How did it all go wrong? Eli and the Octopus traces the rise and fall of an enigmatic business leader and his influence on the nascent project of corporate social responsibility. Born Menashe Elihu Blachowitz in Lublin, Poland, Black arrived in New York at the age of three and became a rabbi before entering the business world. Driven by the moral tenets of his faith, he charted a new course in industries known for poor treatment of workers, partnering with labor leaders like Cesar Chavez to improve conditions. But risky investments, economic recession, and a costly wave of natural disasters led Black away from the path of reform and toward corrupt backroom dealing. Now, two decades after Google's embrace of "Don't be evil" as its unofficial motto, debates about "ethical capitalism" are more heated than ever. Matt Garcia presents an unvarnished portrait of Black's complicated legacy. Exploring the limits of corporate social responsibility on American life, Eli and the Octopus offers pointed lessons for those who hope to do good while doing business.

Trade unions have experienced considerable global decline since the late 1970s. Although union influence remains significant in most nations, many unions have witnessed a fall in membership, on which this influence ultimately depends. Past attempts at turning the fortunes of unions around in the face of 'globalisation' and national predicaments have been the concern of union leaderships. In the case of Nigeria, such events are economic circumstances, the use of legal instrumentality such as decrees and edicts, and lack of democratic environment due to constant military intervention in Nigeria's political system.In light of the current global developments, especially in relation to density decline of trade union membership and the role trade unions are expected to play in industrial relations, The Impact of Political Action on Labour Movement Strength explores the consequences of government action and the economic and political policies on union membership and clout. This book investigates the forms of political action undertaken by trade unions and reviews the conditions under which these actions succeed or fail, whilst exploring how trade unions balance this function in relation to their main aim of collective bargaining.

While much mainstream educational research maintains that teacher unions should be outlawed or their powers greatly reduced, Bascia and her contributors, including many of the leading teacher union researchers working today, challenge this position. Instead, they recognize the important role teacher unions must play in defending public education and in minimizing the damage wrought by ill-thought-out educational policies. By avoiding idealization of these organizations and recognizing their limitations, Teacher Unions in Public Education demonstrates the necessity for union renewal for a successful education system.

Anyone who has ever had a job has probably experienced work-related stress at some point or another. For many workers, however, job-related stress is experienced every day and reaches more extreme levels. Four in ten American workers say that their jobs are very or extremely stressful. Job stress is recognized as an epidemic in the workplace, and its economic and health care costs are staggering: by some estimates over $ 1 billion per year in lost productivity, absenteeism and worker turnover, and at least that much in treating its health effects, ranging from anxiety and psychological depression to cardiovascular disease and hypertension.

Why are so many American workers so stressed out by their jobs? Many psychologists say stress is the result of a mismatch between the characteristics of a job and the personality of the worker. Many management consultants propose reducing stress by redesigning jobs and developing better individual strategies for coping with their stress. But, these explanations are not the whole story. They don t explain why some jobs and some occupations are more stressful than other jobs and occupations, regardless of the personalities and coping strategies of individual workers. Why do auto assembly line workers and air traffic controllers report more job stress than university professors, self-employed business owners, or corporate managers (yes, managers )?

The authors of "Work and Mental Health in Social Context" take a different approach to understanding the causes of job stress. Job stress is "systematically "created by the characteristics of the jobs themselves: by the workers occupation, the organizations in which they work, their placements in different labor markets, and by broader social, economic and institutional structures, processes and events. And "disparities" in job stress are "systematically" determined in much the same way as are other disparities in health, income, and mobility opportunities.

In taking this approach, the authors draw on the observations and insights from a diverse field of sociological and economic theories and research. These go back to the nineteenth century writings of Marx, Weber and Durkheim on the relationship between work and well-being. They also include the more contemporary work in organizational sociology, structural labor market research from sociology and economics, research on unemployment and economic cycles, and research on institutional environments. This has allowed the authors to develop a unified framework that extends sociological models of income inequality and status attainment (or allocation) to the explanation of non-economic, health-related outcomes of work. Using a multi-level structural model, this timely and comprehensive volume explores what is stressful about work, and why; specifically address these and questions and more:

-What characteristics of jobs are the most stressful; what characteristics reduce stress?

-Why do work organizations structure some jobs to be highly stressful and some jobs to be much less stressful? Is work in a bureaucracy really more stressful?

-How is occupational status occupational power and authority related to the stressfulness of work?

-How does the segmentation of labor markets by occupation, industry, race, gender, and citizenship maintain disparities in job stress?

- Why is unemployment stressful to workers who don t lose their jobs?

-How do public policies on employment status, collective bargaining, overtime affect job stress?

-Is work in the current Post (neo) Fordist era of work more or less stressful than work during the Fordist era?

In addition to providing a new way to understand the sociological causes of job stress and mental health, the model that the authors provide has broad applications to further study of this important area of research. This volume will be of key interest to sociologists and other researchers studying social stratification, public health, political economy, institutional and organizational theory.

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Moving from theory into practical reality, ergonomics has come of age as a useful tool for generating safe, comfortable, and productive working environments. Tackling both the simple and complex aspects of a variety of workplaces, Office Ergonomics: Practical Applications demonstrates how to create offices that accommodate all workers. The book contains practical advice on how to maintain an office environment that promotes a healthy, safe, and efficient workforce.

Covering workstation design, selection, layout, and use, the book details the impact of computers on worker well-being, particularly when used under unfavorable conditions, and discusses how ergonomics can accommodate disabled workers. The author emphasizes the need to offer 'protection' to people involved in manual handling in offices, an issue that is frequently overlooked, and offers advice on how to work satisfactorily in non-office environments. She explores the possible negative outcomes, such as back pain, headaches, and upper limb disorders, of a poorly designed workstation.

Walking you through all the features of an office, the book provides insight into the potential problem areas that workers often encounter. The book explains how to identify suitable workstation furniture, test it, trial it, and introduce the final selection so the workforce accepts it. The author draws on first-hand experience dealing with difficulties in many types of office situations to provide straightforward, easily applicable advice on how to improve the workplace to reduce the likelihood of workers experiencing discomfort, ill-health, and dissatisfaction.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the concept of "Total Exposure Health" and presents details on subject areas which make up the framework. It provides in-depth coverage of the science and technology supporting exposure and risk assessment. This includes advances in toxicology and the "-omics" as well as new techniques for exposure assessment. The book concludes with a discussion on bioethics implications, including ethical considerations related to genetic testing. Discusses advances in exposure monitoring Presents a systems biology approach to human exposures Examines how overall well-being translates to worker productivity Considers the link between work-related risk factors and health conditions Covers the study of genomics in precision medicine and exposure science Explores bioethics in genomic studies Aimed at the exposure professionals (industrial hygienists, toxicologists, public health, environmental engineers), geneticists, molecular biologists, engineers and managers in the health and safety industry as well as professionals in the public administration field.

The traditional legal textbooks aim to give students of the law a synoptic overview of the present state of law in a particular area. In doing so, most books offer only a cursory assessment of how the law came to be the way it is and what economic, political and social forces were brought to bear during its evolution. This study seeks to offer students a different kind of text, which takes as its starting point the law as it was in 1945. Guiding the student through four-and-a-half decades of almost continuous legislative activity, Davies and Freedland show how the law was created, and why it looks as it does today. The history explored is from 1945 to 1990, but not including the period since Mr Major succeeded Mrs Thatcher as Prime Minister. Paul Davies is also the editor of the "Industrial Law Journal". Mark Freedland has also written "The Contract of Employment" and "Labour Law, Cases and Materials" (with Paul Davies).

Because of the dramatic changes that economic deregulation has caused in the electricity industry and the widespread social concern about nuclear power safety, Effects of Deregulation on Safety is extremely timely. Effects of Deregulation on Safety uses case studies of the effects of deregulation on the U.S. air and rail industries and the United Kingdom nuclear power industry, as a basis for identifying likely impacts of electricity deregulation on safety of the U.S. commercial nuclear power industry.

Effects of Deregulation on Safety provides a comprehensive overview of the safety experiences of these three case study industries and their implications for the U.S. nuclear power industry. The treatment of the subject is not highly technical, and hence is accessible to a wide range of readers with interests in the subject matter. The book draws on literature from roughly 250 references, ranging from brief news articles to book-length studies of deregulation in a particular industry, as well as original in-depth interviews with representatives of all three case study industries.

This wealth of empirical background information allows the book to go beyond mere speculation about the possible adverse safety consequences of deregulation, to identify situations in which particular adverse safety consequences actually occurred. The experience of the case study industries indicates that economic deregulation need not be incompatible with a reasonable safety record, especially in those aspects of safety that are positively related to productivity. But that safety also cannot be taken for granted after deregulation. Careful management attention is needed in order to avoid the types of safety problems that were associated with deregulation in the case study industries.

Strategic Public Relations has been produced as a core book for what will become a series of second generation books treating public relations as a new, and separate discipline which has strategic implications for the whole business. Written primarily for senior executives and PR practitioners, Strategic Public Relations also serves students and young executives, covering such topics as: corporate goals and strategies; marketing communications; financial public relations; employee and local community relations; parliamentary and EU relations; building an international reputation; corporate advertising; sponsorship and media relations; communications research and corporate responsibility. All of the 16 contributors to this book, in addition to being recognised authorities in their fields, are senior practitioners. They will broaden your business horizons by showing you that corporate relations, if done properly, will lead to improved efficiency, improved competitive performance and, ultimately, to greater profit.

The issue of trade union democracy has been the subject of considerable controversy in recent years. The government has pursued a policy designed in part to 'give unions back to their members' and the decline in the numbers of employees joining unions raises the question of whether trade unionism is losing its relevance. This book presents research papers which deal with these issues and reveals how the unions are adopting to legislative and other changes as they enter the 1990s.

With the decline of collective regulation and the mushrooming of statutory rights in the developed world over the past half-century, individual workplace disputes are now often resolved by the civil courts, by labour courts, by administrative bodies or by arbitration. The nature and operation of these institutions, however, have been largely ignored in the employment literature and this book, by focusing on the institutional architecture itself, fills this gap.
Adjudicating Employment Rights looks at the institutions in ten countries across its chapters: seven European countries, including France, Germany, Italy and Great Britain, as well as countries outside Europe, such as the USA, South Africa and New Zealand. In addition, this book compares these countries' employment adjudication regimes through descriptive comparisons, the analysis of different institutions using well-known theoretical frameworks, and the evaluation of these countries' institutions against a number of yardsticks.

Safety Management Systems (SMS) and Human Factors (HF) disciplines are often regarded as subjective and nebulous. This perhaps stems from a variety and sometimes disjointed activities in the realms of education, industry and the research practices. Aviation is one of the safety-critical industries that have led the development of safety systems and human factors. However, in recent years, SMS and HF is seen to be progressing well in the road, rail and even the medical arena. Multimodal Safety Management and Human Factors is a wide-ranging compendium of contemporary SMS and HF approaches from the aviation, road, rail and medical domains. It brings together 27 chapters from both the academic and professional worlds that focus on applications, tools and strategies in SMS and HF; a wellspring of the practical rather than the theoretical. Safety scientists, human factor industry practitioners, change management advocates, educators and students of SMS and HF will find this book extremely relevant and challenging.

First published in 2007. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Social scientists have not helped the working class make strategic deci sions. Unionists need to know how to carry on industrial conflict so as to provide concrete economic benefits for their members. Should unions strike or not strike? Should losses be avoided at all costs, or can unions afford to take chances? Does economism gut the class power of workers or provide a pragmatic strategy for increasing workers' wage gains? We can say with great confidence that workers should join unions; there is now an exhaustive and compelling literature demonstrating that union membership provides a wide variety of economic benefits. We can say that corporatist class compromises lower income but increase job security and overall employment. Beyond that, however, we cannot say much. In particular, we can do little to advise particular unions in partic ular fixed institutional and political environments how they should han dle the microtactics of individual confrontations. The United Farm Work ers do not need a speech about the miracle of the Swedish industrial relations system. They need to know whether they should strike or not strike, and how their tactics should change if rival Teamsters come into the field. Unfortunately, medical research often has to start with rabbits be fore it proceeds to humans, and so it is with research in industrial conflict. The realistic prospects of doing a large sample analysis of con temporary American wage settlements that simultaneously estimates the effects of union tactics and economic factors are poor."

Based on the primary analysis of the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS 2004), this is the fifth book in the series which began in 1980, and which is considered to be one of the most authoritative sources of information on employment relations in Great Britain. Interviews were conducted with managers and employee representatives in over 3,000 workplaces, and over 20,000 employees returned a self-completion questionnaire. This survey links the views from these three parties, providing a truly integrated picture of employment relations. This book provides a descriptive mapping of employment relations, examining the principal features of the structures, practices and outcomes of workplace employment relations. The reader can explore differences according to the characteristics of the workplace and organization, including workplace size, industrial sector and ownership. Current debates are examined in detail, including an assessment of the impact of the Labour Government's programme of employment relations reform. A key reference from a respected and important institution, this book is a valuable 'sourcebook' for students, academics and practitioners in the fields of employee relations, human resource management, organizational behaviour and sociology. Visit the Companion website at http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/0415378133/

There is perhaps no area of British life where attitudes are more strongly influenced by shared traditions and past experiences than the trade union movement; the memory of the working-class movements is a long one. It is therefore all the more important in the light of recent events to examine the origins and development of trade-union organization over the decades if we are to understand the unions of today, which have emerged as one of the most crucial and strongest elements in the economy.
This book is the product of twenty years detailed research and general reflection on the course of trade-union development, and ranges over the whole field of British trade-union history, from the early craft societies to the structure of modern trade unionism. It begins by illuminating the problems associated with researching and writing in this field, and goes on to trace the main trends of trade-union development, linking these with modern trade-union problems.
Particular attention is paid to some of the important aspects of this history the Owenite period, the so-called New Model unions, the origins of the Trades Union Congress, and more recent changes in trade-union organization. These themes are woven into a broad study which includes detailed investigation of individual trade unions (particularly the printing unions, and also an early employers association) with a general review of the whole movement.
Trade-union history is closely bound up with social conditions, and Professor Musson also examines a number of such related aspects as the struggle for a free press, the origins of the co-operative movement and the early factory system. This classic book was first published in1974.

Over recent years, many companies have developed an awareness of the importance of an active, rather than passive, approach to wellbeing at work. Whilst the value of this approach is widely accepted, turning theory into effective practice is still a challenge for many companies. The Routledge Companion to Wellbeing at Work is a comprehensive reference volume addressing every aspect of the topic. Split into five parts, it explores different models of wellbeing; personal qualities contributing to wellbeing; job insecurity and organizational wellbeing; workplace supports for wellbeing; and initiatives to enhance wellbeing. The international team of contributors provide a solid foundation to research and practice, including contemporary topics such as architecture, coaching, and fitness in the workplace. Edited by two of the world's leading scholars on the subject, this text is a valuable tool for researchers, students, and practitioners in HRM and organizational psychology.

This impressive inquiry into Third World health problems linked to industrialization offers positive directions for both national and international strategies. Occupational health and safety issues, often given low priority as developing countries seek to advance their economies, are seen in their compelling importance through studies on China, Colombia, Costa Rica, India, Malaysia, Nicaragua, South Africa, and Sri Lanka. Part One describes the nature and scope of work-related health problems in developing countries. Health policies designed to meet national needs in the changing work and industrial settings are analyzed through case studies in Part Two. National strategies are considered in Part Three as means of improving work-related health conditions, and Part Four proposes strategies at the international level to improve Third World occupational health. This is an authoritative analysis with substantive recommendations which will affect the thinking of health policy makers and public health planners in the international community and the Third World.

Much of the previous literature in the field of safety focuses on either the technical equipment issues or the human performance factors that contribute to the active failures in safety-critical systems. However, this book provides guidance in the moral or ethical aspects of decision-making that perpetuate many of the latent failures in safety-critical systems. The book presents an interdisciplinary discussion of ethical decision-making and discusses the need to teach ethical decision-making in professional academic programs. It provides a concise introduction to the ethical foundations and follows up with case studies from aviation, healthcare, and environmental and occupational health. These cases illustrate the challenges faced by the individuals in their respective field and the reasons for the choices that they made in the face of adversities. Safety Ethics gives a fascinating insight into ethical decision-making for all those interested or involved in safety-critical environments. The book will be an extremely valuable guide for professionals in making decisions consistent with their beliefs and code of ethics.