Clerical Workers Research Articles

Socio-Demographic Composition and Potential Occupational Exposure to SARS-CoV2 under Routine Working Conditions among Key Workers in France.

This study aims to describe the socio-demographic profile of so-called “key workers” during the first lockdown in France and to assess their potential occupational exposure to SARS-CoV-2 under routine, pre-pandemic working conditions. We used the French list of essential jobs that was issued during the first lockdown to identify three subgroups of key workers (hospital healthcare, non-hospital healthcare, non-healthcare). Based on the population-based “Conditions de travail-2019” survey, we described the socio-demographic composition of key workers and their potential work-related exposures (to “infectious agents,” “face-to-face contact with the public,” and “working with colleagues”) using modified Poisson regression. In general, women, clerical and manual workers, workers on temporary contracts, those with lower education and income, and non-European immigrants were more likely to be key workers, who accounted for 22% of the active population. Non-healthcare essential workers (57%) were the most socially disadvantaged, while non-hospital healthcare workers (19%) were polarized at both extremes of the social scale; hospital healthcare workers (24%) were intermediate. Compared to non-key workers, all subgroups had greater exposure to infectious agents and more physical contact with the public. This study provides evidence of accumulated disadvantages among key workers concerning their social background, geographical origin, and potential SARS-CoV-2 exposure.

Decreasing boarders in the emergency department by reducing clerical work in the discharge process of in-hospital patients in Brazil – an interrupted time-series analysis

BackgroundEmergency Department (ED) boarding is related to in-hospital patients' discharge since no beds will be available for receiving ED patients if there is a delay for patients in the yard leaving the hospital. New techniques implemented in hospital institutions, such as digital signatures to facilitate clerical work improve these processes. We evaluated the impact of expediting patients' discharge after medical orders with the number of patients with an unplanned hospital admission from the Hospital Out Clinic directed to ED for waiting for an available bed in a public tertiary hospital in Brazil.MethodsWe conducted a quasi-experimental study before and after an intervention. It consisted of an encrypted digital signature to reduce clerical work and expedite the patient's release from the institution after medical discharge. We used an interrupted time-series analysis based on administrative data (number of hospital discharges, bed turnover, the time between medical discharge, and the time the patient effectively left the hospital) from 2011 to 2020.ResultsWe enrolled 210,496 patients admitted to the hospital from January 2011 to December 2020. Of those, 69,897(33%) composed the group after the intervention. There was no difference between the groups' gender, age distribution, the proportion of surgical patients, or in-hospital stay (≤ 7 or > 7 days). The interrupted time series analysis for the time from medical order to effectively hospital discharge showed an immediate change in level (Coefficient β2 -3.6 h—95% confidence interval -3.9;-3.4), but no a difference in the slope of the behavior of the post-intervention curve (β3 0.0005 coefficient—95% confidence interval -0.0040;0.0050). For the number of patients directed to ED, we observed no immediate change in level (Coefficient β2 -0.84 patients—95% confidence interval -0.33;0.16), but a difference in the slope of the behavior of the post-intervention curve (β3 0.0005 coefficient—95% confidence interval -0.0040;0.0050).ConclusionReducing clerical work and expediting patient discharge was associated with decreased potential boarders to ED.

“Oh to Be Twenty-one, Reading Greats at Oxford!”: What Happens in Tom Stoppard’s The Invention of Love

Abstract Tom Stoppard’s play The Invention of Love stages the classical scholar and poet A.E. Housman at the point of death, as, in the role “AEH,” he recalls his younger self, “Housman.” “Housman” is seen as an Oxford undergraduate; he is a brilliant classicist, driven by ambition to purge ancient texts from corrupt readings; he is also fired by love for a male fellow-student, Jackson, and by a vision of Classical studies as fostering an awareness of ancient virtue shown in athletic prowess and comradely self-sacrifice. His Oxford milieu offers ambiguous support for this combination of ideals; as a clerical worker in London, he fulfils his academic ambitions but forces upon himself and Jackson the recognition that his love is not reciprocated, and, in any case, could not safely be given public expression or acknowledgement. “AEH,” driven by a sense of nostalgia which is also a quest to recover and resurrect his former self, is increasingly led to confront love, in his own life and in the poetic texts upon which he has worked, as an invention – a precarious and perhaps unsustainable balance between coherence and breakdown, between a stoical embrace of modernity and a passionately modern turn to a receding past.

Telework potential in the Philippines

AbstractUsing work from home (WFH) scores obtained by matching Philippine occupations with U.S. O*NET occupations, this paper estimates that only 12.38% of all workers can WFH and 25.7% of Philippine occupations are teleworkable––mostly from the following occupational groups: professionals, clerical support workers, and technicians and associate professionals. The education, real estate and, professional, scientific and technical sectors account for the largest share of teleworkable jobs. Those workers belonging to lower per capita income deciles, who are male, who have lower levels of education, who are self-employed, aged 55 and older, and who are working in sectors such as agriculture and retail, are also less likely to be in teleworkable occupations.

Immigration and Offshoring: two forces of globalisation and their impact on employment and the bargaining power of occupational groups

This paper estimates conditional demand models to examine the impact of immigration and different measures of offshoring on the labour demand and demand elasticities of native workers in four different types of occupational groups: managers/professionals, clerical workers, craft (skilled) workers and manual workers. The analysis is conducted for the period 2008–2017 for four economies Austria, Belgium, France and Spain. Our results point to important and occupation-specific direct and indirect effects: both offshoring – particularly services offshoring – and immigration have negative direct employment effects on all occupations, but native clerks and manual workers are affected the most, and native managers/professionals the least. Our results also identify an important elasticity-channel of immigration and offshoring and show that some groups of native workers can also gain from globalisation through an improvement in their wage-bargaining position. Overall, our results indicate a deterioration in the bargaining power of native manual workers arising from both immigration and offshoring and an improvement in the bargaining position of native craft workers.

К ВОПРОСУ О СТАНОВЛЕНИИ И РАЗВИТИИ ГРАЖДАНСКОГО ПРОЦЕССА В РУССКОМ ПРАВЕ IX–XV ВВ.

The article reveals the issues of the formation and development of civil procedure law in medieval Russia on the basis of various historical and legal sources and the works of Russian, Soviet and modern scientists. The relevance of the work lies in the fact that this problem remains insufficiently investigated to date due to the small number of works devoted directly to the civil process in the Old Russian state and Northwestern Russia during the period of feudal fragmentation. The novelty of the study is associated with the identification of some new features of civil proceedings and a new interpretation of existing provisions. The methodology used in the course of the study includes dialectical, comparative-historical, formal, logical and hermeneutic methods that allowed us to consider the formation of civil procedure law in its development and its relationship with the phenomena of socioeconomic life, compare historical and legal sources of various periods of medieval statehood, analyze these sources and interpret them. In the course of the study, it was revealed that the formation of civil proceedings was closely connected with the judicial system of Ancient Russia, Novgorod and Pskov. It is determined that, despite the unity of the criminal and civil proceedings in the Kievan state, some differences have already been observed in them. The procedural legal capacity of participants in civil proceedings in Kiev and North-Western Russia has been established. The duality of the judicial system and the separate jurisdiction of the princely and republican judicial bodies in Novgorod and Pskov were revealed and new stages of civil proceedings were established. Conclusions: in Ancient Russia, due to the underdevelopment of commodity-money relations, only the beginnings of the formation of judicial power and civil proceedings were observed. During the period of feudal fragmentation in economically developed Novgorod and Pskov, the judicial system and civil procedure law received significant development. Along with the immutability of the principle of the adversarial process, many new provisions have appeared in it. Women, elderly people and children were given the right to present their representatives at the trial, there were rules on the public summoning of the defendant to court, the process became closed, oral clerical work was replaced by written, the evidence base expanded due to a judicial duel and written evidence.

Paperwork: Conceptual Art and the Pink-Collar Worker

This article charts an alternative history of Conceptual art via the work of three artists who imported aspects of the administrative “paperwork” they employed in their day jobs into their artistic practices. Despite Conceptual art’s much-discussed “aesthetic of administration,” the movement has not been extensively analyzed in relation to the changing conditions of clerical work in the United States during the postwar period. By the 1960s, administrative work had shifted from a white-collar to a “pink-collar” profession, confounding previous categorizations of labor and social class. This restructuring meant that women artists, and increasingly women of color, were far more likely to have firsthand experience of low-level administrative work than their male counterparts. The work of Rosemarie Castoro, Howardena Pindell, and Adrian Piper foregrounds issues of labor, materiality, and embodiment often overlooked in Conceptual art and its critical reception. This article argues for the particularity of the Conceptual strategies adopted by these women artists—not on the basis of gender essentialism but owing to the social conditions produced by the dramatic restructuring of administrative labor in which they participated.

STATE ADMINISTRATION OF THE YARENSKY UYEZD IN THE TRANSITION PERIOD FROM THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE NEW TIME (LATE XVII - FIRST HALF OF XVIII)

The article deals with the state administration of the Yarensky uyezd in the transition period from the Middle Ages to the New time: the end of the 17 - first half of the 18 century. At that time, the management system of Prikazes was being replaced by the collegiate one, which had to radically change the civil service. By conducting it, the central government complicated management tasks, increased the flow of documents, regulated the activities of lower levels of the apparatus, etc. However, due to a number of circumstances, there were no changes. The reason was the unwillingness of the management apparatus, both local and volost, to comply with the rules established by the beginning of the 18 century. The lack of systematic training of clerical personnel, the general low educational level of officialdom led to the fact that clerical work did not depend on what document an official worked with (personal, judicial, personnel, and others), but on the duration of clerk’s stay in the Prikaz service. The central government was not ready to organize the transformation of the entire civil service and was not ready to implement new principles, which led to the inability to ensure the effective functioning of the government. The Prikaz-voivodeship system remained the basis of the administrative structure of the empire, existing and interacting with the collegiate system represented in the higher administrative bodies. For Yarensky Uyezd, the period of the end of the 17 - first half of the 18 century can be defined as the period of interaction and mutual influence of the Prikaz-based and collegiate principles of the organization of power. The modernization impulses coming from the center were still very weak, but they subsequently led to the formation of new management models in the territory under study.

Hard Pill to Swallow: Socio-economic Factors behind Non communicable Diseases of Employed Persons in Sri Lanka

Non-communicable diseases shorten the life expectancy and pave the way for an increase in the mortality and state of disabilities in humans while it has become a global challenge, with the present epidemic transition. Most of the lower and middle-income countries, including Sri Lanka, are currently giving priority to this issue in their respective health policies. The main objective of this research was to study socio-economic factors that affect the prevalence of non-communicable diseases among employed persons in general, with a special focus on two selected diseases. Micro-level secondary data from the Household Income and Expenditure Survey of Sri Lanka 2016 was used for this study. The Logit regression models were used for data analysis with the dependent variables for the prevalence of non-communicable diseases, having diabetes, and blood pressure. The study has found that factors of age, being female, and being Indian Tamil persons, positively affected the occurrence of non-communicable diseases; while factors like living in the rural and estate sector, age square, being clerical workers, elementary workers, and agriculture workers affected it negatively. Profession-specific policies are further suggested to minimize the negative implications of non-communicable diseases in Sri Lanka.

Do wage increases help? Wage increases and material hardships among low-wage hospital workers

ABSTRACT This study examines whether and how wage increases are associated with hardships experienced by low-wage workers and their strategies to manage these hardships. Data are drawn from a survey of 166 hospital service, clerical, and technical workers at a large hospital in Southwestern Pennsylvania. Following an initial wage increase, workers experienced fewer hardships and used fewer strategies to make ends meet, such as financial support from family and public benefits programs. Hardships decreased more for workers making above $15 an hour. These results suggest that raising the wages of low-wage workers can help reduce the hardships they experience and the need to use a variety of strategies to make ends meet.

“We Were Democracy Mad:” Clerical Workers’ Unionism, Antiracism, and Feminism at the University of California, Berkeley, 1966–1972

In April 1968, two Berkeley campus unions—the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Local 1695 representing clerical, technical, and professional workers, and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) Local 1570 representing graduate students—held a work-stoppage and a teach-in on “campus racism” to honor the memory of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. who had been tragically assassinated in Memphis. Inspired by King's work and the AFSCME sanitation workers strike that he supported, the teach-in became a series of workshops that ultimately led to the development of a “white paper” with statistical data highlighting the ways the university harbored racism in its employment practices and in its admission of undergraduate and graduate students. Among its many demands, it called for the University: “to hire black, brown and red workers until the ratio of employees from these groups equals the ratio in the population; bring minority student enrollment and employment up to population ratios . . . publish the University census report showing the percentage of black, brown, and red employees by department; and make an additional report showing the classifications and promotions of black, brown, and red people in each department.”

Medical Scribe Impact on Provider Efficiency in Outpatient Radiation Oncology Clinics Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Purpose/Objectives: Medical documentation has become increasingly challenging for providers, particularly with changes to telemedicine visit formats during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Medical scribes may help mitigate this burden. Our objective was to determine how scribes affect provider efficiency during the COVID-19 pandemic.Materials/Methods: Providers completed a survey in February 2020 (S1, prepandemic) and 1 year into the COVID-19 pandemic in February 2021 (S2, during pandemic). S1 evaluated perceived impact of scribes on clerical work, medical documentation, and efficiency during office visits using the Likert scale. S2 also addressed scribe use during telemedicine visits. Provider time spent on documentation with or without a scribe was evaluated using a five-level ordinal scale. Provider response was assessed using descriptive frequency statistics. Fisher's exact test was used to compare categorical variables. Analysis was performed using SAS version 9.4 (SAS Institute, Inc., Cary, NC). All tests were two sided with an alpha level of 0.05.Results: Fifty-eight providers responded to the surveys: 36 (62%) for S1 and 22 (38%) for S2. Scribe use decreased perceived clerical work and facilitated chart review, and recording of physical examination findings, note documentation, and improved efficiency, both before and during the pandemic (p = 0.5, p = 0.7, p = 0.8, p = 0.8, p = 0.9, respectively). Scribe use significantly decreased time to complete documentation prepandemic (p = 0.002) and during the pandemic for both in-person (p ≤ 0.0001) and telemedicine visits (p = 0.0004). More providers took >60 min to complete medical documentation without the use of a scribe prepandemic (72% vs. 30% with a scribe, p = 0.006) and during the pandemic, after both in-person (40% vs. 0% with a scribe, p = 0.002) and telemedicine visits (35% vs. 0% with a scribe, p = 0.002).Conclusions: Scribe use decreases provider time spent on medical documentation and improves overall efficiency before and during the COVID-19 pandemic for both in-person and telemedicine visits. Integration of scribes into radiation oncology in-person and telemedicine clinics may improve provider satisfaction by reducing burden of documentation.

The Grand Challenges in Information Systems

The field of information systems has historically suffered from a pre-dominance of behavioral approaches. As a result, it is not surprising that in spite of decades of research, dozens of conferences and journals and thousands of researchers, very few breakthroughs have been achieved. This paper advocates a technical approach that focuses on improving existing systems in organizations by viewing them from the point of roles i.e. functions fulfilled by IS in organizations. These are understood as: 1) supporting operations, 2) providing information, 3) supporting decision making, 4) providing knowledge, 5) supporting knowledge and clerical work, and 6) supporting organizational design. It is generally agreed that the field’s understanding of fulfilling roles “1”, “2”, “3” and “6” is mature while understanding of areas “3” (for unstructured decisions), “4”, and “5” are still incomplete. The challenges in these areas are difficult problems that we refer to as grand challenges and discuss in this paper.

My Journey in Red Cross .....till adjudged the Best in the Nation with President of India’s Gold Medal

This write-up talks about my journey in Red Cross in Nizamabad District. What started initially as an extracurricular activity, became a full-time job. We have conducted several Health camps, and I was given the responsibility to establish Blood Bank under the aegis of the Red Cross without any clerical staff working under me. I have taken inspiration from many great personalities and with the support of many eminent people, I have received the National Red Cross Gold Medal from the President of India, which was the first one for the newly carved out Telangana State in recognition of the consistent vibrant Red Cross activity led by Her Excellency Dr. Tamilisai Soundararajan and by all the efforts of Red Cross Volunteers in the State of Telangana since long. Most importantly, I have immense satisfaction of serving the deserved sections of the society without any bias with the seven core principles of Red Cross.

国士舘大学における外国人留学生の日本文化教育の取り組み

In recent years, many Japanese companies that have set up overseas operations have occasionally experienced yield rate issues at their respective local production plants. When the company provides guidance for improvement, local workers sometimes resign from their jobs, which has become a problem. One of the reasons for this is that local workers do not understand the spirit of Japanese-style manufacturing (“monozukuri”). This is true not only for technical workers but also for clerical workers, as evidenced, for example, by conference interpreters who are unable to convey the correct message to the interested parties. Mutual cross-cultural understanding is a key to solving these problems.

Деревянное церковное зодчество Онежского Поморья: источниковедческий и историографический аспекты

The article is devoted to the history of studying the architecture of the Onega Gulf of the White Sea. The description of the area is already found in travel notes of the 16th century, but the monuments of wooden architecture of this region were introduced into wide scientific circulation only in the late 1880s by academician V. V. Suslov. In addition, the historiography of the theme of wooden church architecture of the Onega Pomerania was accompanied by the research and publication of sources, on the basis of which their critical assessment was later based. So, the Archaeological Commission in 1911 published a list of churches in the Onega district in the “Description of monuments of Russian Architecture in the provinces”. The study of the architectural heritage of the Onega Seaboard was resumed only at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, when the publications of I. B. Purishev, Yu. S. Ushakov, and M. I. Milchik were published almost simultaneously. Their articles and essays, along with materials published in the pre-revolutionary years, formed a solid basis for further scientific research in the 2010s, which presented the construction history and contextual analysis of temples in Unezhma, Purnema, Iur’eva Gora, Nimen’ga, Liamtsa, Pushlakhta and Letniaia Zolotitsa. On the basis of written sources (including unpublished materials of the Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts, the Moscow Kremlin Museums, the St. Petersburg Institute of History of the Russian Academy of Sciences) a significant body of archival primary sources on the history of wooden church building in the Onega Gulf of the White Sea, related to monastic clerical work, state accounting materials, documents of diocesan administration bodies, was identified. At the present stage, the main research approach can be called the expansion of the factual base due to, first, the introduction into scientific circulation of previously unknown documents clarifying the construction history of a particular object; secondly, the appeal to the restoration materials of the Soviet era, containing correspondence, drawings, projects and measurements of the 1950s and 1980s; thirdly, the series of expeditions, the results of which are detailed measurements of monuments and graphic reconstructions. The reported study was funded by RFBR, project number № 20-012-00356.

Патриаршество Петра IV и Дамиана как время генезиса Коптской Церкви: проблемы и предлагаемые решения

Introduction. The article examines a recently put forward hypothesis that the time of the Coptic Church’s final genesis was the period of the Alexandrian anti-Chalcedonian Patriarchs Peter IV (576–578) and Damian (578–607). Methods. A comparative research method and factor analysis are used. The main research task is to identify all the factors that contributed to the making of full-fledged ecclesiastical structures by the Theodosians (one of the trends of the Egyptian Miaphysites), and a correlation of these factors with each other to single out the main of them. Analysis. The successful establishment of the Miaphysites (Theodosian) episcopate resulted from the configuration of objective and subjective factors. Objective factors include the following: the weakening of control by the central authorities over the structures of the Miaphysites after Justinian I (482/483–565), the increasing regionalization of the empire and the strengthening of the role of local elites in the provinces, the growing importance of the Coptic language in secular and clerical office work. Subjective factors include the victory of the Miaphysite Patriarch Peter IV over his rival Theodore and the appearance of Damian as Peter’s successor. Results. On the whole, the proposed hypothesis quite thoroughly explains the emergence of the Coptic Church during the period. However, it has several disadvantages, which open up a number of prospects for further researches. Firstly, there is almost no explanation for the success of Damian’s personnel policy. Secondly, insufficient attention was paid to the Egyptian anti-Chalcedonian monasticism. From the author’s point of view, Egyptian Miaphysite monks, suffering from the pressure of the central and local authorities after the Chalcedonian schism, managed to establish an effective network functioned as a “rhizome”, on which the episcopate risen during Peter’s and Damian’s time relied primarily in rebuilding stable ecclesiastical structures in Egypt.

Health and Nutritional Status of Children (0-6 Years age) in Rural Field Practice Area of Katihar Medical College

Introduction: India has a sizeable child population. The 2011 census in the first one in many decades which counted less absolute number of children in the 0-6 years age group compared to 2001 census count of 164 million children, there were 159 million children in 2011. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in the rural field practice area of Katihar Medical College situated around 5 km away from Katihar. A total of 600 under six children were approached for conducting the present study, of which 592 were interviewed and selected for the study. Results: Out of 592 children 216 (36.4%) children were exclusively breast feed. Further it was observed that majority i.e. 137 (63.43%) of the children were normal in whom exclusive breast feeding was practiced. It was observed that out of the 548 fully immunized for age children a maximum i.e. 288 (52.55%) were normal. Maximum i.e. 11 (73.33 %) of the unimmunized children were under nutrition. Majority of the children were less than 24 months of age, number of female children were slightly higher than male children. Majority of the children were Muslims followed by Hindus and only one child was Christian. Maximum number of children belonged to class IV followed by class III socio-economic class, according to modified Kuppuswamy classification. Discussion: According to occupation of the father and nutritional status. Majority of the fathers were involved in unskilled occupation or semiskilled occupation i.e. 356 (60.13%). Unemployed fathers had a higher proportion of under nutrition children 7(58.33%), followed by fathers involved in unskilled /semiskilled work 183(51.4%). Fathers involved in semi-professional/professional occupation had maximum proportion of normal children 7(77.78%). Conclusion: Majority of the children belonged to nuclear type of family. The literacy percentage was slightly higher in fathers than in mothers. Majority of fathers were labourers followed by clerical work or owned .....

Material Hardships, Perceived Stress, and Health among Low-Wage Hospital Workers.

Many service, clerical, and technical hospital workers deemed essential during the pandemic have wages that do not reflect the essential nature of their work and do not earn enough income to cover basic expenses. Thus, many experience material hardships related to food, housing, and medical care. Previous studies have shown strong relationships between material hardships and health; however, they do not fully explain the role of stress as an intervening mechanism. This cross-sectional study analyzes an online survey with 257 lower-wage hospital workers to examine the relationships between hardships and health, and how perceived stress mediates these relationships. Path analysis revealed that financial and food hardships were related to mental health through perceived stress, while medical hardship was directly associated with physical health. These findings add to the evidence that workers' hardships either directly or indirectly contribute to negative mental and physical health outcomes through perceived stress. Future investigations should further examine relationships among material hardships, stress, and health, and advocacy efforts should focus on raising wages for essential hospital workers.

Editor's Introduction

Editor's Introduction