Hasil untuk "Labor. Work. Working class"

Yinuo Chen, Yiyang Nan, Lang Xu et al.

Abstract Background Recent studies emphasize the significance of copper dyshomeostasis in neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, thereby highlighting the role of copper in neurotoxicity. Cuproptosis, a novel mechanism of copper-dependent cell death, remains underexplored, particularly concerning environmental pollutants like polystyrene nanoplastics (PS-NPs). While PS-NPs are recognized for inducing neurotoxicity through various forms of cell death, including apoptosis and ferroptosis, their potential to trigger neuronal cuproptosis has not yet been investigated. This study aims to determine whether exposure to PS-NPs induces neurotoxicity via cuproptosis and to explore the preliminary molecular mechanisms involved, thereby addressing this significant knowledge gap. Methods Seven-week-old male C57BL/6 mice were exposed to PS-NPs at dose of 12.5 mg/kg, and were co-treated with the antioxidant N-acetylcysteine (NAC). Complementary in vitro experiments were conducted using SH-SY5Y neuronal cells exposed to PS-NPs at a concentration of 0.75 mg/mL, with interventions that included the copper chelator tetrathiomolybdate (TTM), NAC, and the MAPK inhibitor PD98059. Results Exposure to PS-NPs significantly increased cerebral copper accumulation (P < 0.05) and induced cuproptosis, characterized by lipid-acylated DLAT oligomerization, dysregulation of cuproptosis regulators (FDX1, LIAS, HSP70), and mitochondrial damage. In murine models, PS-NPs elicited neurotoxicity, as evidenced by neuronal loss, decreased Nissl body density, impaired synaptic plasticity, and suppressed oxidative stress markers (GSH, SOD, Nrf2), alongside activation of the ERK-MAPK pathway, ultimately resulting in deficits in learning and memory. Treatment with NAC alleviated these adverse effects. In SH-SY5Y cells, exposure to PS-NPs resulted in reduced cell viability (p < 0.01), an effect that was mitigated by TTM. Furthermore, NAC and PD98059 were found to reverse elevated copper levels, cuproptosis markers, and mitochondrial anomalies (p < 0.05). Conclusion This study presents preliminary evidence indicating that PS-NPs may induce neuronal cuproptosis, potentially through the oxidative stress-mediated activation of the ERK-MAPK pathway, which contributes to cognitive dysfunction in mice. These findings provide insights into the potential mechanisms underlying PS-NPs neurotoxicity and highlight possible therapeutic targets, such as copper chelation or MAPK inhibition, for mitigating the neurological risks associated with nanoplastic exposure, pending further validation in human-relevant models.

Wambua Muindi

AbstractThis paper examines the song Riziki1 (2005), composed and performed by Ja-Mnazi Afrika, which theorizes night work. Written and performed by the Kenyan musician Michael Otieno Ooko a.k.a Awillo Mike Ja’mnazi, the song appropriates the Swahili word “Riziki” which refers to a livelihood to complicate the idea and value of work, and particularly work by night. This way, the song’s Swahili lyrics muse upon and animate the work process to an East African audience. The song narrates night work dynamics, with a temporal sensibility, and proffers dignity to work-by-night subcultures. Borrowing from performance analysis and close listening analytical approaches, this paper argues that the song communicates the stress and pressures of night work while simultaneously emphasizing how imperative the continued work is to secure people’s livelihoods. Furthermore, the choice of language, for the most part, of the song in Kiswahili, an African language, and a language of trade in Eastern Africa is perhaps aware of the diversity of people and occupations included in night work. This way, the song complicates the cultural dynamic of night work to move beyond its association with the pleasure economy to locate work by night within capitalist work cultures.

Allyson P. Brantley, Lori A. Flores

AbstractThis introduction provides context for this special feature on night work across time and place. It outlines past debates over the propriety and necessity of night shifts, as well as present and future challenges and opportunities for night workers, activists, and researchers.

Danièle Linhart

Alka Verma, Amit Goel, Priyank Yadav et al.

Introduction: Limited information is available regarding effect of vaccination on protection against Covid-19 infections and their severity as well. Objectives: In the present study, we assessed the effect of Covid-19 vaccination on incidences and severity of break through Covid-19 infections. Method: This retrospective study was conducted at a tertiary care center in Northern India during one calendar year, 1st August 2021 to 31st July 2022. The study population included Health-care workers (HCWs) who were treated for Covid 19 infection and had already received at least 1 dose of Covishield TM (AZD1222) Covid-19 vaccine. Results: Out of 1868 health care workers enrolled for the study, 513 contracted Covid-19 infections. Amongst infected HCWs, number of single and double doses of CovishieldTM (AZD1222) recipients were 112 and 401 respectively. Out of the 513 covid positive HCWs, 459 (89.4%) had mild disease, whereas 54 (10.6%) had moderate disease. None of the HCWs developed severe disease and no mortality was noted in either group. Conclusion: In this study, we found that immunization with two doses of CovishieldTM (AZD1222) vaccine was associated with decline in number of cases with moderate or severe Covid-19. Moreover, immunization with even single dose of CovishieldTM (AZD1222) vaccine prevented development of severe disease. Henceforth, it is concluded that although, immunization with CovishieldTM (AZD1222) could not protect all recipients from SARS-Cov-2 infection, it did prevent the progress of disease to severe grades.

Alberto Acosta

Atrás quedan las promesas del “desarrollo”, nutridas de uno de los corazones de la Modernidad: el “progreso”. En la vorágine, estamos abocados a replantearnos el tema del trabajo y del ocio. Se ha transformado el fenómeno del “ocio”, para expresar libertad y autonomía en un espacio mercantil de la vida misma. El “ocio mercantil” es reflejo de un mundo “mal desarrollado”, donde “trabajo” y “ocio” terminan igualmente alienados a la acumulación del capital. Pero no todo es desalentador. Hay reflexiones y acciones que demandan la construcción de sociedades radicalmente distintas. Palabras clave: Modernidad, Desarrollo, Progreso, Ocio y Trabajo.

Maksym Trotsko, Viktor Hudyma, Andrii Diadechko et al.

Мета роботи: розробити узагальнену математичну модель функціонування сектору безпеки і оборони України в умовах невизначеності та ризиків, притаманних впливу гібридних засобів противника, а також дослідити синергетичний ефект впливу взаємосумісності на спроможності сектору безпеки і оборони протидіяти стратегії застосування гібридної боротьби. Метод дослідження: методи комплексного аналізу та синтезу, метод нелінійного математичного моделювання. Результати дослідження: визначено, що існує взаємозв’язок між невизначеністю та ризиками гібридних загроз, а також доведене існування компенсуючого впливу з боку сектору безпеки та оборони держави на застосування противником заходів гібридного впливу. Теоретична цінність дослідження: теоретичні положення, висновки та рекомендації, викладені в роботі, можуть стати основою для подальших наукових досліджень й дискусій з питань підвищення можливостей сектору безпеки та оборони України протидіяти гібридним засобам противника. Практична цінність дослідження: реалізація  рекомендацій  і пропозицій,  обґрунтованих  у  роботі,  які спрямовані, на основі процесів військової стандартизації, на забезпечення взаємосумісності складових сектору безпеки і оборони України, а також міжнародних партнерів, дозволить протидіяти стратегії противника щодо застосування заходів гібридної боротьби. Цінність дослідження: в даному дослідженні моделювання процесів функціонування сектору безпеки та оборони України в умовах невизначеності та ризиків, притаманних впливу гібридних засобів противника ще не були предметом комплексного наукового дослідження.

Maansi Parpiani

AbstractLabor in the textile and garment industry is at the heart of a series of recent books on South Asia. Together these books document the different scales at which textile and garment work has been structured and restructured over the last century, and its implications for workers, their health as well as collective solidarity. Across the countries of Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, the industry developed and declined in vastly different temporalities and rhythms. Yet, as these works reveal, workers have often been confronted with similar challenges brought on by the boom-and-bust cycles of industrial development. In each case, textile and garment workers have been forced to navigate transitions to premature deindustrialization, closure, or national/transnational industrial policy changes. The books center workers and their long “post”-industrial or industrial “afterlives,” as they cope with the dramatic changes in the global manufacturing of textile and garment.

Alaa AL-Nemr

Objectives: This study aimed to detect the relationship between body mass index (BMI), selective voluntary motor control (SVMC), and functional independence in children with spastic diplegic cerebral palsy (CP) with levels II and III of gross motor function classification system. Methods: A total of eighty-four children with spastic diplegic CP, aged 6-9 years with a mean age of 7.09±0.68 participated in this correlational study. BMI, selective control assessment of the lower extremity (SCALE), and pediatric functional independence measure (WEE FIM) were used for the assessment of BMI, SVMC, and functional independence, respectively. Results: The results demonstrated the presence of a positive strong significant correlation between SCALE and WEE FIM, a negative strong significant correlation between WEE FIM and BMI, and a negative moderate significant correlation between BMI and SCALE. Discussion: Functional independence is significantly correlated with BMI and SVMC in children with spastic diplegic CP. This study provides original evidence that BMI and SVMC are major factors that influence functional independence in these children. So, they are highly recommended to be part of the evaluation of their functional independence in clinical settings and research.

Alexandra Ghiț

AbstractIn this article, I choose struggles over skill development as an entry point to uncovering features of women's labor activism in state-owned tobacco factories in Romania, from the 1920s to the early 1960s. I look at the processes that constructed women tobacco workers, especially those at the Tobacco Manufactory in the city of Cluj, as non-skilled workers, and examine the forms of labor activism in the tobacco industry that challenged those constructs. I describe how women's work at the Cluj Tobacco Manufactory, from the mid-1920s to the mid-1950s, was shaped by successive waves of production intensification and rationalization, demonstrating that these reorganizations affected female workers more than they affected their male coworkers. I point out that although they were considered non-skilled laborers, female tobacco workers exercised an amount of control over their work and were important contributors to their families’ maintenance. I show that spanning two different political regimes, matters of skill were at the core of labor activism. For female workers, in the interwar period, labor activism in male-dominated organizations and structures entailed skill-mediated political strategies that emphasized experience and shopfloor status besides skill. By the 1950s, labor activism encompassed engaging in confrontational politics over seasoned women workers’ lack of access to skill training programs. I show that both in the late 1920s and in the early 1950s, illiteracy and women's more limited access to formal schooling in general shaped new experiences of participation in labor politics.

Eileen Boris

Faced with the most up to date washing machine, the undocumented Rosa, newly arrived from Guatemala to Los Angeles, does what many resourceful Mayan women would: She handwashes clothes and lays them on the lawn to dry.1 Played for comic relief in the 1983 movie El Norte, this confrontation of the domestic worker with the machine represents how, presumably in the face of dirty wars in Latin America and rising labor force participation of mothers with small children in the United States, well-to-do households had it both ways: They purchased the latest appliances and relied upon the labor of immigrant women. Recent migrants appeared more tractable than the African Americans who historically had worked in other women's homes. New models superseded old Maytags, but domestic workers never became obsolete, despite the predictions of sociologists and the panicked laments of would-be employers.

Ariel Ludwig

The carceral history of Rikers Island, which now houses nine of the New York City jails, begins with garbage and forced labor. The Municipal Farm on Rikers Island, operated by the Department of Public Charities and Correction, opened in 1884 and served as a “prison farm.” Penal farms were common at that time, but what was not common was the simultaneous use of the island as a landfill. Most of the landmass that now comprises Rikers was formed from the refuse of New Yorkers. As the amount of garbage grew the initially productive farm became plagued by rats and other pests—not to mention fetid smells and poor air quality. This history is felt today on the island, as there are shunts into the earth that spew sickening steam, a constant reminder of its origins.

Yeliz Polat

During the global Covid-19 pandemic crisis, many countries, especially European countries, placed the practice of short-time work, which is a passive employment policy, at the center of labor market measures. Fundamental factors, such as application procedures and principles, eligibility requirements, duration, the amount of allowance, and social security contributions differ between countries. In addition, to minimize the negative effects of the crisis, which affected all labor markets, relaxation of regulations regarding the practice of short-time working brought international practices closer together. This study investigated the similarities and differences of the short-time working practices in European Union member countries during the pandemic crisis, evaluating current and potential reverberations in labor markets. Consequently, it isclearly inevitable and necessary to extend the regulations regarding short-time working practices, which has an important role in protecting employment during general economic crises.

Yara Elizabeth Alves

Elif Özlem Özçatal, Umur Aşkın

Out of the vulnerable and disadvantaged groups in the labor market, disabled employees make up one of the segments that is most exposed to mobbing in the workplace. In this study, we investigated mobbing processes against disabled employees and their effects on them. The research was conducted through faceto-face in-depth interviews with 10 disabled employees in the province of Tokat, between November 2019 and December 2020. The obtained data was analyzed using descriptive and content methods. We examined the characteristics of handicapped employees who had been victims of mobbing, the mobbing acts used against them, causes and types of mobbing and their effects on the victims. The findings show that disabled employees are subjected to acts of mobbing including scolding, mockery, shouting, humiliation, backbiting, overloading, disdain, and being given work below their qualifications. Negative prejudices and attitudes towards disability are among the causes of mobbing against disabled employees in the workplace. Mobbing affects the effective and equal participation of disabled people at work and hinders their permanent presence in the labor market. The psychological and physical health of disabled employees who are victims of mobbing worsen and their disability-related health problems deteriorate. Mobbing impairs the physical and mental health of disabled employees and reduces their productivity as well. Mobbing weakens and eventually breaks these people’s ties with the labor market and their working lives.

Maria Stella Brandão Goulart, Juliana Coelho Antunes

Este artigo discute o sofrimento mental de docentes na universidade pública brasileira contemporânea. Serão apresentados, neste texto, parte dos dados resultantes de pesquisa qualitativa exploratória, realizada em uma Instituição Federal de Ensino Superior (IFES), em parceria com o Sindicato dos Professores, resultantes da realização de entrevistas semiestruturadas e observação participante em “Rodas de Conversa” sindicais sobre o tema. Identificou-se que o assunto é invisibilizado e que aqueles professores que comunicam seu sofrimento são chamados a normalizar suas expressões, configurando-as como uma questão individual, psiquiátrica ou jurídica. Além disso, foram identificadas estratégias igualmente individualizantes para lidar com o sofrimento no cotidiano. A discussão realizada no artigo ressalta o caráter coletivo e institucional do sofrimento relatado, relacionando-o aos processos de expansão, alterações na carreira e outros relativos às condições de trabalho e às relações profissionais estabelecidas. O “produtivismo” acadêmico, o assédio entre pares e as formas de avaliação dentro da universidade se configuraram como as principais causas de sofrimento entre professores, permeadas pela competição, individualismo, e ausência de sentimento de pertença a um coletivo. Entre as principais estratégias utilizadas em resposta ao sofrimento mental vivenciado estão o isolamento, tentativa de mobilidade interna e descredenciamento da pós-graduação. Concluímos que o sofrimento mental de docentes é uma pauta que exige atenção, especialmente em função de seu impacto na vida acadêmica, que toma a forma de primeira causa nos afastamentos do trabalho.

José Luiz Cordeiro Antunes, Maria Cristina Paulo Rodrigues, Lia Tiriba

No momento que este editorial está sendo escrito, quase quinhentos mil brasileiros/as negros/as, indígenas, brancos, quase-brancos (como diria Caetano), quilombolas, ribeirinhos/as, mulheres, de mil e uma cores, com seus sonhos e desejos pulsantes, tiveram suas vidas ameaçada e ceifadas. Pela covid-19, mas também pela impossibilidade de atendimento para inúmeras outras doenças, consequência do descaso com a saúde pública e com o SUS.

Inge Kryger Pedersen

This paper investigates how health professions compete and cooperate in addressing emerging local work tasks defined in relation to new globalized health challenges, such as type 2 diabetes. It identifies which professional groups have claimed responsibility for the tasks and by means of which kinds of interactions and infighting. The materials entail workplace-related artefacts and documents; in-depth interviews and extended conversations with health professionals about goals, dilemmas, and practices linked to prevention of lifestyle-related diseases; and site visits at Danish hospitals. Grounding Abbott’s framework of jurisdictions and his meso-level vocabulary in a situated account of professional boundary work, the analysis follows the ways that nurses in particular create, and sometimes stabilize or standardize, techniques for a disease prevention programme less than a decade old. The paper argues that processual theory of boundary work would benefit from grounding in a situated account of forms of professional boundaries within emerging jurisdictional tasks.

Francisco Carlos Oliveira de Sousa

Propomo-nos analisar a formação da rede federal de educação profissional industrial no Brasil. A análise das fontes apoia-se nos referenciais propostos por Magalhães (2004), Nosella e Buffa (2007), segundo os quais compreender a genealogia de uma instituição educativa pressupõe relacionar a sua função social com o contexto no qual está inserida. Criada em 1909, a rede escolar analisada objetivou, sob a crença no industrialismo, a formação profissional para desvalidos da sorte. Em síntese, a investigação evidenciou os limites dessa proposta em uma sociedade de incipiente industrialização.

Alireza Moradi, Shahamat Hosseinian, Seyed Kamal Vaezi

Background & Purpose: A requirement for the success of knowledge workers’ competence development plans is to take their thinking preferences into account. This research proposed a nature-based model of strategies of developing skills building and competencies of knowledge workers according to their preferred thinking style. Methodology: This was an applied, inductive, interpretative, and qualitative research conducted through the grounded theory. The participants of the research included 21 experts of Human Resource Management, selected by theoretical sampling. Data were analyzed using Corbin and Strauss’ Grounded Theory, through three stages of open, axial, and selective coding. Findings: Aprocess modelhas introduced in which Skill building and competence development of knowledge workers is the central phenomena of this model. The causal factors includ the three categories of individual, social-environmental, and organizational-legal. The strategies consist of three categories of competence development, skill building, and personal development based on A, B, C, and D’s preferences. The intervening factors are three categories of cultural-organizational, personal attitude, and senior managers’ attitude. Moreover, considerations of development facilitating factors comprise the contextual factors of the model. Finally, the outcomes of the model include the three categories of personal, organizational, and social development. Conclusion: Preparing and implementing plans for the development of competencies and skills of Knowledge workers based on their fourfold thinking preferences enhance the success and efficiency of these plans. For this purpose, competencies and skills related to each of these thinking preferences are identified and the actions necessary for their development are determined in this research.