Measuring workforce segregation: religious composition of private-sector employees at individual sites in Northern Ireland

In this paper I examine the scope of publicly available information on the religious composition of employees in private-sector companies in Northern Ireland. I highlight the unavailability of certain types of monitoring data and the impact of data aggregation at company as opposed to site level. Both oversights lead to underestimates of the extent of workplace segregation in Northern Ireland. The ability to provide more-coherent data on workplace segregation, by religion, in Northern Ireland is crucial in terms of advancing equality and other social-justice agendas. I argue that a more-accurate monitoring of religious composition of workplaces is part of an overall need to develop a spatial approach in which the importance of ethnically territorialised spaces in the reproduction of ethnosectarian disputation is understood.

Burnout as a predictor of all-cause mortality among industrial employees: A 10-year prospective register-linkage study

Objective: Burnout, a psychological consequence of prolonged work stress, has been shown to coexist with physical and mental disorders. The aim of this study was to investigate whether burnout is related to all-cause mortality among employees. Methods: In 1996, of 15,466 Finnish forest industry employees, 9705 participated in the 'Still Working' study and 8371 were subsequently identified from the National Population Register. Those who had been treated in a hospital for the most common causes of death prior to the assessment of burnout were excluded on the basis of the Hospital Discharge Register, resulting in a final study population of 7396 people. Burnout was measured using the Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey. Dates of death from 1996 to 2006 were extracted from the National Mortality Register. Mortality was predicted with Cox hazard regression models, controlling for baseline sociodemographic factors and register-based health status according to entitled medical reimbursement and prescribed medication for mental health problems, cardiac risk factors, and pain problems. Results: During the 10-year 10-month follow-up, a total of 199 employees had died. The risk of mortality per one-unit increase in burnout was 35% higher (95% CI 1.07-1.71) for total score and 26% higher (0.99-1.60) for exhaustion, 29% higher for cynicism (1.03-1.62), and 22% higher for diminished professional efficacy (0.96-1.55) in participants who had been under 45 at baseline. After adjustments, only the associations regarding burnout and exhaustion were statistically significant. Burnout was not related to mortality among the older employees. Conclusion: Burnout, especially work-related exhaustion, may be a risk for overall survival. (C) 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Organizational Change and Employees' Mental Health: The Protective Role of Sense of Coherence

Objective: To examine the impact of sense of coherence (SOC) on psychiatric events in the context of organizational merger. Methods: Data were derived from a prospective

Lack of Predictability at Work and Risk of Acute Myocardial Infarction: An 18-Year Prospective Study of Industrial Employees

Objectives. We examined whether the distinctive components of job control-decision authority, skill discretion, and predictability-were related to subsequent acute myocardial infarction (MI) events in a large population of initially heart disease-free industrial employees.

Effort-reward imbalance at work and the co-occurrence of lifestyle risk factors: cross-sectional survey in a sample of 36,127 public sector employees

Background: In occupational life, a mismatch between high expenditure of effort and receiving few rewards may promote the co-occurrence of lifestyle risk factors, however, there is insufficient evidence to support or refute this hypothesis. The aim of this study is to examine the extent to which the dimensions of the Effort-Reward Imbalance (ERI) model - effort, rewards and ERI - are associated with the co-occurrence of lifestyle risk factors.

Relationship between work stress and body mass index among 45,810 female and male employees

Objective: The proportion of overweight and obese people has grown rapidly, and obesity has now been widely recognized as an important public health problem. At the came time, stress has increased in working life. The 2 problems could be connected if work stress promotes unhealthy eating habits and sedentary behavior and thereby contributes to weight gain. This study explored the association between work stress and body mass index (BMI; kg/m(2)). Methods: We used cross-sectional questionnaire data obtained from 45,810 female and male employees participating in the ongoing Finnish Public Sector Cohort Study. We constructed individual-level scores, as well as occupational- and organizational-level aggregated scores for work stress, as indicated by the demand/control model and the effort-reward imbalance model. Linear regression analyses were stratified by sex and socioeconomic status (SES) and adjusted for age, marital status, job contract, smoking, alcohol consumption, physical activity, and negative affectivity. Results: The results with the aggregated scores showed that lower job control, higher job strain, and higher effort-reward imbalance were associated with a higher BMI. In men, lower job demands were also associated with a higher BMI. These associations were not accounted for by SES, although an additional adjustment for SES attenuated the associations. The results obtained with the individual-level scores were in the same direction, but the relationships were weaker than those obtained with the aggregated scores. Conclusions: This study shows a weak association between work stress and BMI.

Job strain and leisure-time physical activity in female and male public sector employees

Background. High work stress could decrease physical activity but the evidence of the relationship has remained equivocal, The present study examined the association between job strain and leisure-time physical activity in a large sample of employees.

Job strain, effort-reward imbalance, and heavy drinking: A study in 40,851 employees

Objective: The objective of this study was to examine the relationship of the job strain model and the effort-reward imbalance model with heavy drinking.

Work stress, smoking status, and smoking intensity: an observational study of 46 190 employees

Study objective: To examine the relation between work stress, as indicated by the job strain model, and the effort-reward imbalance model, and smoking.

Implementation of workplace-based smoking cessation support activities and smoking cessation among employees:the Finnish Public Sector Study

We investigated the relationship between implementation of workplace smoking cessation support activities and employee smoking cessation.

Workplace social capital and all-cause mortality:a prospective cohort study of 28,043 public-sector employees in Finland

We examined the association between workplace social capital and all-cause mortality in a large occupational cohort from Finland.

Frontline Leisure::Securitizing tourism in the War on Terror

This article argues that the terrorist bombings of hotels, pubs and nightclubs in Bali in October 2002, and in Mombasa one month later, were inaugural moments in the post-9/11 securitization of the tourism industry. Although practices of tourism and terrorism seem antithetical – one devoted to travel and leisure, the other to political violence – this article argues that their entanglement is revealed most clearly in the counter-terrorism responses that brought the everyday lives of tourists and tourism workers, as well as the material infrastructure of the tourism industry, within the orbit of a global security apparatus waging a ‘war on terror’. Drawing on critical work in international relations and geography, this article understands the securitization of tourism as part of a much wider logic in which the liberal order enacts pernicious modes of governance by producing a terrorist threat that is exceptional. It explores how this logic is reproduced through a cosmopolitan community symbolized by global travellers, and examines the measures taken by the tourism industry to secure this community (e.g. the physical transformations of hotel infrastructure and the provision of counter-terrorism training).

The impact of the global financial crisis on managing employees

Purpose: This paper aims to provide a brief overview of the global financial crisis (GFC), highlighting its most frightening dimensions, the policy responses and issues around the management of labour during and post-GFC. Further, this paper introduces the five research papers that encompass this special issue. Design/methodology/approach: The papers presented here are early contributions on how the GFC has impacted the management of people. The key areas focused upon include the human resource management responses of multinational enterprises, the response of trade unions, the roles of employee representative bodies and the rationalisation of post-crisis managerial strategies. Findings: The major conclusions of this special issue are that the impact of the GFC was variable across countries and sectors in addition to the process of decision making, the types of decisions made, and the determinants and consequences of those decisions. Originality/value: The papers of the special issue provide some of the first empirical findings on how the GFC has impacted on people management, trade unions and the HR function in different contexts. © Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

Obesity and occupational injury:a prospective cohort study of 69,515 public sector employees

Obesity and overweight are suggested to increase the risk of occupational injury but longitudinal evidence to confirm this is rare. We sought to evaluate obesity and overweight as risk factors for occupational injuries.