Work Stoppages Research Articles

Influence of air pollution on the nonaccidental death before and after the outbreak of COVID-19

BackgroundDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, non-therapeutic interventions (NPIs), such as traffic restrictions, work stoppages, and school suspensions, have led to a sharp decline in the concentration of air pollutants in the epidemic sites. However, few studies focused on the impact of air pollutant changes on the risk of nonaccidental death.MethodWe selected Yancheng City, China, as the study site and applied a Generalized Additive Model (GAM) based on the quasi-Poisson distribution to evaluate the impact of atmospheric pollutants exposure on the nonaccidental death of local residents. The time span of this study was set from January 1, 2013, to December 21, 2022, that is, before and after the outbreak of COVID-19.ResultsThe concentration of some air pollutants has greatly varied after the outbreak of COVID-19, with a significant decline for PM2.5 (− 43.4%), PM10 (− 38.5%), SO2 (− 62.9%), and NO2 (− 22.6%), but an increase for O3 (+ 4.3%). Comparative analysis showed that PM2.5 contributed to an increased risk of nonaccidental death after the outbreak of COVID-19. With an increase in PM2.5 by 10 µg/m³, the excess relative risks (ER) of nonaccidental death of residents increased by 1.01% (95%CI: 0.19%,1.84%). The stratified analysis revealed that air pollutants impacted nonaccidental deaths in both men and women before the outbreak of COVID-19. After the outbreak of COVID-19, PM10 had a significant effect on male nonaccidental deaths. The concentrations of PM2.5, PM10, and SO2 increased by 10 µg/m³, the ER of PM2.5, PM10, and SO2 on female nonaccidental death increased by 1.52% (0.38%,2.67%), 0.58% (0.02%,1.13%), and 15.09% (5.73%,25.28%), respectively. Before the outbreak of COVID-19, five air pollutants had an impact on the death of residents from cardiovascular disease (CVD). After the outbreak of COVID-19, only PM10 significantly affected the death risk of CVD. In addition, we discovered that PM2.5, PM10, and SO2 significantly impacted the risk of death due to respiratory diseases before and after the outbreak of COVID-19.ConclusionsAir pollutants have different effects on nonaccidental deaths before and after the COVID-19 outbreak. A decrease in air pollutant concentration due to the NPIs for COVID-19 had a significant effect on the reduction of the risk of nonaccidental death.

Race, inclusion, and equity: do ESOP jobs deliver for Black workers?

ABSTRACT This paper investigates whether ESOPs closed the wage gap and provided better benefits for millennial workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The four factors that will be the focus are wages, non-wage benefits, COVID-19 outcomes, and risk of catching COVID-19. The sample size of this study is 4,417, and logit regressions were used to analyse data from Round 20 of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth, collected in 2021. The study found that ESOP jobs provide higher wages and more non-wage benefits than non-ESOP jobs. ESOP workers were less likely to experience a work stoppage during the COVID-19 pandemic. There were no significant differences in the risk of catching COVID-19. Scholarship focuses on ESOPs’ ability to close the wealth gap between Black and White workers. While ESOPs do provide better wages than non- ESOP jobs, there is a large disparity between the wages of Black and White ESOP workers.

Epidemiology of Injury and Illness in North American Professional Men's Soccer: Comparing COVID-19 Lockdown With Previous Seasons.

After COVID-19 lockdown, studies across Europe and Asia examined its effect on professional soccer injury rates and severity; however, COVID-19 lockdown influence on injuries in United States men's professional soccer has not been evaluated. Injury and illness rates during the 2020 season were higher than the previous 2 seasons. Retrospective observational cohort study. Level 3. Medical staff from participating Major League Soccer (MLS) clubs entered injuries and athletic exposures during the study period into a league-wide electronic medical record system. Injury rate and severity were analyzed to examine differentials between the 2020 COVID season and historical controls. The injury incidence rate per 1000 hours in 2020 was 10.8, ie, higher than 2018 (5.4) and 2019 (5.0) (P < 0.05). Training injury incidence rate increased in 2020 (8.9) compared with 2018 (2.5) and 2019 (2.6) (P < 0.05), whereas match injury incidence decreased in 2020 (18.3) compared with 2018 (24.0) and 2019 (22.7) (P < 0.05). Incidence rates of lower extremity muscle injuries (6.04), anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injuries (0.17), and concussions (0.49) were also higher in 2020 compared with 2018 (2.5, 0.07, 0.27) and 2019 (2.36, 0.05, 0.22) (P < 0.05). More injured players in 2020 missed >90 days (17.7%) than in 2018 (10.2%) and 2019 (10.1%) (P < 0.05). Incidence of all non-COVID-19 illness was higher in 2020 (3.93) than 2018 (1.53) and 2019 (1.32) (P < 0.05). During 2020, there were significant increases in incidence rates of overall injuries, training injuries, lower extremity muscular injuries, ACL injuries, concussions, and non-COVID illness, along with a higher percentage of players missing >90 days compared with the 2 previous seasons. These results may help clarify the effects of future MLS inseason work stoppages and periods of restricted training.

When Gorillas Strike: Constitutional Protection of Non-Market-Institutions in Labor Law

Abstract The “wildcat strike” against the poor working conditions of the bike couriers of the delivery service Gorilla at the beginning of 2021 ended in numerous dismissals by the employer. The trade unions did not support the strike, so that participation in the work stoppage was deemed unlawful by the courts. Under German law, strikes are only permitted as a means of exerting pressure in collective bargaining. However, it must be asked whether, with the changes in forms of employment and the associated limits to trade union representation of interests, it is still justified to regard the right to strike exclusively as an appendage of collective bargaining autonomy. Not only the pressure of international law, but also Gunther Teubner’s concept of non-market institutions as necessarily resistant collective actors against economic profit pressures call for the further development of legal protection of collectivities. Alternative labor struggles for the often precarious conditions of increasing mobile, digitalized and transnational gainful employment would then have to be recognized under certain conditions.

Emplacement and Emplotment: Media Production in Pandemic Times

Places matter, despite the discursive hype of virtual making or remote locations, in showing the ways that production is a process nested within social worlds. In 2020, global Hollywood promoted a “COVID-friendly ideal” in order to return to work during widespread lockdowns and work stoppages. Yet by focusing comparatively on the stories that film and television workers told about production during COVID, we argue that crisis stories reveal much about the specificity of places in studying production cultures. To illustrate, we compare workers’ pandemic stories as evidence of emplacement in national hierarchies and emplotment in local power dynamics. Drawing on a corpus of seventy interviews conducted in Tel Aviv, Israel and New Orleans, USA in 2020 and 2021, we show that production cultures provide ample critique of normative tales that media industries promote about themselves and their workforces.

Self‐Employment, the COVID‐19 Pandemic, and the Rural–Urban Divide in the United States☆

AbstractSelf‐employed individuals faced numerous challenges amid the global health and economic crisis that was the COVID‐19 pandemic. Similarly, rural and urban workers faced different challenges during the pandemic. This rural–urban disparity further complicates the impacts of self‐employment and exacerbates inequalities resulting from gender, race, ethnicity, or immigration status. This study examines the economic consequences of the COVID‐19 pandemic across these categories in the United States using Current Population Survey data from May 2020 to May 2022. Comparing the wage and self‐employment sectors across rural and urban areas, I examine the effects of individual, business, and geographic characteristics on the probability of work stoppages due to the health crisis. The analysis reveals that recovery from the pandemic was delayed among the self‐employed, while additional education and full‐time employment status can reduce work interruptions for these workers, as does working in select industries. Findings suggest that rural and urban minorities are more likely to face pandemic‐related work disruptions, with key differences between formal and informal self‐employment sectors. Specifically, self‐employed Asians/Pacific Islanders and Native Americans were more adversely affected in rural areas. The study concludes with several policy and program recommendations to assist vulnerable workers, especially in the rural self‐employment sector.

Does Retirement and Work Stoppage Impact Body Weight and Waist Circumference Changes in Middle- and Older-Aged Women and Men? Results From the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging.

This study aimed to examine the impact of employment transitions (ETs) on anthropometric changes among middle-aged and older workers (ages 45y+). Using two waves of data from the Canadian Longitudinal Study on Aging, we analyzed the impact of ETs (stayed working, entered retirement, and stopped working) on change in body weight and waist circumference (WC) on continuous scales as well as categories (≥5% cut-off). Analyses were sex/gender-stratified. Women did not show significant weight or WC change that differed across ETs, but estimated directions suggested those who stopped working were more likely to have ≥5% change in weight. Estimated directions of continuous outcomes for women who stopped working relative to continued workers showed less weight gain and more WC gain. Men who retired gained less weight and had smaller WC gain compared to reference. The findings imply that the short-run impact of exiting the labor force may not exacerbate weight gain.

Predicting the risk of becoming eligible for the disability pension: Machine learning methods applied to French health data

Benefiting from the disability pension implies morbid (physical and psychological) and social (fall in income) implications for the person. It also has economic consequences for society, with increasing expenses since 2011 (+4.9% on average per year). Investing in preventive actions against the loss of the ability to work should limit these consequences, but it requires targeting people at risk. The development of artificial intelligence opens up prospects in this regard. To target, using supervised machine learning methods, those people with a high probability of becoming eligible for the disability pension over the course of the year based on their socio-demographic and medical characteristics (pathologies, work stoppages, drugs taken, and medical procedures). Among the beneficiaries of the French public welfare system aged 20–64 in 2017, we compared the socio-demographic and medical characteristics between 2014 and 2016 of those who received a disability pension in 2017 and not before, and those who did not receive a disability pension from 2014 to 2017. The determination of the boundary between these two groups was tested using logistic regression, decision trees, random forests, naive Bayes classifiers, and support vector machines. The models’ performance was compared with respect to accuracy, precision, sensitivity, specificity, and AUC (area under the curve). Finally, the predictive power of each factor was measured by AUC too. The boosted logistic regression had the best performance for three of the five criteria, but low sensitivity. The best sensitivity was obtained with the support vector machines, with an accuracy close to that of the boosted logistic regression, but a lower precision and specificity. Random forests offered the best discriminatory ability. The naive Bayes classifier had the worst performance. The most predictive factors in becoming eligible for the disability pension were having 30 days or more off sick in 2014, 2015, and 2016 and being aged 55 to 64. Supervised learning methods have appeared relevant for identifying people with the highest probability of becoming eligible for the disability pension and, more broadly, for steering public and social policies.

Pulse fractional grey model application in forecasting global carbon emission

Global climate problem has attracted attention from all over the world. How to correctly reflect greenhouse gas emission trend is not only an environmental problem, but also concerns human society's sustainable development. Energy consumption is the primary source of greenhouse gas emission. It is necessary to accurately forecasting energy consumption greenhouse gas emission future trend. COVID-19 epidemic has brought respite from global climate change problem by reducing energy consumption through home office, work stoppage, and global travel ban. However, in the post-epidemic period, energy consumption greenhouse gas emission intensity trend has become the center research field. This study takes global energy consumption carbon emission problem as the main research line and focuses on forecasting global energy consumption carbon dioxide emission trend in major regions based on COVID-19 epidemic shock background. The study considering epidemic shock volatility characteristic. Firstly, fractional order grey mode (FGM(1,1))is used as the baseline model to balance time series data weight. Secondly, Median absolute deviation data preprocessing is introduced to reduce data fluctuation. Finally, a novel delaying pulse shock function optimized background grey forecasting model is also proposed to reflect epidemic shock-response characteristic. The proposed model is compared with existing models. It is found that data preprocessing and novel proposed model not only improves historical data's fitting quality by reflecting COVID-19 epidemic's shock characteristic, but also showed excellent forecasting performance for future trend. The novel grey model largely solves existing model underfitting/overfitting problem. In the end, based on forecasted results, we summarize research conclusion and implication.

Time Management and its Impact on Business Growth: A Study of Public Holidays and Work Stoppages in Nigeria

This article provides a nexus between time management, public holidays and other work stoppages in Nigeria. It looks at the negative consequences of having too many public holidays and work stoppages in a fragile and dependent economy like Nigeria. Too much of everything is bad it is said. Any action that leads to the stoppage of work activities is detrimental to the growth of businesses. Nigeria observes too many works stoppages in a calendar year, and research shows that intermittent and frequent works stoppages can cause damage to the efforts designed to make a country’s financial and capital markets catch up with global trends. Further researches also show that Nigeria’s financial system handles a large amount of transaction that principally involves all banks in the country. In turn, these institutions facilitate the transactions of all economic agents. This study treats all holidays as works stoppage; all off duty activities such as strikes that consumes economic or man-hour is referred to as work stoppage (strike inclusive).

On regulation of multiphase zones in liquid gas pipelines with complex relief

Despite the positive aspects of pipeline transportation, which is considered one of the efficient transportation methods of liquefied gases, it is inevitable that there are very important shortcomings in the transportation process, such as the transition to the gas phase and the creation of multiphase zones in the pipeline. These cases are observed more often when the stoppage of work of the pipelines and accidents occur. The presence of multiphase flow zones greatly increases the pressure at the beginning of the pipeline and the cost of transportation. Therefore, it is very important to detect such gaps and flows, whether in static conditions or in a stationary flow, and to determine their coordinates. In the article, the possibility of diagnostics of gaps and imbalanced volume created during the transportation of liquid gases, as well as the possibility of adjusting multiphase zones in pipelines, is shown in the example of separate cases.

The Influencing Factors and Relationship Between Job Satisfaction and Job Performance of Primary and Junior Secondary School Teachers: Empirical Study Based on Mali’s Bamako and Kita Regions

Over decades, Malian primary and junior secondary school teachers have gone through work stoppages, strikes, and demonstrations claiming better living and working conditions. These incessant claims have caused the loss of much learning and teaching time and are charged being one of the causes of students' failure. This study examines the factors influencing Malian primary and junior secondary school teachers' job satisfaction and establishes the correlations between their job satisfaction and job performance. We used a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design to examine the factors influencing Malian primary and junior secondary school teachers' job satisfaction. The quantitative phase consisted of five hundred and twenty (n=520) teachers selected using stratified random sampling techniques. In contrast, the qualitative phase consisted of twenty (n=20) participants purposively selected from the quantitative phase based on their level of dissatisfaction. SPSS software was used to analyze the data. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data collected from the interviews. Overall, the findings showed that most of the teachers (51 %) were not satisfied with their job. The study showed that urban teachers are more satisfied with their job than rural teachers. A significant correlation was found between teachers' general level of satisfaction and their job performance. It showed that the more satisfied teachers are, the better students' academic performance in Mali.

Economic Costs of Work Stoppages Caused by the COVID-19 Outbreak

AbstractThis study explores the economic costs of work stoppages resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. It utilizes a global multiregional dynamic computable general equilibrium model and finds that the higher the proportion of labor compensation in the initial factor distribution, the greater the economic damage. Macroeconomic loss was characterized by a monotonically increasing function, with developed countries potentially incurring greater losses than developing countries. The COVID-19 pandemic had significant negative impacts on the global labor market, with a decline in labor productivity; the cumulative global economic loss in 2020–2022 surpassed $10.4 trillion, of which the EU, the USA, and China contributed 30.44%, 18.74%, and 15.44%, respectively. Countries’ anti-epidemic responses showed great heterogeneity, with South Korea and China’s actions showing the dual advantages of protecting the economy and lives, whereas the EU failed to protect either lives or the economy. This article argues that it was necessary to adopt strict quarantine measures to control the spread of the virus in the early stages of the epidemic, but with a drop in the case fatality rate and the introduction of vaccinations, strict control measures had to be removed to protect the economy.

Occupational safety risk analysis in construction sites based on fuzzy analytic hierarchy process: A case study in a large construction project.

Construction projects are one of the most critical occupational sectors that experienced many challenges in occupational accidents and safety performance. This study was designed to assess safety risk in construction projects based on fuzzy analytic hierarchy process. This study was conducted with 12 construction and occupational safety experts in one of the largest construction projects in Tehran-Iran in 2020. The process of this study included (1) risk identification, (2) measurement of risk parameters and sub-parameters, and (3) risk assessment based on a fuzzy analytic hierarchy process. Risk-forming parameters in this study included the probability and severity of the event. The probability of occurrence was estimated based on four sub-parameters of technical inspection, accident experience, detection probability, and human reliability. Sub-parameters of severity included human injury, cost imposition, tarnishing the organization's esteem, and impact on project timing and work stoppage. Twenty-eight identified hazards were examined in the studied construction project, including falling from a height (9-hazard), falling objects (2-hazard), electric shock (6-hazard), falling crane or load (6-hazard), elevator crashes (2-hazard), and soil fall (3-hazard). Safety risk assessment revealed that 27 risk sources were at the tolerable level and one risk source was unacceptable. This study demonstrated that the risk levels in the studied construction project were tolerable and unacceptable. The obtained model in this study demonstrated that using parameters that determine the probability and severity of risk according to the nature of the working environments can be a practical step in risk evaluating and implementing control measures.

Study on the regional risk classification method for the prevention and control of emerging infectious diseases based on directed graph theory.

Emerging infectious diseases are a class of diseases that are spreading rapidly and are highly contagious. It seriously affects social stability and poses a significant threat to human health, requiring urgent measures to deal with them. Its outbreak will very easily lead to the large-scale spread of the virus, causing social problems such as work stoppages and traffic control, thereby causing social panic and psychological unrest, affecting human activities and social stability, and even endangering lives. It is essential to prevent and control the spread of infectious diseases effectively. We aim to propose an effective method to classify the risk level of a new epidemic region by using graph theory and risk classification methods to provide a theoretical reference for the comprehensive evaluation and determination of epidemic prevention and control, as well as risk level classification. Using the graph theory method, we first define the network structure of social groups and construct the risk transmission network of the new epidemic region. Then, combined with the risk classification method, the classification of high, medium, and low risk levels of the new epidemic region is discussed from two cases with common and looped graph nodes, respectively. Finally, the reasonableness of the classification method is verified by simulation data. The directed weighted scale-free network can better describe the transmission law of an epidemic. Moreover, the proposed method of classifying the risk level of a region by using the correlation function between two regions and the risk value of the regional nodes can effectively evaluate the risk level of different regions in the new epidemic region. The experiments show that the number of medium and high risk nodes shows no increasing trend. The number of high-risk regions is relatively small compared to medium-risk regions, and the number of low-risk regions is the largest. It is necessary to distinguish scientifically between the risk level of the epidemic area and the neighboring regions so that the constructed social network model of the epidemic region's spread risk can better describe the spread of the epidemic risk in the social network relations.

Dissident Labour Activism in Vietnam

Scholars of Vietnam have studied different forms of labour resistance such as wildcat strikes, petitions, complaints, work stoppages, and boycotts, with which workers demand higher wages and pensions, overall better working conditions, and the implementation of workers’ rights. This article pays attention to the small, yet not negligible group of dissident labour activists, who are subjected to much harsher state repression compared to labour resistance in and around the workplace. This article asks: What makes dissident labour activism a (real or perceived) threat to the state? A common and widely accepted explanation refers to the nature of the demands of dissidents, which includes independent trade unions, democratisation, and regime change. This article digs deeper and finds that dissident labour activists function as agents of an emerging epistemological third space, which permits the revitalisation of hidden knowledges about labour rights, the reclamation of the silenced idea of independent trade unions and the co-existence of critique of the status quo and imagination of an alternative future, which together threaten to endanger the Communist Party of Vietnam’s political legitimacy and, by implication, capital utilisation.

Chipping Away at the Right to Strike

Abstract: On June 1, the Supreme Court issued a significant decision against the labor movement in Glacier Northwest v. Teamsters Local Union No. 174. In an 8–1 split, the Court found that the National Labor Relations Act does not protect striking cement truck drivers from being sued by their employer, who alleges damages for lost cement caused by their work stoppage. The decision, perhaps by design, has received little public outcry.

INCREASING PROFITABILITY OF A MANUFACTURING COMPANY BY USING THE TOTAL PRODUCTIVE MAINTENANCE APPROACH: A REVIEW

In the modern world, a company pays serious attention to productivity and efficiency. Several sectors in the manufacturing world are starting to carry out business transformation, particularly those leading to industry 4.0. This circumstance is driven by efforts to achieve higher productivity and efficient process, mainly after being economically hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. To maintain efficiency, a manufacturing company should maintain its machine and equipment. Total productive maintenance is a system based on the concept of preventive and predictive maintenance. It is designed to prevent losses resulting from many factors, e.g. work stoppages due to failures and adjustments, speed losses due to minor stops and speed reductions, and losses due to defects. The total productive maintenance also provides a tool to measure the level of effectiveness of a machine, i.e. overall equipment effectiveness. This review paper focuses on the application of total productive maintenance and overall equipment effectiveness in determining the effectiveness of equipment and eliminating the factors affecting the effectiveness of the equipment.

How did the COVID-19 crisis affect different types of workers in the developing world?

This paper examines how the COVID-19 pandemic affected the employment of different groups of workers across 40 mostly low and middle-income countries. Employment outcomes during the crisis are tracked through high-frequency phone surveys conducted by the World Bank and national statistics offices. Our results show that larger shares of female, young, less educated, and urban workers stopped working at the beginning of the pandemic. Gender gaps in work stoppage stemmed mainly from gender differences within sectors rather than differential employment patterns of men and women across sectors. Differences in work stoppage between urban and rural workers were markedly smaller than those across gender, age, and education groups. Preliminary results from 10 countries suggest that following the initial shock at the start of the pandemic, employment rates partially recovered between April and August 2020, with greater gains for those groups that had borne the brunt of the early jobs losses. Although the high-frequency phone surveys over-represent household heads and therefore overestimate employment rates, a validation exercise for five countries suggests that they provide a reasonably accurate measure of disparities in employment levels by gender, education, and urban/rural location following the onset of the crisis, although they perform less well in capturing disparities between age groups. These results shed new light on the distributional labor market consequences of the COVID-19 crisis in developing countries, and suggest that real-time phone surveys, despite their lack of representativeness, are a valuable source of information to measure differential employment impacts across groups during an unfolding crisis.

Do sporting events amplify airborne virus transmission? Causal evidence from US professional team sports

We analyze the impact of professional sporting events on local seasonal influenza mortality to develop evidence on the role played by spectator attendance at sporting events in airborne virus transmission. Results from a difference-in-differences model applied to data from a sample of US cities that gained new professional sports teams over the period 1962–2016 show that the presence of games in these cities increased local influenza mortality by between 4% and 24%, depending on the sport, relative to cities with no professional sports teams and relative to mortality in those cities before a new team arrived. Influenza mortality fell in cities with teams in some years when work stoppages occurred in sports leagues. Health policy decisions, and decisions about the subsidization of professional sports, should take into account the role played by sporting events in increasing airborne virus transmission and local influenza and coronavirus mortality.