Who's talking? Communication and the casual/part-time nurse : a literature review

The rapidly evolving nursing working environment has seen the increased use of flexible non standard employment, including part-time, casual and itinerate workers. Evidence suggests that the nursing workforce has been at the forefront of the flexibility push which has seen the appearance of a dual workforce and marginalization of part- time and casual workers by their full-time peers and managers. The resulting fragmentation has meant that effective communication management has become difficult. Additionally, it is likely that poor organisational communication exacerbated by the increased use of non standard staff, is a factor underlying current discontent in the nursing industry and may impact on both recruitment and retention problems as well as patient outcomes. This literature review explores the relationship between the increasing casualisation of the nursing workforce and, among other things, the communication practices of nurses within healthcare organisations.

Semiparametric modeling of the spatial distribution of occupational accident risk in the casual labor market, Piracicaba, southeast Brazil

The objective of this study was to estimate the spatial distribution of work accident risk in the informal work market in the urban zone of an industrialized city in southeast Brazil and to examine concomitant effects of age, gender, and type of occupation after controlling for spatial risk variation. The basic methodology adopted was that of a population-based case-control study with particular interest focused on the spatial location of work. Cases were all casual workers in the city suffering work accidents during a one-year period; controls were selected from the source population of casual laborers by systematic random sampling of urban homes. The spatial distribution of work accidents was estimated via a semiparametric generalized additive model with a nonparametric bidimensional spline of the geographical coordinates of cases and controls as the nonlinear spatial component, and including age, gender, and occupation as linear predictive variables in the parametric component. We analyzed 1,918 cases and 2,245 controls between 1/11/2003 and 31/10/2004 in Piracicaba, Brazil. Areas of significantly high and low accident risk were identified in relation to mean risk in the study region (p < 0.01). Work accident risk for informal workers varied significantly in the study area. Significant age, gender, and occupational group effects on accident risk were identified after correcting for this spatial variation. A good understanding of high-risk groups and high-risk regions underpins the formulation of hypotheses concerning accident causality and the development of effective public accident prevention policies.

Semiparametric modeling of the spatial distribution of occupational accident risk in the casual labor market, Piracicaba, southeast Brazil

The objective of this study was to estimate the spatial distribution of work accident risk in the informal work market in the urban zone of an industrialized city in southeast Brazil and to examine concomitant effects of age, gender, and type of occupation after controlling for spatial risk variation. The basic methodology adopted was that of a population-based case-control study with particular interest focused on the spatial location of work. Cases were all casual workers in the city suffering work accidents during a one-year period; controls were selected from the source population of casual laborers by systematic random sampling of urban homes. The spatial distribution of work accidents was estimated via a semiparametric generalized additive model with a nonparametric bidimensional spline of the geographical coordinates of cases and controls as the nonlinear spatial component, and including age, gender, and occupation as linear predictive variables in the parametric component. We analyzed 1,918 cases and 2,245 controls between 1/11/2003 and 31/10/2004 in Piracicaba, Brazil. Areas of significantly high and low accident risk were identified in relation to mean risk in the study region (p < 0.01). Work accident risk for informal workers varied significantly in the study area. Significant age, gender, and occupational group effects on accident risk were identified after correcting for this spatial variation. A good understanding of high-risk groups and high-risk regions underpins the formulation of hypotheses concerning accident causality and the development of effective public accident prevention policies.

Strengthening leave entitlements for workers in Australia

The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) commissioned me to work during October-December 2015 to prepare this preliminary research report on ways to strengthen leave entitlements for workers in Australia. The report considers how portable entitlements might be extended in a highly casualised Australian workforce continually affected by new technological arrangements.

Communication and the casualisation of nursing : a critical ethnography

The contemporary working environment is being rapidly reshaped by technological, industrial and political forces. Increased global competitiveness and an emphasis on productivity have led to the appearance of alternative methods of employment, such as part-time, casual and itinerant work, allowing greater flexibility. This allows for the development of a core permanent staff and the simultaneous utilisation of casual staff according to business needs. Flexible workers across industries are generally referred to as the non-standard workforce and full-time permanent workers as the standard workforce. Even though labour flexibility favours the employer, increased opportunity for flexible work has been embraced by women for many reasons, including the gender struggle for greater economic independence and social equality. Consequently, the largely female nursing industry, both nationally and internationally, has been caught up in this wave of change. This ageing workforce has been at the forefront of the push for flexibility with recent figures showing almost half the nursing workforce is employed in non-standard capacity. In part, this has allowed women to fulfil caring roles outside their work, to ease off nearing retirement and to supplement the family income. More significantly, however, flexibility has developed as an economic management initiative, as a strategy for cost constraint. The result has been the development of a dual workforce and as suggested by Pocock, Buchanan and Campbell (2004), associated deep-seated resentment and the marginalisation of part-time and casual workers by their full-time colleagues and managers. Additionally, as nursing currently faces serious recruitment and retention problems there is urgent need to understand the factors which are underlying present discontent in the nursing profession. There is an identified gap in nursing knowledge surrounding the issues relating to recruitment and retention. Communication involves speaking, listening, reading and writing and is an interactive process which is central to the lives of humans. Workplace communication refers to human interaction, information technology, and multimedia and print. It is the means to relationship building between workers, management, and their external environment and is critical to organisational effectiveness. Communication and language are integral to nursing performance (Hall, 2005), in twenty-four hour service however increasing fragmentation due to part-time and casual work in the nursing industry means that effective communication management has become increasingly difficult. More broadly it is known that disruption to communication systems impacts negatively on consumer outcomes. Because of this gap in understanding how nurses view their contemporary nursing world, an interpretative ethnographic study which progressed to a critical ethnographic study, based on the conceptual framework of constructionism and interpretativism was used. The study site was a division within an acute health care facility, and the relationship between increasing casualisation of the nursing workforce and the experiences of communication of standard and non-standard nurses was explored. For this study, full-time standard nurses were those employed to work in a specific unit for forty hours per week. Non-standard nurses were those employed part-time in specific units or those nurses employed to work as relief pool nurses for shift short falls where needed. Nurses employed by external agencies, but required to fill in for shifts at the facility were excluded from this research. This study involved an analysis of observational, interview and focus group data of standard and non-standard nurses within this facility. Three analytical findings - the organisation of nursing work; constructing the casual nurse as other; and the function of space, situate communication within a broader discussion about non-standard work and organisational culture. The study results suggest that a significant culture of marginalisation exists for nurses who work in a non-standard capacity and that this affects communication for nurses and has implications for the quality of patient care. The discussion draws on the seven elements of marginalisation described by Hall, Stephen and Melius (1994). The arguments propose that these elements underpin a culture which supports remnants of the historically gendered stereotype "the good nurse" and these cultural values contribute to practices and behaviour which marginalise all nurses, particularly those who work less than full-time. Gender inequality is argued to be at the heart of marginalising practices because of long standing subordination of nurses by the powerful medical profession, paralleling historical subordination of women in society. This has denied nurses adequate representation and voice in decision making. The new knowledge emanating from this study extends current knowledge of factors surrounding recruitment and retention and as such contributes to an understanding of the current and complex nursing environment.

Nursing casualisation and communication : a critical ethnography

Aim The aim was to explore the relationship between nursing casualization and the culture of communication for nurses in a healthcare facility. Background Casualization, or non-standard work, is the use of temporary, contract, part-time and casual labour. An increase in casual labour has been part of a global shift in work organization aimed at creating a more flexible and cheaper workforce. It has been argued that flexibility of labour has enabled nurses to manage both non-work related needs and an increasingly complex work environment. Yet no research has explored casualization and how it impacts on the communication culture for nurses in a healthcare facility. Design Critical ethnography. Methods Methods included observation, field notes, formal interviews and focus groups. Data collection was undertaken over the 2 years 2008–2009. Results The concepts of knowing and belonging were perceived as important to nursing teamwork and yet the traditional time/task work model, designed for a full-time workforce, marginalized non-standard workers. The combination of medical dominance and traditional stereotyping of the nurse and work as full-time shaped the behaviours of nurses and situated casual workers on the periphery. The overall finding was that entrenched systemic structures and processes shaped the physical and cultural dimensions of a contemporary work environment and contributed to an ineffective communication culture. Conclusion Flexible work is an important feature of contemporary nursing. Traditional work models and nurse attitudes and practices have not progressed and are discordant with a contemporary approach to nursing labour management.

Workplace bullying a risk for permanent employees

Objective: We tested the hypothesis that the risk of experiencing workplace bullying was greater for those employed on casual contracts compared to permanent or ongoing employees. Methods: A cross-sectional population-based telephone survey was conducted in South Australia in 2009. Employment arrangements were classified by self-report into four categories: permanent, casual, fixed-term and self-employed. Self-report of workplace bullying was modelled using multiple logistic regression in relation to employment arrangement, controlling for sex, age, working hours, years in job, occupational skill level, marital status and a proxy for socioeconomic status. Results: Workplace bullying was reported by 174 respondents (15.2%). Risk of workplace bullying was higher for being in a professional occupation, having a university education and being separated, divorced or widowed, but did not vary significantly by sex, age or job tenure. In adjusted multivariate logistic regression models, casual workers were significantly less likely than workers on permanent or fixed-term contracts to report bullying. Those separated, divorced or widowed had higher odds of reporting bullying than married, de facto or never-married workers. Conclusions: Contrary to expectation, workplace bullying was more often reported by permanent than casual employees. It may represent an exposure pathway not previously linked with the more idealised permanent employment arrangement. Implications: A finer understanding of psycho-social hazards across all employment arrangements is needed, with equal attention to the hazards associated with permanent as well as casual employment.

Sub-registro de acidentes do trabalho em localidade do Estado de São Paulo, 1997

OBJETIVO: Estimar o número de acidentes do trabalho ocorridos em determinada localidade e intervalo de tempo e a extensão do sub-registro de casos. MÉTODOS: Amostraram-se 4.782 domicílios residenciais do município de Botucatu, SP, contendo 17.219 moradores, em primeiro de julho de 1997. em cada um dos domicílios, um morador adulto era entrevistado para identificar ocorrência de acidentes do trabalho nos três meses precedentes à entrevista. Nos casos positivos, os acidentados foram entrevistados. Para cálculo do intervalo de confiança utilizou-se a formula de Cochran. RESULTADOS: Confirmaram ter sofrido acidente do trabalho 76 indivíduos, estimando-se em 1.810 o número desses eventos em Botucatu no ano de 1997 e a proporção de incidência em 4,1% (IC95% 3,0%-5,3%). Dos 76 acidentados, 39 não eram cobertos pelo seguro acidente previdenciário (51,3% IC95% 41,1%-61,6%), não se enquadrando na obrigatoriedade de emissão de Comunicação de Acidente do Trabalho (funcionários públicos estatutários, autônomos, assalariados sem registro em carteira, proprietários e outros). Dentre os 37 casos com obrigatoriedade de emissão desse documento, 20 casos não possuíam (54,1% IC39,4%-68,7%). Houve maior proporção de sub-registro de casos em trabalhadores de micro, pequenas e médias empresas, do que entre grandes empresas. Apenas 22,4% (IC13,8%, 30,9%) dos acidentes do trabalho informados nas entrevistas domiciliares foram captados pelos registros previdenciários CONCLUSÕES: Os achados indicam a necessidade de melhoria de utilização de outras fontes de informação, além das Comunicações de Acidentes do Trabalho, para elaboração das estatísticas oficiais sobre acidentes do trabalho.

The incidence and intensity of employer funded training: Australian evidence on the impact of flexible work

The interaction between the growth of flexible forms of employment and employer funded training is important for understanding labour market performance. In particular, the idea of a trade-off has been advanced to describe potential market failures in the employment of flexible workers. This study finds that evidence of a trade-off is apparent in both the incidence and intensity of employer funded training. Flexible workers receive training that is 50-80% less intense than the workforce average. Casual workers - especially males - suffer more acutely from the trade-off. This suggests that flexible production externalities may seriously reduce human capital formation in the workforce.

Union strategies in representing ‘new workers’ : the case of UK retail union

The purpose of this paper is to explore the changing nature of employee voice through trade union representation in the retail industry. The retail industry is a major employer in the UK and is one of the few private sector service industries with union representation (Griffin et al 2003). The requisite union: the Distributive and Allied Workers (USDAW) union is one of the biggest unions in the country. However, the characteristics of the industry provide unique challenges for employee voice and representation including: high labour turnover; high use of casual, female and student labour; and, variable levels of union recognition (Reynolds et al 2005). Irrespective of these challenges, any extension of representation and organisation by unions in the retail sector is inherently valuable, socially and politically, given that retail workers are often categorised as vulnerable, due to the fact that they are among the lowest paid in the economy, sourced from disadvantages labour markets and increasingly subject to atypical employment arrangements (Broadbridge 2002; Henley 2006; Lynch 2005; Roan 2003).

The new world of work and employment: fitness workers and what they want from the employment relationship

This paper reports on an empirically based study of the Queensland (Australia) health and fitness industry over 15 years (1993 -2008). This study traces the development of the new occupation of fitness instructor in a service industry which has evolved si nce the 1980s and is embedded in values of consumption and individualism. It is the new world of work. The data from the 1993 study was historically significant, capturing the conditions o f employment in an unregulated setting prior to the introduction of the first industrial a ward in that industry in 1994. Fitness workers bargained directly with employers over all a spects of the employment relationship without the constraints of industrial regulation or the presence of trade unions. The substantive outcomes of the employment relationship were a direct reflection of m anagerial prerogative and worker orientation and preference, and did not reflect the rewards and outcomes traditionally found in Australian workplaces. While the focus of the 1993 research was on exploring the employment relationship in a deregulated environment, an unusual phenomenon was identified: fitness workers happily trading-off what would be considere d standard working conditions for the opportunity to work (‘take the stage’). Since then, several streams of literature have evolved providing a new context for understanding this phenomenon in the fitness industry, including: the sociology of the body (Shilling 1993; Turner 1996); emotional (Hochschild 1984) and aesthetic labour (Warhurst et al 2000); the so cial relations of production and space (Lefebvre 1991; Moss 1995); body history (Helps 2007); the sociology of consumption (Saunders 1988; Baudrillard 1998; Ritzer 2004); and work identity (Du Gay 1996; Strangleman 2004). The 2008 survey instrument replicated the 1993 study but was additionally informed b y the new literature. Surveys were sent to 310 commercial fitness centres and 4,800 fitness workers across Queensland. Worker orientation appears unchanged, and industry working conditions still seem atypical despite regulation si nce 1994. We argue that for many fitness workers the goal is to gain access to the fitness centre economy. For this they are willing to trade-off standard conditions of employment, and exchange traditional employm ent rewards for m ore intrinsic psycho-social rewards gained the through e xp o sure of their physical capital (Bourdieu 1984) o r bo dily prowess to the adoration o f their gazing clients. Building on the tradition of emotional labour and aesthetic labour, this study introduces the concept of ocularcentric labour: a state in which labour’s quest for the psychosocial rewards gained from their own body image shapes the employment relationship. With ocularcentric labour the p sycho-social rewards have greater value for the worker than ‘hard’, core conditions of employment, and are a significant factor in bargaining and outcomes, often substituting fo r direct earnings. The wo rkforce profile (young, female, casual) and their expectations (psycho-social rewards of ado ration and celebrity) challenge traditional trade unions in terms of what they can deliver, given the fitness workers’ willingness to trade-off minimum conditions, hard-won by unions.

Factors associated with depression among male casual laborers in urban Vietnam

This study examined the level, the prevalence of and the factors associated with depression among male casual laborers in Hanoi. Social mapping was done to recruit and interview 450 men aged over 18 years, mostly unskilled and unregistered laborers from 135 street venues across 13 districts of the city using a structured questionnaire. Most were from rural and mountainous provinces and did manual works such as motorbike taxi drivers, porters, construction workers, small traders and others in the current city. The prevalence of self-reported depressive symptoms (25 %) was high. Structural equation modeling showed that marriage, family separation and living with peers or partners were three significant distal risk factors, while illicit drug use and low social connectedness were proximal predictors of depression. Of all factors, social connectedness appeared to be the most important because it plays a mediating role. Drug use was an independent risk factor. This study provides a model to understand the mental health of male casual laborers and to develop culturally appropriate intervention programs for these men

Comparação entre hipertensão autoreferida e pressão arterial casual e presença de fatores de risco em funcionários da saúde Bauru e Jaú

Model: Prevalence study. Objectives: To evaluate the presence of self-reported hypertension to compare with blood pressure measurements. Besides, this work investigated health information level of workers and if the job position has any influence on blood pressure (BP). Methods: This study evaluated 349 health workers (44±10 years old) from Bauru and Jau cities, who answered some questions about history of health condition, use of medicines, past surgeries as well as social, scholar and physical conditions and had their blood pressure measured. Each subject selfreported as normotensive or hypertensive. Values of systolic ≥ 140 mmHg and/or diastolic PA ≥ 90 mmHg were considered elevated. Among the health workers evaluated, 198 were submitted to anthropometric and biochemical evaluations. Values are presented as means ± SD and frequency of distribution. It was used T-student test (p<0.05). Results: From all workers evaluated only 16% self-reported as hypertensive, which 56% presented high BP, however 91% used to take antihypertensive medicines. Among the 84% who self-reported as normotensive, 24% presented high BP and 8% used to take medicines. Although most of the employees of each section self-reported as normotensive, more than a half presented high BP and which was more common in the health's section (76.3%). Conclusion: These results suggest that besides the majority of the employees self-reported as normotensive, an elevated number of health workers presented high blood pressure and used to take medicines inappropriately, which indicates that they did not have enough knowledge about their health. Furthermore, it was observed that Health Section presented the higher blood pressure values.

Are student workers a threat or a solution? CEPS Commentary, 14 July 2015

The massification of tertiary education means that a significant percentage of young people participate in tertiary education while also working. They can be seen as a threat – as cheap and highly qualified competition for low-skilled workers in casual jobs who are setting aside their studies for the time being in favour of immediate income. Or they might present an opportunity – a natural way for a large percentage of young people to gain experience and contact with the labour market without the need for massive government programmes. The authors argue in this CEPS commentary that student work is more of an opportunity than a threat.