Prolonged Strike Research Articles

Proposed Solutions and Associated Problems Regarding the Shortage of Doctors in Essential Medical Fields

Recently, a sudden increase of 2,000 in the number of medical students has led to massive and prolonged strikes in medical fields. Although it remains controversial whether there is actually a shortage of doctors, many people, including physicians, agree that there is a shortage in essential medical fields. Recently, both the government and the Supreme Court have proposed several solutions in response to the problem. In this article, I would like to discuss the suggested solutions and their problems regarding the issue.

A retrospective study of the impact of health worker strikes on maternal and child health care utilization in western Kenya

BackgroundThere have been dozens of strikes by health workers in Kenya in the past decade, but there are few studies of their impact on maternal and child health services and outcomes. We conducted a retrospective survey study to assess the impact of nationwide strikes by health workers in 2017 on utilization of maternal and child health services in western Kenya.MethodsWe utilized a parent study to enroll women who were pregnant in 2017 when there were prolonged strikes by health workers (“strike group”) and women who were pregnant in 2018 when there were no major strikes (“control group”). Trained research assistants administered a close-ended survey to retrospectively collect demographic and pregnancy-related health utilization and outcomes data. Data were collected between March and July 2019. The primary outcomes of interest were antenatal care (ANC) visits, delivery location, and early child immunizations. Generalized estimating equations were used to estimate risk ratios between the strike and control groups, adjusting for socioeconomic status, health insurance status, and clustering. Adjusted risk ratios (ARR) were calculated with 95% confidence intervals (95%CI).ResultsOf 1341 women recruited in the parent study in 2017 (strike group), we re-consented 843 women (63%) to participate. Of 924 women recruited in the control arm of the parent study in 2018 (control group), we re-consented 728 women (79%). Women in the strike group were 17% less likely to attend at least four ANC visits during their pregnancy (ARR 0.83, 95%CI 0.74, 0.94) and 16% less likely to deliver in a health facility (ARR 0.84, 95%CI 0.76, 0.92) compared to women in the control group. Whether a child received their first oral polio vaccine did not differ significantly between groups, but children of women in the strike group received their vaccine significantly longer after birth (13 days versus 7 days, p = 0.002).ConclusionWe found that women who were pregnant during nationwide strikes by health workers in 2017 were less likely to receive WHO-recommended maternal child health services. Strategies to maintain these services during strikes are urgently needed.

Doctors Strike During COVID-19 Pandemic in Malaysia

Doctors Strike During COVID-19 Pandemic in Malaysia

The impact of clinical crisis management on trauma team outcomes following a prolonged strike by nursing, technical, and support staff.

There is a paucity of literature describing the preparation of hospital institutions prior to a nursing strike and the quality outcomes during and after a prolonged nursing strike. No published study was found describing the effects of a prolonged strike on quality outcomes specific to trauma patients. The American College of Surgeons (ACS) suggests specific critiques and complications data that each trauma program may choose to track as quality indicators, and those metrics are submitted to regional, state and national databanks and closely examined during site accreditations. This research study analyzed data from three equal time periods following a multiservices strike involving both nurses and service/technical staff lasting 63 days. The purposes of this study were to (1) evaluate the effects of prestrike organizational leadership and crisis management planning on organizational staffing and emergency management to reduce health care risk during the strike, (2) describe outcomes data from three equal time periods: prestrike, strike, and poststrike, and (3) specifically compare the trauma program's selected ACS trauma metrics for critiques and complication rates for our high-risk/high-volume population as a level 1 trauma center.

Prolonged health worker strikes in Kenya- perspectives and experiences of frontline health managers and local communities in Kilifi County

BackgroundWhile health worker strikes are experienced globally, the effects can be worst in countries with infrastructural and resource challenges, weak institutional arrangements, underdeveloped organizational ethics codes, and unaffordable alternative options for the poor. In Kenya, there have been a series of public health worker strikes in the post devolution period. We explored the perceptions and experiences of frontline health managers and community members of the 2017 prolonged health workers’ strikes.MethodsWe employed an embedded research approach in one county in the Kenyan Coast. We collected in-depth qualitative data through informal observations, reflective meetings, individual and group interviews and document reviews (n = 5), and analysed the data using a thematic approach. Individual interviews were held with frontline health managers (n = 26), and group interviews with community representatives (4 health facility committee member groups, and 4 broader community representative groups). Interviews were held during and immediately after the nurses’ strike.FindingsIn the face of major health facility and service closures and disruptions, frontline health managers enacted a range of strategies to keep key services open, but many strategies were piecemeal, inconsistent and difficult to sustain. Interviewees reported huge negative health and financial strike impacts on local communities, and especially the poor. There is limited evidence of improved health system preparedness to cope with any future strikes.ConclusionStrikes cannot be seen in isolation of the prevailing policy and health systems context. The 2017 prolonged strikes highlight the underlying and longer-term frustration amongst public sector health workers in Kenya. The health system exhibited properties of complex adaptive systems that are interdependent and interactive. Reactive responses within the public system and the use of private healthcare led to limited continued activity through the strike, but were not sufficient to confer resilience to the shock of the prolonged strikes. To minimise the negative effects of strikes when they occur, careful monitoring and advanced planning is needed. Planning should aim to ensure that emergency and other essential services are maintained, threats between staff are minimized, health worker demands are reasonable, and that governments respect and honor agreements.

Industrial Cluster Formation As A Strategy To Diversify A Sub-National Economy: Illustrations From South Africas North West Province

Economic modelling techniques can assist policy makers to understand the effects of policy or external shocks and to make informed decisions about economic development programmes. Economic diversification is a priority of resource-dependent regions such as South Africas North West Province (NWP) in the wake of the 2014 platinum strike. The economy of the NWP is highly specialised and dependent on a few sectors - in particular, mining and quarrying. Both the NWP and the South African economies were adversely affected by a prolonged strike in the platinum sector.This paper sets out to illustrate the effects of industrial cluster formation as a strategy to enhance competitiveness in the NWP and diversify its economy using SAM multiplier analysis. The supported activity of eight of the ten industrial clusters was shown to be greater than the actual activity, indicating that industrial cluster formation will enhance economic activity in the NWP. Of the ten identified clusters for the NWP, four were found to be moderately integrated and to have high upstream effects. Finally, structural change in the NWP economy through industrial cluster formation was observed using economic landscaping. A key finding was that the identified industrial clusters are significant contributors to the structural change of the NWP economic landscape with the promotion of cluster-specific exports. It is recommended that the North West provincial government adopt this strategy with a view to enhancing competitiveness and economic diversification.

The Roles of Employers, Unions and Government in Swedish Industrial Relations: Important Lessons for Improving Nigeria's Industrial Relations

Nigeria's industrial and labour relations have been very precarious in the last ten to fifteen years. Employees, employers, and government dealings with one another have been characterized by disrespect, egocentric tendencies, mistrust, threats, and prolonged strikes with attendant negative consequences. Many scholars, industry players, and other experts have attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to proffer solutions to the country s labour relations challenges. This paper attempts to highlight the lessons that Nigeria can learn from Sweden, a nation with a unique workable industrial relations model noted worldwide. The paper takes a quick look at some historical issues that possibly brought the present Swedish industrial relations model into being. The paper also examines some earlier and latter issues that shaped the Swedish model. It also tries to identify some elements in the Swedish model that have survived and are worth of studying and adopting. The paper then situates the foregoing issues in the roles that employers, unions and government play in the Swedish industrial relations system. Ultimately, the paper identifies and discusses some important lessons that Nigeria can learn from Sweden.

Freedom from Hate: Solidarity and Non-violent Political Struggle in Poland

Thirty-first August 2001 marked the 21st anniversary of the end of prolonged strikes in Poland that resulted in the forming of the trade union Solidarity. The struggle of Solidarity remains a powerful lesson in political non-violence. In spite of the wide support it enjoyed in Polish society, Solidarity was outlawed in December 1981 and its leaders were imprisoned. If one is suppressed by force, one can answer with force. But Solidarity did not. Was it an ethical standpoint that Solidarity used only peaceful means in its defence or a utilitarian or pragmatic strategy? The paper argues that it was both. The struggle of Solidarity was not only guided by pragmatic considerations on how to achieve the goals more effectively, but also by ethical principles. Also, the author discusses the nature of political system that existed in Poland from 1945 to 1989.

Glen Adler and Eddie Webster, eds., Trade Unions and Democratization in South Africa, 1985–1997. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2000. vii + 238 pp. $69.95 cloth.

Few issues have occupied the attention of academics, analysts and activists more closely than those on the role of South Africa's labor movement in the transition to democracy. Most commentators place the beginning of this transition to former President F. W. De Klerk's February 1990 decision to repeal the ban on liberation movements and release Nelson Mandela and other prisoners from incarceration. However, it would be more accurate to think of the transition as beginning in 1973 in the industrial and port city of Durban, where thousands of workers shook the quiet confidence of South Africa's racial capitalist regime through a series of spontaneous and prolonged strikes that changed the context of South African labor and politics in the last quarter of the twentieth century.

UK opencast mining equipment in the 1980's

ABSTRACT Opencast coal mining in the UK is currently one of the most profitable mining operations in the world. This level of profitability has been sustained throughout the 1980's, a decade during which the UK mining industry has experienced a prolonged strike during 1984 followed by significant internal re-structuring, and operated through a transitional period of planning legislation culminating in the Housing and Planning Act 1986 and Minerals Planning Note 3, May 1988. The summary outlines the background environment of the decade during which time the excavating and haulage equipment being selected by opencast mining contractors has changed significantly to meet the challenge of an increasingly competitive business.

COMMUNICATIONS — AN ANTIPODEAN EXERCISE

Events in Italy and the rest of the world were confirming Pareto's predictions … [T]he national government was incapacitated by indecision … It was in this milieu that Italian fascism took root … On aggregate, people had come to feel that they should grow prosperous without having to work hard. As a consequence more energy was invested in connivance and in devising ways of transferring existing wealth than in constructive activity and the production of new wealth. With workers engaged in prolonged strikes and capitalists busy with parasitic or speculative activities yielding quick and easy money, no class was contributing to sustained growth or real property … corporate giants and organised labour were granted whatever concessions they asked for, at the expense of the general public. (C.H. Powers (ed.) in V. Pareto, The Transformation of Democracy, Transl., R. Girola, pp 17-18).

Hospital workers in dispute--harmonizing Europe.

THE prolonged strike in which the hospital porters and other ancillary staff were recently involved was an unhappy and uncharacteristic episode in the life of the hospitals, where a friendly spirit of co-operation is usually to be found among all grades of staff. Indeed, in the early phase of the dispute there were doctors and nurses as well as members of the public who had considerable sympathy for the underpaid hospital workers whose pay rise had been caught in the freeze, but their sympathy began to run out when sick patients had to be turned away from hospitals and as . . .

Economic Issues in the Stabilization of the Iron and Steel Industry

DURING THE YEAR 1959, more attention was focused on the economic significance of the iron and steel industry than has been the case for this or any other industry in any comparable peace time era. The importance of the industry for national economic well-being was realized early during the days of the prolonged strike. Estimates vary considerably as to the costs of the nearly four months of work stoppage. It will be some time, however, before all the indirect costs may be calculated. The total of the direct and indirect economic burden easily could surpass 10 billion dollars.

An Annotated Bibliography of Journalism Subjects in American Magazines

In an unprecedented legal action, the U. S. government filed a suit against the Lorain (Ohio) Journal on charges of conspiracy to effect a monopoly. As this historic case began, the question which might ultimately be answered by the courts was whether the inevitable economic trend toward non-competitive facilities may, if aggravated by the owners’ deliberate moves to discourage renewed competition, be actionable in the interest of public welfare. The government's ability to prove any ground for prosecution, however, had not been demonstrated in the Lorain case as the fall quarter of the year ended. In another important economic field, the prolonged strike of Chicago typographical unions suddenly ended in a compromise, and with it came the end of a significant and successful experiment in publication of metropolitan newspapers without benefit of compositors. In the radio and television field, two developments highlighted the late summer and early autumn—the order of the Federal Communications Commission curtailing the give-away programs which had become a virtual craze and an added bit of Americana for observers foreign and domestic to wonder at; and the marked “plateau” which the television industry reached after its meteoric postwar rise—a pause which was blamed on various ineptitudes in both industrial and governmental policy controlling “video.” —W. F. S.

Les Charbons Britanniques et leur épuisement

IN France, as in the rest of Europe, consumers have during the past winter been complaining of the difficulty of obtaining an adequate supply of coal, the chief cause of the increased demand having been the activity in the iron and steel trades. At the same time, prolonged strikes in Austria and elsewhere, and the temporary cessation of the production of the collieries of Natal and Cape Colony, have lessened the supplies usually available. The prevailing scarcity of coal is a matter of serious moment to France, where, owing to the increasing depth of the collieries and the costly nature of mining operations, the quantity of coal that has to be imported from other countries grows larger every year. At the present time about two-thirds of the coal consumed in France is raised in the country; and last year the imports amounted to 10,500,000 tons, of which quantity 6,000,000 tons were obtained from Great Britain. France being so largely dependent on Great Britain, it will readily be seen that the duration of the British coal-fields is a subject of no little importance to French economists. M. Loze has, therefore, been induced to devote two bulky volumes, covering together 1229 pages, to a critical consideration of the investigations of Prof. Stanley Jevons, the Right Hon. Leonard H. Courtney, Mr. R. Price-Williams, Mr. T. Forster Brown, Prof. E. Hull and other English writers. Les Charbons Britanniques et leur epuisement. By E. Loze. Pp. ix + 559, and vii + 562 to 1229. (Paris: C. Beranger, 1900.)