Deteriorating Working Conditions in Us

During the past year we have devoted a number of blogs to discussing working conditions, as they currently exist in China, specifically at the Foxconn plant used to manufacture several Apple products. We’d now like to turn our attention to the rapidly deteriorating working conditions in the United States; first by enumerating briefly what we’ve already learned are contributing factors to unhealthy work in the U.S. and second by contrasting, combining, and complementing this knowledge with what is currently going on – for better or worse – in different workplaces across America.

So, what do we know contributes to or constitutes an unhealthy workplace?

For a very long time (over a hundred years now) chemical and physical exposures (e.g. heat, cold, dangerous working conditions) have been recognized as risk factors to the health of working people. This recognition resulted in a societal consensus in the passage of the OSHA Act in 1970 which regulates safety standards in U.S. workplaces and also marked the creation of our National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health which funds research into working conditions.

Despite efforts to improve the work environment from legislation like OSHA, illnesses and disability at work from many causes are on the rise. Part of this is due to the processes of globalization - the steadily increasing inter-dependency of world economics, production, trade, technology and culture – which is having an enormous impact on work, work organization and the health of working people (we have been discussing these issues in our reporting on Foxconn in earlier blogs). There is now increasing competition among nations and between corporations, as resources grow scarcer. The ongoing need for corporate profitability drives globalization, technology and changes in workplace organization resulting in more competition, restructuring and downsizing, outsourcing, more precarious labor and increased job insecurity, as well as increased time...