This article explores meaningful work across two frontline occupations, bank advisors and schoolteachers. We build on narrative research focusing on the role of stories and storytelling in the sensemaking and identity construction processes related to work to explore the importance of others in the perception and construction of everyday work as meaningful. To study this, we examine the narrative construction of meaningful work in everyday work stories of self, work, others, and organizations as (ante)narrative identity construction processes. Our analysis shows that ‘making a difference by helping others’ is the predominant theme when sharing stories of everyday work situations perceived and constructed as meaningful. Three contributions are made. First, the narrative construction of meaningful work is collective and dynamic; second, others have a powerful voice in negotiating the meaningfulness of work; and third, negative public attention affects the possibility of assessing work as meaningful.
Tasmiya Rangila, Andiswa Zondo, Andiswa Mtshali
et al.
<b>Background/Objectives</b>: Although children’s playgrounds foster physical, cognitive and emotional health, sandpits can harbour antibiotic-resistant bacteria, representing a health concern for kids. Therefore, this point prevalence study investigated the presence and antimicrobial resistance of <i>Escherichia coli</i> in sandpits at four schools in Durban to ascertain the potential risk to schoolchildren and inform school authorities of the need to prevent such occurrences. <b>Methods</b>: Twenty samples were collected from schools on a single day. <i>E. coli</i> was isolated using colilert-18<sup>®</sup> and confirmed using PCR. Antibiotic susceptibility testing was performed against 19 antibiotics using the disc diffusion method and Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) guidelines. <b>Results</b>: <i>E. coli</i> was detected in 2/4 schools (50%), yielding 100 pure isolates. Of these, 71% (31 Site B and 40 Site C isolates) were resistant to at least one of the antibiotics tested, displaying 36 antibiograms. The highest resistance was to CFX (<i>n</i> = 40), and the lowest was to AMK and MEM (<i>n</i> = 1). All isolates were susceptible to CIP, CHL, GEN and TZP. At Site B, the highest resistance was against CFX (<i>n</i> = 16) and the lowest against AMK, CTX and NAL (<i>n</i> = 1). The highest resistance at Site C was against TET (n = 26), and the lowest against ATH and AUG (<i>n</i> = 1). Twenty isolates (20%) were multidrug-resistant, displaying resistance to at least one antibiotic from 3 classes. <b>Conclusions</b>: These results show that children with poor hygiene practices could get sick from playing in sandpits. Schools must change their sand regularly and ensure that sandpits are constantly exposed to the sun.
Recent advances in large language models (LLMs) have led to substantial progress in domain-specific applications, particularly within the legal domain. However, general-purpose models such as GPT-4 often struggle with specialized subdomains that require precise legal knowledge, complex reasoning, and contextual sensitivity. To address these limitations, we present LabourLawLLM, a legal large language model tailored to Chinese labor law. We also introduce LabourLawBench, a comprehensive benchmark covering diverse labor-law tasks, including legal provision citation, knowledge-based question answering, case classification, compensation computation, named entity recognition, and legal case analysis. Our evaluation framework combines objective metrics (e.g., ROUGE-L, accuracy, F1, and soft-F1) with subjective assessment based on GPT-4 scoring. Experiments show that LabourLawLLM consistently outperforms general-purpose and existing legal-specific LLMs across task categories. Beyond labor law, our methodology provides a scalable approach for building specialized LLMs in other legal subfields, improving accuracy, reliability, and societal value of legal AI applications.
AbstractThe year 2025 marks the 120th anniversary of Lochner v. New York, a 1905 U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down legislative limits on work hours in the baking industry. U.S. scholars generally agree this decision harmed workers and was a setback to the labor movement in the United States. The essay borrows from some of the historian E.P. Thompson’s writings on the relationship between historical inquiry and normative values in order to reflect on Lochner and the relative consensus among scholars opposing the decision. That reflection in turn serves as a point of entry for thinking about the role of normative values in doing labor history, what values we propound in the present by writing and teaching about the history of working-class people, and how those issues relate to different ways labor historians can understand what is arguably our field’s central category, class. The essay suggests that, with regard to the Lochner decision and in general, labor history is something of a different activity if the field’s orientation is toward the amelioration of time- and place-specific problems in working-class people’s lives, toward class as inherently a category of violence and injustice, or both.
In recent decades, a myriad of occupational terminologies has been proposed to grasp the fast-changing labour arrangements in the digital economy. ‘Tech worker’ is among the more recent terms, mostly referring to white-collar employees in tech firms like Google or Amazon. This term was popularised by unionisation drives of high-paid workers in the IT industry, where the notion of the term was gradually expanded. This article reconstructs the use and meaning of the term and reflects on its divergent use in labour movements and academia. Based on this analysis, I argue for an understanding of ‘tech worker’ among researchers that acknowledges its political dimension and dynamic meaning-making.
This article examines the process that led to the creation of the Union of Cotton and Food Crop Producers in Mali in the early 1990s. This process was made possible by the emergence within the peasantry of a distinct group identifying as cotton producers, who shared common interests to assert vis-à-vis the company overseeing cotton cultivation, the Malian Textile Development Company (CMDT). It was driven by a deteriorating economic context, marked by the country’s economic liberalization, and further facilitated by political liberalization following the fall of Moussa Traoré’s authoritarian regime. Finally, the article focuses specifically on understanding why producers chose a union as the means to represent and defend their interests.
The purpose of the article is to discuss the pedagogical work with children's perspectives based on the concept of resonance. The article is based on an analysis of a teaching activity in a Danish national church organized by a national church school service aimed at children in primary school. The teaching in the church seeks to create a relationship between the children's world of experience and the soundscape "The Stone" as well as activities that the adults have organized. On the one hand, the adults create a controlled and controllable framework for the teaching with soundscapes and activities, where the children are expected to act in certain ways, but on the other hand, children's perspectives are expressed in the children's uncontrollable experiences of something or someone talking to them, and that they can respond based on their perspectives on and experiences of the world. With resonance, we can see the importance of the uncontrollable in the pedagogical work with children's perspectives and nuance the creation of space for children's perspectives – here based on teaching activities in the church.
The PLATO mission is scheduled for launch in December 2026. It is an ESA M-class mission designed to find small planets around bright stars via the transit technique. The light curves it obtains will be wonderful for other science goals, among which is the study of binary and multiple stars. We are creating the Multiple Star Working Group (MSWG) to bring together the community to best exploit this unique opportunity. We will assemble the many science cases, create target lists, and co-ordinate applications for PLATO observations. We include instructions on how to register your interest.
The study of quantum thermodynamics aims to elucidate the role played by quantum principles in the emergent features of quantum thermodynamic processes. Specifically, it is of fundamental importance to understand how quantum correlation among different parties enables thermodynamic features distinguishable from those arising in classical thermodynamics. In this work, we investigate the relation between extractable work and quantum correlations for two-mode Gaussian states. We examine the change in local energy occurring at one party due to a Gaussian measurement performed on the other in relation to the quantum correlations of two-mode states classified as separable, entangled, and steerable states. Our analysis reveals a clear quantitative difference in the extractable work, depending on the class of states to which the two-mode state belongs.
Simpson Zhang, Tennison Liu, Mihaela van der Schaar
Current labor markets are strongly affected by the economic forces of adverse selection, moral hazard, and reputation, each of which arises due to $\textit{incomplete information}$. These economic forces will still be influential after AI agents are introduced, and thus, agents must use metacognitive and strategic reasoning to perform effectively. Metacognition is a form of $\textit{internal reasoning}$ that includes the capabilities for self-assessment, task understanding, and evaluation of strategies. Strategic reasoning is $\textit{external reasoning}$ that covers holding beliefs about other participants in the labor market (e.g., competitors, colleagues), making strategic decisions, and learning about others over time. Both types of reasoning are required by agents as they decide among the many $\textit{actions}$ they can take in labor markets, both within and outside their jobs. We discuss current research into metacognitive and strategic reasoning and the areas requiring further development.
Precarious work is universal, though its forms and consequences vary across countries due to institutional, cultural, and historical differences. This article reviews recent research on precarious work from a global perspective, emphasizing the comparative and interdisciplinary research needed for a comprehensive understanding of the structural transformations in contemporary capitalism that promote precarious work. The article has three foci. First, research that details the diverse forms of precarious work, which have become increasingly heterogeneous as national labor markets have been interwoven with global production networks. Second, research on precarious work that emphasizes its disparate impacts for women, youth, the elderly, racial and ethnic minority groups, and migrants, revealing an articulation of precarity and social cleavages. Third, research on the politics associated with precarious work and how some precarious workers have successfully organized and mobilized their interests, such as by unionizing and becoming involved in electoral politics. Still, questions remain regarding precarious work: how precarious workers differ from regular workers in representing their interests and demands and whether precarious workers are a new, independent social class or remain part of a changing working class. Finally, topics for future research on the global dimensions of precarious work are discussed.
El texto que se presenta a continuación surge en respuesta a la iniciativa de intentar explicar, desde una perspectiva personal, alguno de los aspectos importantes que influyen el proceso de producción de una tesis doctoral. Sirviéndome del genero de la autoetnografía para su redacción, se explican algunos de los cambios experimentados, tanto a nivel personal como desde un punto de vista conceptual, a lo largo del propio transcurso de la investigación que da lugar en último término a la tesis doctoral. Esto se hace desde la mirada privilegiada que otorga el paso del tiempo, así como el cumplimiento de alguno de los objetivos que inicialmente ni siquiera se contemplaban como factibles. Aunque no se mencionan con nombre y apellidos, este es un proceso en el que influyen una gran cantidad de personas, desde profesores y profesoras que son también amigos y amigas en la actualidad, hasta compañeros y compañeras de las que se va aprendiendo por el camino, además de los apoyos de fuera de la academia que resultan fundamentales. Es por ello por lo que se puede considerar que la tesis es un proceso social que se encarna de manera puntual en la persona que la firma. Un poco de todo esto es lo que se trata de explicar en las siguientes líneas.
Jacqueline Whalley, Asanthika Imbulpitiya, Tony Clear
et al.
This paper reports on the results of a 2023 survey that explores the Work Integrated Learning (WiL) experiences of thirty recent Computer Science (CS) graduates. The graduates had all completed their undergraduate bachelors degree within the last five years and were currently employed in a CS industry role. The survey asked about the graduates' perceptions within a continuum of WiL experiences from final year capstone projects to professional development in their first industry-based role. Most respondents had taken a capstone course involving a team project. Only two respondents had participated in an internship program. Our results indicate that graduates value their capstone experiences and believe that they provide transferable skills including teamwork, managing client relations, exposure to technologies and methods, and time management. When entering their first industry role less than fifty percent of graduates were allocated a mentor. Overwhelmingly, these graduates noted the importance of those mentors in their transition from student to working professional. Very few of the surveyed graduates were provided with ongoing professional development opportunities. Those who did noted significant gains including growth of leadership skills and accelerated career progression. Our survey highlights a gap and an opportunity for tertiary institutions to work with industry to provide graduate onboarding and novice/early-career professional development opportunities.
Chinese-style modernization involves the modernization of a large population, requiring top-level design in terms of scale and structure. The population perspective in Xi Jinping's Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era serves as the fundamental guide for population policies. The three-child policy and delayed retirement will affect the supply of labor in China and challenge the previous assessments of China's Lewis Turning Point. This study examines the rural surplus labor transfer from 2013 to 2022 based on urban and rural data. The results indicate that China's overall wage levels have continuously increased, the urban-rural income gap has narrowed, and the transfer of surplus rural labor has slowed. China has passed the first turning point and entered a transitional phase. Factors such as the level of agricultural mechanization, urbanization rate, and urban-rural income gap are more significant in influencing the transfer of surplus labor than the normal working-age population ratio. The delayed retirement policy has a more immediate impact on the supply and transfer of rural surplus labor than the three-child policy. Additionally, delayed retirement can offset the negative impact of the reduced relative surplus labor supply caused by the three-child policy, although the three-child policy could increase the future absolute surplus labor supply.
Davi Fideles De Oliveira, Carlos Marcelo Balbino, Carolina Baptista Ribeiro
et al.
The objective was to reflect on the key concept of labor motivation in the area in a dialogical perspective from the perspective of Frederick Irving Herzberg. It was a descriptive study of qualitative approach of the theoretical-reflective type, anchored in the concept of labor motivation proposed by psychologist Frederick Irving Herzberg. It was perceived that Herzberg's theory, decodes the motivational factors of employees in a company, bringing important elements for the construction and planning, relates two distinct classes of factors that condition the behavior generate satisfaction in the employees of a company, the hygienic classified by the theorist as unpleasant factors and the motivational considered factors that please the employee, such factors reflect directly on working conditions and their productivity. It was concluded that job satisfaction brings motivating factors that can consequently positively influence the rates of absenteeism causing its reduction, professional dissatisfaction causes a series of losses to the organization and the decrease in performance and productivity of employees.
Abstract The enduring COVID‐19 pandemic has gradually transformed our everyday lives. This study focuses on changes in work and family arrangements, with particular focus on changes in domestic help, and examines its impact on the division of domestic labor. Using a social survey of work and the family conducted in November 2020 and May 2021, the results show that from January 2020 (pre‐pandemic) to May 2021, approximately 40% of respondents experienced a reduced gender gap for housework and childcare, while a large gender gap is still observed in the absolute frequency of undertaking domestic labor. Some lifestyle changes triggered by the pandemic, such as an increase in the use of takeaways or delivery meals, and the expansion of working from home, are found to be able to contribute a shift toward more equal sharing of domestic labor. However, the fact that the access to such lifestyle changes is more common among those with a relatively high income or high educational background suggests that the lifestyle changes imposed by the pandemic may exacerbate class disparities in the gender gap in domestic labor. Furthermore, the results show that decreased kinship support results in a greater childcare burden being placed on women.
Glory T. Tsangue, Jacque Chirac Awa, Josephine Nsono
et al.
Background: Child abuse is a serious public health issue in low- and middle-income countries, and children with disabilities are at greater risk of abuse. Despite this heightened risk, the abuse of children with disabilities often goes undetected and under-reported, leading to the continuity of such abuse by their abusers.
Objectives: This study was aimed at identifying the reasons for non-disclosure of abuse and possible mitigating strategies to curb this dilemma in children and young adults with disabilities (CWD).
Methods: A population-based record-linkage qualitative study was conducted among CWD (both at home and in institutions) in the Northwest Region of Cameroon. Twelve key informant interviews and eight focus group discussions (FGDs) were conducted among key staff from child protection offices for child abuse, parents and teachers in schools. Fifty in-depth interviews were also conducted among children with disabilities. Reasons for nondisclosure and proposed mitigating approaches from audio tapes were transcribed verbatim, thematic analysis performed and findings reported.
Results: A lack of knowledge on where to disclose, fear of stigma, long and expensive procedures, a lack of confidence in the justice system, threats from abusers, protection of family unity and friendship ties were linked with nondisclosures. The most common mitigating strategies postulated were sensitisation, capacity building on parenting and the creation of child protection committees.
Conclusion: From this study, nondisclosure of abuse is common in CWD, and thus there is a need for urgent attention to curb the situation for safer and more child-friendly environments through sensitisation, parental support and putting in place strategic child protection committees.
Contribution: This article is based on the experience of all authors with interest in the field of disability. This article contributes to the pull of knowledge by providing context specific reasons for non-disclosure of abuse as well as mitigation strategies.
Vocational rehabilitation. Employment of people with disabilities, Communities. Classes. Races
Alfredo Gabriel Buza, Roberto Leher, Juliana Lando Canga
A pesquisa investiga o processo de descontinuação da experiência educacional angolana como uma dimensão do movimento ao socialismo para o atual contexto com a presença do setor privado. Foi uma pesquisa documental e histórica. Por meio de fontes oficiais evidencia a expansão do setor privado, correlacionando aspectos demográficos e territoriais. Conclui que em menos de três décadas ocorreu a substituição do monopólio estatal sobre a educação por medidas em prol da privatização do fornecimento da educação superior, movimento que concorreu para o fim da gratuidade nas instituições públicas.
Palavras-chave: Educação superior; Estado; Independência; Socialismo; Mercantilização.
Special aspects of education, Labor market. Labor supply. Labor demand
<p class="first" id="d1724999e71">This article aims to put forward an overarching typology of platform-related work.
First, it places the platformisation of productive processes within a characterisation
of informational capitalism. Then it proceeds by distinguishing between work behind
and through capitalist platforms. The former refers to the informational, industrial
and service work and workers who keep the platforms up and running. The greater part
of the article is devoted to discussing the latter. This second category is further
divided into three sub-categories of work and workers: ‘gig labour’, ‘prosumers’ and
‘self-employed owners’. Finally, platform work and labour beyond capitalist platforms
are addressed, with a further sub-typology. Here, three types of beyond-capitalist
platforms are identified: co-ops, commons-based peer production and state-owned agencies.
</p>
En el marco de la publicación del número cien de la revista Sociología del Trabajo interesa en este artículo recuperan los aportes de los estudios sobre Latinoamérica aparecidos en ella con el objetivo de visibilizar la producción de esta región señalando énfasis, recurrencias y perspectivas. Sus más de ochenta artículos atestiguan la importancia que la realidad latinoamericana tiene en la revista. Además de hacer referencia a los enfoques teóricos predominantes, los textos denotan diálogos fructíferos entre configuraciones laborales sumidas por procesos recomposición del trabajo a escala global, pero también particularidades condicionadas por el lugar ocupado en la división internacional del trabajo y las tradiciones políticas de cada formación social.