Union Efforts to Reduce COVID-19 Infections Among Grocery Store Workers.

Grocery store workers are essential workers, but often have not been provided with appropriate protection during the current pandemic. This report describes efforts made by one union local to protect workers, including negotiated paid sick leave and specific safety practices. Union representatives from 319 stores completed 1612 in-store surveys to assess compliance between 23 April 2020 and 31 August 2020. Employers provided the union with lists of workers confirmed to have COVID-19 infection through 31 December 2020. Worker infection rates were calculated using store employees represented by the union as the denominator and compared to cumulative county infection rates; outcome was dichotomized as rates higher or lower than background rates. Restrictions on reusable bags and management enforcement of customer mask usage were most strongly associated with COVID-19 rates lower than rates in the surrounding county. Stores that responded positively to worker complaints also had better outcomes. The union is currently engaging to promote improved ventilation and vaccination uptake.

[Occupational cancers - Epidemiology and certification]. / Choroby nowotworowe pochodzenia zawodowego ­ epidemiologia i aspekty orzecznicze.

The etiology of cancer is multifactorial. Malignant tumors caused by factors occurring in the work environment, classified as carcinogenic in humans, can be recognized as an occupational disease. Analysis of epidemiological data indicates a significant underestimation of occupational cancer, mainly due to long latency period of these diseases. This publication provides guidance to certify occupational etiology of malignant tumors, based on the reviews of existing legislation and medical literature, as well as on the experience of their authors. The publication presents the epidemiology of cancers, including occupational cancers, risk factors, occupational carcinogens and presents the principles of occupational cancer certification. Med Pr 2018;69(1):93-108.

[Professional divers: analysis of critical issues and proposal of a health protocol for work fitness]. / Il lavoratore subacqueo: analisi delle criticità e proposto di un protocollo sanitario per l'idoneità al lavoro.

INTRODUCTION: From many years now, thanks to the development of modern diving techniques, there has been a rapid spread of diving activities everywhere. In fact, divers are ever more numerous both among the Armed Forces and civilians who dive for work, like fishing, biological research and archeology. AIM: The aim of the study was to propose a health protocol for work fitness of professional divers keeping in mind the peculiar work activity, existing Italian legislation that is almost out of date and the technical and scientific evolution in this occupational field. METHOD: We performed an analysis of the most frequently occurring diseases among professional divers and of the clinical investigation and imaging techniques used for work fitness assessment of professional divers. RESULTS: From analysis of the health protocol recommended by D.M. 13 January 1979 (Ministerial Decree), that is most used by occupational health physician, several critical issues emerged. Very often the clinical investigation and imaging techniques still used are almost obsolete, ignoring the execution of simple and inexpensive investigations that are more useful for work fitness assessment. CONCLUSIONS: Considering the out-dated legislation concerning diving disciplines, it is necessary to draw up a common health protocol that takes into account clinical and scientific knowledge and skills acquired in this area. This protocol's aim is to propose a useful tool for occupational health physicians who work in this sector.

[Occupational chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases. Legal aspects and practical management]. / Bronchopneumopathies chroniques obstructives professionnelles. Aspects médicolégaux, conduite à tenir en pratique.

The existence of occupational chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD) is now well established. Since 1989, several regulations have been progressively introduced, allowing compensation for some cases of occupational COPD. Following a brief review of the main occupational causes of COPD, the authors describe the present context for compensation in France and the procedures to be followed to ensure that patient's interests are supported.

Problemas derivados de la indeterminación legal de la profesión habitual. Situaciones de compatibilidad no deseadas y propuestas de revisión / Problems arising from the legal profession habitual indeterminacy. Compatibility unwanted situations and proposed revisions

La determinación de la profesión habitual se configura como una de las piezas clave del sistema por el que se rige la declaración de invalidez permanente. Lo es porque determina tanto la procedencia de la declaración inicial de la invalidez, de manera fundamental en la incapacidad permanente total, como la compatibilidad de la misma una vez reconocida con el trabajo, con un salario o con una posible prestación futura derivada del mismo. La indeterminación legal de los parámetros que configuran el reconocimiento de una situación de invalidez deriva, en situaciones de compatibilidad difíciles de justificar. Sin duda la más sorprendente es la prácticamente absoluta compatibilidad de la situación de incapacidad permanente absoluta y de gran invalidez con el trabajo, según la doctrina configurada por el Tribunal Supremo. También hay dificultad para revisar el grado de incapacidad reconocido, puesto que la misma ha de ajustarse a los motivos tasados por el legislador. CONCLUSIONES: - Delimitar el concepto de profesión habitual de una forma de manera que se amplíe desde el marco reducido de las funciones al más amplio del grupo profesional o, cuando menos, al que habilita al empresario para efectuar la movilidad funcional. - Modificar las actuales causas de revisión de la invalidez posibilitando que la mejoría también pueda ser considerada desde la perspectiva profesional, bien por la adaptación y rehabilitación funcional posterior o bien porque las modificaciones de los procesos productivos modifiquen la capacidad profesional inicialmente determinada. - Determinar en supuestos de nuevo trabajo si es compatible con las limitaciones funcionales objetivadas e impedir así el desempeño de trabajos con requerimientos similares o superiores a los que provocaron el reconocimiento de la situación de IPT. - Suspender la pensión de IPT en el supuesto de que el beneficiario de la misma simultaneé su percibo con el desempeño de la misma profesión, o funciones, o de otras que exijan los mismos requerimientos que aquella para la que fue declarado inválido. - Vincular la declaración de IPT a planes de formación para la búsqueda de empleo y rehabilitación ocupacional, asociando el percibo de la prestación por IPT a la búsqueda activa de empleo mediante la obligatoriedad de participar en programas de formación destinados a facilitar la reincorporación a la vida laboral activa. - Valoración de la incidencia de la edad y la formación en el reconocimiento de las situaciones de incapacidad permanente. - Profundizar en el análisis del paralelismo o correlación entre las prestaciones de desempleo y de IPT

Determining the usual profession it is configured as one of the key parts of the system by which the declaration of permanent disability is governed. It is because it determines both the origin of the initial declaration of invalidity, fundamentally in the total permanent disability, such as support of it once awarded the job, with a salary or a possible future benefit arising therefrom. The legal uncertainty of the parameters that make up the recognition of a situation of invalidity stems in difficult situations justify compatibility. Undoubtedly the most striking is the almost complete compatibility of the situation of absolute permanent disability and severe disability to work, according to the doctrine set by the Supreme Court. There is also difficulty revising the recognized degree of disability, since it must comply with the reasons assessed by the legislature. CONCLUSIONS: - Define the concept of habitual profession in a way so that it extends from the small part of the broader functions of the professional group or at least, which enables the employer to make functional mobility. - Modify the current review of the causes of disability enabling the improvement also can be considered from the professional perspective, either by post or adaptation and functional rehabilitation because changes in production processes initially determined modify the professional capacity. - Determine in cases of new job if it is compatible with the objectified functional limitations and thus prevent the performance of similar or higher work requirements that led to the recognition of the status of IPT. - Suspend IPT pension in the event that the beneficiary of the juggled her perceive with the performance of the same profession, or functions, or other requiring the same requirements as that for which was declared invalid. - Linking statement IPT training plans for job search and occupational rehabilitation, associating collect the benefit for IPT to active job search by mandatory to participate in training programs to facilitate the return to life active labor. - Assessment of the impact of age and training in recognizing situations of permanent disability. - Deepen the parallelism analysis or correlation between unemployment benefits and IPT

[Arduous working conditions for beginners: when workplace prevention becomes an economic risk]. / La pénibilité pour les nuls : quand la prévention au travail devient un risque économique.

The French law of 20.01.2014 recently instituted an arduous working conditions allowance. This innovated legislation is designed to improve the status of workers subject to arduous working conditions either by allowing lighter work schedules or job reclassification or early retirement. The impact of arduous working conditions on health has been clearly established, but no consensual solution has yet been proposed. Life expectancy without disability can differ by as much as 9 years between higher executives and manual workers, but the proposed solutions comprise a multitude of perverse effects. Workers may benefit from maintaining their arduous working conditions in order to preserve their right to early retirement. Companies do not necessarily have the desire or the resources to invest in prevention, which is the only consensually accepted effective measure, if they are also required to finance both training and retirement. In particular, management of the arduous working conditions allowance is very complex and entirely financed by companies. Consequently, company productivity can be impacted, leading to transfers of company headquarters, outsourcing to interim workers, replacement of jobs by automation. Unemployment could be the big winner of this conflict. Politically, arduous working conditions allowance appears to be very difficult to put into practice and can be considered to be more a promise by the government to the left and to the trade unions.

Psychiatric legal investigation for sickness benefits due to disability at the Brazilian Federal Social Security Special Court in Florianópolis, capital city of the State of Santa Catarina, southern Brazil.

OBJECTIVE: To describe the profile of insured individuals that filed claims for sickness benefits and compare the results of the administrative and legal investigations. METHOD: This case series included 114 insured persons that filed lawsuits against the Brazilian National Institute of Social Security (Instituto Nacional de Seguridade Social, INSS). They underwent psychiatric examinations required by the Brazilian Federal Social Security Special Court in Florianópolis from August to December 2010. RESULTS: Mean age was 47 years, and participant age ranged from 24 to 64 years. Most insured individuals were women (79%), and most were employed (67.5%) and self-employed (26.5%) workers. Mean contribution time was 99.9 months, ranging from 8 to 352 months. Mean benefit duration was 20.4 months, ranging from 2 to 97 months. The most prevalent category of workers was service workers, store and supermarket salespeople (54.4%), followed by administrative workers (19.3%). CONCLUSIONS: Only 17 participants were found to be unable to work after benefit cessation, a 14.9% mismatch between administrative and legal investigations. The most frequent diagnoses were mood disorders (59.6%) and anxiety disorders (17.5%).

Psychiatric legal investigation for sickness benefits due to disability at the Brazilian Federal Social Security Special Court in Florianópolis, capital city of the State of Santa Catarina, southern Brazil / Perícias judiciais psiquiátricas em benefícios por incapacidade no Juizado Especial Federal Previdenciário de Florianópolis, capital do estado de Santa Catarina, sul do Brasil

Objective: To describe the profile of insured individuals that filed claims for sickness benefits and compare the results of the administrative and legal investigations. Method: This case series included 114 insured persons that filed lawsuits against the Brazilian National Institute of Social Security (Instituto Nacional de Seguridade Social, INSS). They underwent psychiatric examinations required by the Brazilian Federal Social Security Special Court in Florianópolis from August to December 2010. Results: Mean age was 47 years, and participant age ranged from 24 to 64 years. Most insured individuals were women (79%), and most were employed (67.5%) and self-employed (26.5%) workers. Mean contribution time was 99.9 months, ranging from 8 to 352 months. Mean benefit duration was 20.4 months, ranging from 2 to 97 months. The most prevalent category of workers was service workers, store and supermarket salespeople (54.4%), followed by administrative workers (19.3%). Conclusions: Only 17 participants were found to be unable to work after benefit cessation, a 14.9% mismatch between administrative and legal investigations. The most frequent diagnoses were mood disorders (59.6%) and anxiety disorders (17.5%). .

Objetivo: Descrever o perfil dos segurados que requerem benefícios por incapacidade e comparar os resultados das perícias administrativas e judiciais. Método: Esta série de casos incluiu 114 segurados que buscaram a justiça contra o Instituto Nacional de Seguridade Social (INSS). Os participantes foram submetidos a perícia psiquiátrica exigida pelo Juizado Especial Federal em Florianópolis, entre agosto e dezembro de 2010. Resultados: A idade média dos participantes foi de 47 anos, variando de 24 a 64 anos. A maioria dos segurados era do sexo feminino (79%) e era empregada (67,5%) ou autônoma (26,5%). O tempo médio de contribuição foi de 99,9 meses, variando de 8 até 352 meses. A duração média dos benefícios foi de 20,4 meses, com mínimo de 2 e máximo de 97 meses. A categoria mais prevalente foi de trabalhadores no setor de serviços e vendedores de lojas e supermercados (54,4%), seguida por trabalhadores em atividades administrativas (19,3%). Conclusão: Apenas 17 participantes foram considerados incapazes de trabalhar após o término do benefício, uma diferença de 14,9% entre as perícias administrativa e judicial. Os diagnósticos mais frequentes foram transtornos de humor (59,6%) e transtornos de ansiedade (17,5%). .

Steel barrier: legal implications from a gender equal opportunity perspective / Barreras de acero: implicaciones legales desde una perspectiva de género e igualdad de oportunidades

In recent decades, legal Acts, norms, and regulations have proliferated in order to ensure equal opportunities for women and men in multiple contexts, including public and private organizations. Nevertheless, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that, to date, real and legal equality do not match. The current context of the global economy suggests that there may now be a new barrier, related to the fact that women have been partially excluded from positions abroad which would facilitate the acquisition of professional and personal skills which are essential in the present century. This new inequality in access to senior management seems to be in contradiction with the different pressures and initiatives put in place to achieve equality of opportunities between women and men, protected in our national and international laws. In this paper, the main causes excluding women from international assignments, and consequently from senior management, are reviewed, highlighting the motivational and legal aftereffects that this trend may have (AU)

En las últimas décadas han proliferado diversas disposiciones legales y normativas con el objetivo de garantizar la igualdad de oportunidades entre mujeres y hombres en múltiples contextos, entre ellos el que atañe a las organizaciones públicas y privadas. Pese a ello, existe suficiente evidencia de que la igualdad real no se acerca, hasta la fecha, a la legal. El contexto actual de economía globalizada sugiere que puede aparecer una nueva barrera, al quedar la mujer excluida parcialmente de puestos en el extranjero que le facilitan la adquisición de capacidades profesionales y personales imprescindibles en el siglo actual. Esta nueva desigualdad en el acceso a puestos de alta dirección no parece responder a las distintas presiones e iniciativas por conseguir la igualdad de oportunidades entre hombres y mujeres, protegida en nuestro ordenamiento jurídico nacional e internacional. En este trabajo revisamos las principales causas que alejan a la mujer de los puestos internacionales y, en consecuencia, de la alta dirección, resaltando las derivaciones motivacionales y legales que dicha tendencia pudiese tener (AU)

High-end food, low-wage labor.

Some people work in restaurants as a lifestyle choice: they love the fast pace, the quick jokes, the often easy-flowing booze. At the height of a busy shift, if everything's going right, a team of skilled cooks and waiters can enter a kind of adrenaline-fueled flow state that's hypnotic and addictive. Some people choose it because they got burned out as grad students or software engineers or attorneys. Some people work in restaurants to make money until they graduate or get their big break in show business. It can be lucrative, especially for young, good-looking, and agile waiters, working for a great employer in a big city, where customers practically fight for the chance to buy expensive wines and $50 entrées and truffle supplements from the latest hotspot.

My health and theirs: clients constructing meanings for a health service programme for unemployed people.

Health care research has been more interested in identifying reasons why people do not participate in health interventions than in trying to understand the reasons why they do. This study examined how unemployed people position themselves with regard to a new health service which was set up as part of an institutional strategy for delivering and enabling their access to health care. Positioning theory was used as a methodological framework to analyse participants' responses to the novel health service. The focus was on two main issues: the way clients' positions are established through discourse, and the range of factors that come into play in determining those positions. The analysis revealed six positions unemployed people use when encountering the studied service: the docile citizen, the rebel, the socially responsible citizen, the distinctive individual, the independent actor and the calculating client. These positions and associated discourses display the different sets of rights and duties of the client and simultaneously define the positions of the service. While illustrating how a health service engaged with the ideology of equality is integrated into the value framework of the clients, the findings contribute to the ongoing debate on need of particular health services for unemployed people.

[Problems stemming from recently revised government standard for job-induced mental disorders in the future].

On December 26, 2011 the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare issued a new standard in the Workers' Compensation Law for Job-Induced Mental Disorders. The standard provides new guidelines for determining the degree to which conditions in the workplace bring on stress that results in mental disorders in workers. One case study will be discussed. An employee developed a mood disorder resulting in prolonged sick leave because of overly severe scaldings and warnings from the boss. The employee applied for workers' compensation 7 years after the incident and after the implementation of the new Workers' Compensation Law. I will discuss how the new law allows workers to claim compensation for work-induced mental disorders that happened before the law came into effect.

The value of an employment-based green card.

The need for and role of highly skilled immigrant workers in the U.S. economy is fiercely debated. Proponents and opponents agree that temporary foreign workers are paid a lower wage than are natives. This lower wage partly originates from the restricted mobility of workers while on a temporary visa. In this article, we estimate the wage gain to employment-based immigrants from acquiring permanent U.S. residency. We use data from the New Immigrant Survey (2003) and implement a difference-in-difference propensity score matching estimator. We find that for employer-sponsored immigrants, the acquisition of a green card leads to an annual wage gain of about $11,860.

Becoming farmers: opening spaces for women's resource control in Calakmul, Mexico.

Despite empirical findings on women's varied and often extensive participation in smallholder agriculture in Latin America, their participation continues to be largely invisible. In this article, I argue that the intransigency of farming women's invisibility reflects, in part, a discursive construction of farmers as men. Through a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods, including interviews with one hundred women in Calakmul, Mexico, I demonstrate the material implications of gendered farmer identities for women's control of resources, including land and conservation and development project resources. In particular, I relate the activities of one women's agricultural community-based organization and the members' collective adoption of transgressive identities as farmers. For these women, the process of becoming farmers resulted in increased access to and control over resources. This empirical case study illustrates the possibility of women's collective action to challenge and transform women's continued local invisibility as agricultural actors in rural Latin American spaces.

Limited access: gender, occupational composition, and flexible work scheduling.

The current study draws on national data to explore differences in access to flexible work scheduling by the gender composition of women's and men's occupations. Results show that those who work in integrated occupations are more likely to have access to flexible scheduling. Women and men do not take jobs with lower pay in return for greater access to flexibility. Instead, jobs with higher pay offer greater flexibility. Integrated occupations tend to offer the greatest access to flexible scheduling because of their structural locations. Part-time work is negatively associated with men's access to flexible scheduling but positively associated with women's access. Women have greater flexibility when they work for large establishments, whereas men have greater flexibility when they work for small establishments.

Standardizing the home?: Women reformers and domestic service in New Deal New York.

In response to the poor working conditions suffered by domestics struggling to survive the Depression, middle-class women's organizations initiated various legislative reforms aimed at tackling the problems they believed plagued the occupation. Throughout these years, organized women debated three key pieces of reform related to domestic service: efforts to suppress street-corner markets, health requirements for prospective domestics, and state-level wage and hour reform. These reforms were united by the rhetoric of privacy, which clubwomen used both to oppose wage and hour reform and to support requirements that domestics have physicals before applying for work. This article examines the fine distinction that middle-class women's organizations drew between public and private in the appropriate application of government power and the resulting conflict between progressive women's gender ideology and their most deeply-held reform ideals. In doing so, it reveals organized women's struggle to reconcile their humane ideals with the reality in their kitchens.

Economic advice as a vocation: symbioses of scientific and political authority.

Academic economists perform an important function in advising politicians and state bureaucrats, lending them epistemological authority. This creates a challenge of institutional design and of professional vocation, of how these experts can combine their commitment to scientific analysis with their commitment towards their governmental patrons. This article examines the case of anti-trust economics, in which government economists are encouraged to remain as academically engaged as possible, so that their advice will be - or appear to be - unpolluted by political or bureaucratic pressures. Yet this ideal is constantly compromised by the fact that the economists are nevertheless government employees, working beneath lawyers. Max Weber's concept of a 'vocation' is adopted to explore this tension, and his two lectures, 'Science as a Vocation' and 'Politics as a Vocation' are read side by side, to consider this core dilemma of academic policy advisors.

Abner Doubleday, Marc Bloch, and the cultural significance of baseball in rural America.

In 1907 baseball's promoters decreed that Civil War hero Abner Doubleday created the game in the village of Cooperstown, New York, in 1839. Baseball thus acquired a distinctly rural American origin and a romantic pastoral appeal. Skeptics have since presented irrefutable evidence that America's pastime was neither born in the United States nor was a product of rural life. But in their zeal to debunk the myth of baseball's rural beginnings, historians have fallen prey to what Annales School founder Marc Bloch famously called the "idol of origins," and all but neglected the very real phenomenon of rural baseball itself. The claim that baseball has always been "a city game for city men" does not stand up to empirical scrutiny anymore than the Doubleday myth itself, as this address demonstrates with three case studies -- Cooperstown in the 1830s, Davisville, California, in the 1880s, and Milroy, Minnesota, in the 1950s. Baseball may have been a source of rural nostalgia for city people, but it was the sport of choice for farmers and a powerful cultural agent.

Domestic relations in Brazil: legacies and horizons.

Grounded in literature review and an ethnographic study, this article examines contemporary Brazilian domestic life. Relations among women (employers and maids) and between women and men are analyzed with a focus on the home as a space in which gender, race, and class inequalities are constantly reproduced. The article argues that what happens in domestic life is constitutive of wider social divisions and that the domestic is a universe integral to the national social context. A case in point is the connection between the widespread use of paid domestic labor and the naturalization of black women as subservient, complementing the pairing of whiteness and class entitlement. Another case is the buffering role of maids in the development of gender conflicts in well-off homes, thus blurring gender hierarchies at a broader scale. Locating the domestic within the recent discussion on global domestic labor, the article compares particularities of Brazilian domestic life to those elsewhere.

Occupational classification in the South African census before ISCO-58.

The population census is one of the major statistics gathering exercises undertaken by the state, when information on a wide range of personal attributes is demanded. None is more problematic than occupation, which, for clarity, requires the subsequent simplification and classification of the myriad of self-descriptions collected. Nowhere is this more evident than in South Africa before 1958. Conflict between British imperial directives and local peculiarities, notably the issue of race, resulted in the adoption of widely fluctuating classification schemes. Consequently, direct comparisons between the published occupational statistics of successive enumerations are highly problematic, if not impossible.