The purpose of this paper is to explore the issues in the shiftworking literature and to apply these to an administrative environment.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the issues in the shiftworking literature and to apply these to an administrative environment.
Design/methodology/approach
The scope of the paper is the issue of health problems in shiftworkers in administrative environments. The method was to use case study organisations which had introduced shiftwork and discover from semi‐structured interviews of staff what the effects had been.
Findings
Given the choice, employees opted for shiftwork, especially women and especially for a night or evening shift; anticipated problems of absenteeism and labour turnover and low performance related to health issues were not present.
Research limitations/implications
The design was limited to two organisations which gave access; this may have been because they were able to report positive outcomes. A broader survey may uncover negative aspects which this paper could not.
Practical implications
The concerns over health cannot be transferred to an administrative environment. This may encourage organisations to introduce more shift patterns, given full employee involvement from the outset. Shift premia, so common elsewhere, and a concern to cost‐conscious managers were not paid.
Originality/value
The concerns over health uncovered by previous research on shiftwork are not present in administrative environments.
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When I contemplate the development of policy for post‐secondary education, I am reminded of one of the least pleasant popular songs of the past two decades: the one which asked…
Abstract
When I contemplate the development of policy for post‐secondary education, I am reminded of one of the least pleasant popular songs of the past two decades: the one which asked plaintively “What's it all about, Alfie?”, and was sung by a lady who sounded to me as if she were being slowly strangled while suffering from severe constipation. I am beginning to manifest the same symptoms myself — although it is my thought processes rather than my voice which they affect. For our problems seem never to come any nearer resolution. Perhaps indeed they cannot, until we have had a General Election. But if that goes wrong (from my point of view), I doubt if we shall be any further forward. One has only to contemplate the statements of Mark Carlisle, the Tory education spokesman, to justify those doubts: they are urbane and soothing, but unhappily vacuous. His back‐up man Dr. Keith Hampson is far from mentally constipated; he seems quite unable to control a constant flow of half‐digested views and nostrums about higher education, while neglecting totally the 16–19 year olds.
The Government is to consult on the legal basis of further education provision, says Mark Carlisle, Secretary of State for Education & Science. He set up last Autumn, jointly with…
Abstract
The Government is to consult on the legal basis of further education provision, says Mark Carlisle, Secretary of State for Education & Science. He set up last Autumn, jointly with the local authority associations, a working group to review the law as it relates to further education, to consider the need for changes, and to suggest what changes might be made. The group have now completed their report and submitted it to Ministers and the local authority associations. Comments thereon are now sought by 30 October.
The General Election is over, with the predicted result. Margaret Thatcher is in Downing Street/and Mark Carlisle (and Rhodes Boyson, from whom may the good Lord preserve us) in…
Abstract
The General Election is over, with the predicted result. Margaret Thatcher is in Downing Street/and Mark Carlisle (and Rhodes Boyson, from whom may the good Lord preserve us) in Elizabeth House. With them is Janet, the Baroness Young, as Minister of State; as far as I know her principal educational qualification, apart from her own degree, is to have been born the daughter of the Bursar of Jesus College, Oxford. Perhaps that is symbolic: the present Government shows every sign of being strong on finance — in the sense of cutting it — and weak on the content of education. Meanwhile Shirley Williams has departed from the scene, as have Margaret Jackson, Bryan Davies (a former FE teacher), Mike Noble (once chairman of Burnley LEA), and myself. We shall dispense with expertise: prejudices to the fore¡
One can allow pupils and teachers to taste life in an industrial setting, and come into contact with some of the problems facing those in the productive sector of the economy �…
Abstract
One can allow pupils and teachers to taste life in an industrial setting, and come into contact with some of the problems facing those in the productive sector of the economy — the impact and potential in computerised procedures; the need to solve problems; the fact that designing and making things deserve the attention of the ablest pupils; and so on. A corollary is to give employers a better insight into what schools are trying to achieve. The other objective — and a greater challenge — is to prepare young people more effectively for the world of work, without sacrificing the equally important task of all round individual development.
The DES recently invited comments on Professor Keohane's recommendation that a Certificate of Extended Education (CEE) should be established for young people with modest…
Abstract
The DES recently invited comments on Professor Keohane's recommendation that a Certificate of Extended Education (CEE) should be established for young people with modest attainments at GCE O‐level or in CSE. This important and complex issue is being studied alongside other proposals relating to the sixth‐form curriculum and examination structure. The education interests are divided about the proper solution. A little over half of the replies which I have received generally support the introduction of a CEE. The remainder are either opposed on educational grounds to the underlying philosophy of a single‐subject examination with no necessary vocational bias; or question the wisdom of inaugurating a separate new examination alongside existing examinations for a similar target group who follow pre‐employment courses in further education.
The recent controversy about school transport charges should not be buried and forgotten until we have drawn some conclusions from it. They may be of as much interest to those…
Abstract
The recent controversy about school transport charges should not be buried and forgotten until we have drawn some conclusions from it. They may be of as much interest to those working in further and higher ecucation as to those in the school sector and to parents.
Since the mid‐1990s, offshore production has become increasingly important in white‐collar, service sector activities in the US economy. This development coincided with a stagnant…
Abstract
Purpose
Since the mid‐1990s, offshore production has become increasingly important in white‐collar, service sector activities in the US economy. This development coincided with a stagnant gender wage gap in the service sector and a slowdown in the narrowing of the overall US gender wage gap over this period. This paper aims to categorize white‐collar service sector occupations into two groups based on whether an occupation is at risk of being offshored and to assess the relative contribution of these two groupings, through their employment and wages, to the trends in the gender wage gap within the service sector and the US economy between 1995 and 2005.
Design/methodology/approach
Standard occupational decomposition methods are applied to Current Population Survey and Displaced Workers Survey data.
Findings
The findings show that in occupations at risk of being offshored, low‐wage women's employment declined, leading to an artificial increase in the average wage of the remaining women thereby narrowing the gender wage gap. This improvement in the gender wage gap was offset by the relative growth of high‐wage male employment in at‐risk occupations and the widening of the gender wage gap within not‐at‐risk occupations.
Originality/value
These findings contribute to the growing literature on the causes of the stagnation of the US gender wage gap in the 1990s.
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I spent a weekend in Ireland recently. Mixing business with pleasure, I left a hard‐headed adult education conference in down‐to‐earth Belfast for a day in dreamy and desolate…
Abstract
I spent a weekend in Ireland recently. Mixing business with pleasure, I left a hard‐headed adult education conference in down‐to‐earth Belfast for a day in dreamy and desolate Donegal. After driving through some of the most beautiful scenery in Europe on some of its worst roads, I sat relaxing over a pint of Guinness and let myself succumb to the delusion of all city‐dwellers — that in such remote and backward areas was to be found the idyllic life, free from worry and tension. But the conversation at the bar soon brought me back to an odd kind of reality. For the landlady and a few of her regular customers were far from worry‐free. They were deeply concerned about the dangers which could arise from the activities of the notorious if mostly unseen denizens of those parts — not the IRA, but the fairies.
Benjamin D. Scherrer, Brandon Folson, Chevy R. J. Eugene, Ellie Ernst, Tinesh Indrarajah, tavis d. jules, Madeleine Lutterman and Anastasia Toland
Drawing connections between Indigenous boarding schools in North America and the expansion of colonial schooling worldwide, this chapter conceptualizes methods of re-engagement…
Abstract
Drawing connections between Indigenous boarding schools in North America and the expansion of colonial schooling worldwide, this chapter conceptualizes methods of re-engagement with the topic of reparations for communities who have been subjected to the consequences of colonial schooling. Models of colonial schooling instill education practices aimed at enforcing the assimilation of populations into dominant cultures while reinforcing globalized racializing hierarchies. The epistemic violence central to the conceptualization of the colonial school is a key component of this colonial technology and is reproduced within modern education systems throughout the Global South. Moving toward the interconnected articulation of reparative material and epistemic justice in education for American Indian and African American communities in the United States and post-colonial communities worldwide, the chapter aims to create openings in comparative and international education for addressing the colonial residues within modern education on local and global levels, recentering the foundational terms by which schools function and the solidarities necessary for repair.