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INTRODUCTION
 Stress and Work
Stress is becoming a major health and safety issue. When stress is continuous, when pressures are intense it can cause physical illness and psychological distress. When work is too fast, too heavy, or too unpleasant, stress can occur. And whether stress is caused by physical factors such as excessive noise or emotional factors such as the pace of work the results are the same. When stress becomes chronic the stress responses of elevated blood pressure, cholesterol, adrenal and blood sugar can lead to heart disease and other chronic diseases.
The International Labour Organization reports that "stress has become one of the most serious health issues...." Perhaps to underline the point a recent survey by the Canada Health Monitor found that more than 1 in 4 workers reported stress, mental or emotional health problems arising from work. According to the survey more than 1/3 of blue collar workers said they stayed home because of stress.
A few years ago (November 1999) Statscan reported increasing time stress for every age group of Canadians. More and more research is pointing to the problems caused by job insecurity, more intense demands, time pressure, and rapid technological change. In a recent study (January 2002) released by Canadian Policy Research Networks dealing with the quality of worklife in health care workplaces the authors conclude: "The people who deliver the care have produced more with less, and coped with incessant change. But there has been a cost – in the form of burnout, declining morale and staff shortages."
Responding to workplace stress is an area where we have taken some preliminary steps:
We will continue to develop both our understanding and our bargaining response to stress. Stress management techniques may help relieve the short-term strains caused by stress. But stress needs to be controlled at the source. This includes our commitment to provide more opportunities for our members to attend to personal matters through shorter work time, it means a focus on those workplace factors which lead to stress and it means a more adequate response from Workers’ Compensation boards.
Good Stress/Bad Stress?
"Good Stress" is a concept that was developed by Hans Selye, the Canadian physician who did the first major research on stress in the 1940s and 1950s. Selye defined stress in very general terms, as "the rate of wear and tear on the body." This definition was based on the classic "fight or flight" physical response our bodies make to danger.
Selye also talked about two forms of stress: eustress (or good stress) and distress (or bad stress). This is only an opinion, or idea. It is not supported by scientific or physical evidence. But it leads to statements such as this one:
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"Stress is not a problem for people or workplaces. Stress is purely and simply a very powerful fuel."
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But good stress/bad stress is still a very popular idea. Many articles and books argue that stress can be positive if people learn to use it correctly.
Stress-coping strategies can be very effective, but the good stress/bad stress approach can "blame the victim." It implied that people who suffer from stress do so because they are not skilled enough to control it. Stress becomes a problem that is "all in a person’s head."
Another problem with stress is that we’re often told to take it for granted. It’s assumed that "stress" is a normal part of modern living. It’s not, and it doesn’t have to be. Uncontrolled, stress can cause enormous physical, emotional, family and social "disease".
Stress-related problems cause more lost work-time than accidents, strikes and even colds and flu. This doesn’t include the chronic or long-term diseases related to stress. Stress related costs on the bottom line are "worse than [they've] ever been," said Ravi Tangri, author of StressCosts, Stress-Cures at Health and Safety Canada 2005, today in Toronto. He believes good leadership is the key to reducing employee stress and thus improving productivity.
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"People don't leave jobs, they leave bosses," said Tangri. "Seventy per cent of [work] culture is shaped by the leadership."
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According to Tangri's research, stress costs organizations:
- 19 per cent of absenteeism;
- 40 per cent of turnover (the cost of turnover is 150-250 per cent of the salary benefit envelope for each position);
- 55 per cent of EAP program costs (consult your provider for a more accurate number - it may be higher);
- 30 per cent of short-term disability and long-term disability costs;
- 10 per cent of drug plan costs to cover psychotherapeutic drug costs;
- 60 per cent of the total cost of workplace accidents the total cost of workers' compensation claims and lawsuits due to stress.
This paper uses the word, stress, to mean bad stress, and uses the word "arousal" to describe good stress. We can be aroused in positive ways. Our bodies may, for a short time, experience physical changes similar to the stress response. But when this arousal is called stress it confused the issue. It leads to managers arguing that there are not bad stressors, only bad stress-coping strategies or stress-producing personalities. This is clearly not true. It also prevents workers and unions from taking collective actions to eliminate workplace stressors.
Stress In Our bodies
Our reaction to different stressors are often personal. Our bodies may react to stress in different ways. But there are some basic physical changes that occur that are typical of stress-reactions. Understanding what happens in our bodies when we experience stress helps us to understand why stress causes so many different diseases.
Our brain is the first organ that "fires up" under stress. The brain decides whether or not a certain situation is stressful and alerts the rest of the body. The brain’s role in a stressful situation is to release as much energy into the body as quickly as possible. There are many different ways the brain does this.
The first organ the brain "calls" is the pituitary gland. This small gland at the bottom of the brain releases a hormone called "ACTH" (adrenocorticotrophic hormone, sometimes called the stress hormone). ACTH races to the adrenal glands located above the kidneys. The adrenals manufacture over 50 hormones for the stress response. The main one is epinephrine, commonly known as adrenaline.
Adrenaline is the body’s version of a very strong cup of coffee! It puts everything else into high gear. It increases the body’s energy levels by releasing all the stored reserves of glucose (sugar) and other chemicals that the liver changes into glucose. These reserves are stored in the muscles and fatty tissues, such as the liver. Some of the different chemicals released are cholesterol and triglycerides ("free fatty acids"). Although the liver converts these into sugar, these chemicals can also coat the blood vessels and may be a cause of future disease.
The lungs work harder, trying to get more oxygen into the bloodstream. The heart begins to beat very rapidly to push the blood around faster. This allows oxygen, hormones and stored up sugars to move around quickly, keeping the body in a state of alertness. The adrenals release another hormone that causes the kidneys to retain sodium. This, in turn, causes the kidneys to release "pressor substances" that cause the blood vessels to shrink in size. The smaller the blood vessel, the higher the blood pressure and the faster the blood pumps around.
The adrenals also release another hormone called cortisone. Cortisone helps increase the body’s "sugar rush." It also boosts the body’s energy levels a second way: it helps shut down all the energy-consuming body systems that aren’t required to cope with the stress incident. Cortisone puts the immune system on hold by reducing the flow of white blood cells and other helper cells. These cells normally attack invading viruses, or block off locally inflamed tissues.
Sometimes this immune system creates its own problems. Badly sprained ankles or wrists can swell to very painful sizes. Harmless pollens can trigger serious immune reactions that we call allergies. People suffering from these immune system problems are often given cortisone to purposely shut down the immune system.
Cortisone also prevents the muscles from absorbing protein (energy) from the blood. Instead the muscles tense and prepare to work on overdrive. This lack of protein is what causes them to "hurt".
Food digestion is another energy-draining activity. Do you ever notice how often animals sleep after eating? To stop this drain during a stress incident, the body lines the digestive system with nasty acids. These acids smooth out the little bumps in the intestines that digest the food. Sometimes these acids work so effectively that the whole system basically "let’s go" and... Well, you can imagine the rest.
The Three Stages of Stress Response
Hans Selye, the world’s first prominent stress researcher, called these body changes the "General Adaptation Response." It’s now referred to simply as the "stress response." Selye discovered that these changes are part of our genetic makeup. They are an in-bred survival pattern. Humans developed this pattern hundreds of thousands of years ago to "fight or flee" from dangers in our environment. The stress response is often called the "fight or flight" response.
The stress response always has three stages. First, there is the alarm or danger stimulus stage. The brain (mind) sees there is some danger in the environment and blows the panic whistle for the rest of the body. If the stressor (danger) is severe enough, people can die because the body goes into a state of shock.
The second stage is called the resistance or danger removal stage. The body is so well-primed that it can run away with the speed of an Olympic medallist or fight back with fury of a mother bear. The adrenaline and sugar "rush" puts the body on peak performance for a short period. (Ever notice how you never get a cold until after the deadline?)
Finally, there is the exhaustion or relaxation stage. The body now pays the price of the stress response. If it successfully dealt with the danger, it relaxes and recovers. No serious body damage occurs. If the danger remains, the stress response persists to the point of exhaustion and, eventually, death.
Assuming that the danger is dealt with, the stress response is healthy. We needed it to cope with dangers, such as hungry sabre-toothed tigers or stampeding woolly mammoths in our cave dwelling past. We still use it today. Remember the last time you stepped into busy traffic? Thought your wallet was lost? Snatched your child from a dangerous situation? In a flash, your body went through all of the stress response. Remember, too, that when it was over you were relieved, perhaps a little exhausted, and finally relaxed?
The key point here is "when it was over." As long as the danger (stressor) is brief, and we don’t meet dangers too often, the body copes quite well. It’s when the stressor doesn’t go away, when we can’t fight or we can’t run from it, that the physical wear and tear on the body really starts.
Think of your car brakes. Every once in a while you have to slam them on suddenly. There’s lots of squealing and excitement. If the emergency is severe enough, you might even "kill" the brakes by burning them out. But usually it’s just a brief moment of heavy-duty "stress". The real brake "wear and tear" are not these one-in-awhile emergencies. It’s the constant "stop and go" of congested city driving that we, as the "brains" behind the steering wheel, take so much for granted that we don’t even notice it until our brakes give out or our mechanic gives us a warning.
The same problem exists for most stressors in today’s workplace and world. They are constantly there, and usually just enough to bother us but not really alarm us. We take them for granted. Our body does through a low-key version of the stress response. But we’ve grown so used to living with stressors that we no longer notice the wear and tear on our body, just as we forget about the wear and tear on our brakes in "stop and go" traffic. The result: our body slowly begins to fall apart. One of our challenges in coping better with stress is learning to recognize the early warning signs in our bodies.
Arousal/Stress
Earlier in this paper, we made the distinction between "arousal" and "dis-stress". This program uses the word stress to mean distress. As far as the "fight or flight" response is concerned, arousal is what happens when we are exposed to short-term stressors that we resolve successfully by fighting or running away. Stress is what happens when we are exposed to stressors that we cannot fight or flee from. These stressors become "chronic", which means "long-term". It is these chronic stressors that cause the wear and tear on our bodies that makes us sick.
An optimum level of arousal is necessary for achievement but stress impairs performance and leads to exhaustion and illness.
How Stress Can Cause Disease
Our body’s stress response explains how stress causes certain diseases.
Heart Disease
Heart disease is the leading cause of death in Canada and other industrialized countries. High blood pressure, smoking, obesity, diabetes, excessive alcohol use and high cholesterol levels increase a person’s chances of getting heart disease. Lack of fitness could also be a factor.
Stress is another important part of heart disease. When we’re exposed to chronic stressors, our body often goes into a constant state of low-level stress-response. It’s there, but we don’t notice it. Meanwhile, it’s:
- Increasing our blood pressure;
- Increasing our cholesterol levels;
- Coating our blood vessels with "gooey" fatty acids and "pressor substances";
- Increasing our heart rate.
If the stress persists, our body adapts to the increased blood pressure, and we suffer high blood pressure. High blood pressure can lead to the rupture of a blood vessel. This is called an aneurism, and it can be fatal. It this rupture occurs in the brain, it is called a stroke, and can be temporarily or permanently crippling, and sometimes fatal. If our muscles can’t use the cholesterol and fatty acids (because we can’t fight back or run away), our body converts them to fat that coats our blood vessels. This condition is known as coronary artery disease. The combination of a high heart rate (from stress, or just from exercise) and coronary artery disease can cause pain in the chest. This condition is called angina pectoris, and is often the first sign of a heart attack. A heart attack occurs when the blockage in the artery is so great that it stops all flow of blood to the heart. About 30per cent of all first-time heart attacks are fatal.
Digestive Diseases
The acids released by the stomach and the intestines can dissolve living tissues. Fluids normally protect the stomach and intestine linings. The cortisone chemicals released by the stress response decrease these fluids, causing the acids to "eat into" the linings. This can cause ulcers.
Peptic ulcers, which occur in the part of the intestine just below the stomach, are commonly caused by stress.
Inflammation of the colon (large intestine) is also a stress-related disease. Kidney disease, caused by overwork, increased adrenal hormones and high blood pressure, is another stress-related illness.
Other Diseases
Because the immune system partially shuts down, the body is less resistant to any infectious disease. Colds, flu, viruses and "latent" infections (such as cold sores and herpes) occur more frequently after chronic stress. Stress can trigger pre-existing diabetes (due to high blood-sugar levels) and rheumatoid arthritis (due to the fluctuations in the immune system). Skin diseases and asthma are more common, although we don’t understand the exact reasons why. Finally, there is evidence from animal studies that stress (particularly the stress of isolation) can decrease our bodies ability to fight cancer cells.
Many of these diseases have a powerful emotional cause. People who are anxious, unhappy, and bottle up their feelings tend to develop physical illnesses as a result. Stress is a powerful cause of anxiety and unhappiness in people’s lives.
Overall, 60 per cent to 90 per cent of all visits to health care professionals are for stress-related disorders. That’s how much a part stress plays in disease. Stress plays an important role in causing all the diseases just listed. This is not the same as saying that stress causes these diseases. These diseases have multiple causes. It is the interaction of these many causes, including stress, that brings on illness.
Beefing Up Our Stress Response
Many of the things we do to cope with stress can wind up causing more harm than good. Three personal health behaviours are particularly significant: smoking, diet and drugs.
Smoking
Smoking is the leading cause of lung cancer and a major cause of heart disease. Smoking adds to our stress burden in two ways. First it reduces our lungs ability to change carbon dioxide into oxygen. This causes other energy-producing parts of the body to work harder during the stress response. Second, smoking triggers physical reactions similar to the stress response. It increases blood pressure and heart rate. It stimulates the body to work harder and faster. This may be one reason why many people smoke more when under stress. Despite the greater burden on the lungs, smoking may actually increase the body’s stress response for a short time. But over the longer term, smoking also increases the wear and tear on the body.
Deep breathing and relaxation are two good stress-coping behaviours. Smokers are less able to breathe deeply than non-smokers, due to lung damage. Smoking stimulates, rather than relaxes, the body.
While smoking is a leading cause of heart disease, some researchers now believe that stress may cause more heart disease than smoking.
Diet
In the last few years we’ve learned a great deal about how the food we eat influences our health. Many of our foods can either increase or decrease our stress burden. As many "stressed-out" people smoke more for the short-term relief, many "stressed-out" people eat the wrong foods for the same reason. How often have you reached for "comfort food" – a chocolate bar, a bag of salty potato chips, a plate of chunky fries – when you’re feeling stressed?
Again, there’s a short-term benefit. Stuffing more sugar into our mouths means shoveling more sugar into our bloodstream. This is exactly what the body’s stress response is trying to do! Salty foods may increase blood pressure in some people. If we use the extra energy these "comfort foods" give us in fighting or running away, their long-term damage may be very small. Because we can’t usually fight or run away, the extra energy becomes chronic high blood pressure. This increases the wear and tear on our bodies.
Even in the medium-term, a lot of the comfort foods we reach for when we experience stress can backfire. Salty, fatty and sweet foods can cause drowsiness, headaches and irritability, all of which are also stress-related. A healthier diet allows up to cope better with stress.
Eating for Stress
- Eat more fresh fruit, vegetables and whole grains.
- Eat less meat, especially fattier cuts of "red meats" (lamb, beef, pork).
- Eat more fish and poultry.
- Use non-fat or low-fat milk products, including low-fat cheeses.
- Eat less butterfat and other foods high in cholesterol, such as eggs.
- Keep a close watch on sugar and salt intake. (A lot of processed foods contain fairly high quantities of sugar and salt, so read the labels carefully.)
Drugs
If adrenaline is the body’s version of a strong cup of coffee, coffee is the social version of stoking up the adrenaline. Caffeine is a powerful drug. It gives us a boost or a short period of time. In moderation (less than four or five cups of coffee, tea or caffeine-containing soft-drinks a day) caffeine does us little or no harm. Excess caffeine use aggravates the anxiety and tensions of the stress-response.
The coffee-break may be even worse for us than the coffee we drink. These breaks are supposed to provide us with an opportunity to replenish our energy levels. The best way to do that, is to relax, eat some healthy foods and take some time to digest what’s in our stomach. In reality, most of us don’t get enough time to relax. Many of us, especially office workers, take our breaks at our desks, continuing to work. The food we do eat on our breaks is often high in sugar and carbohydrates (doughnuts, muffins). This gives us a short burst of energy, but it’s quickly followed by a "bottoming out" of blood-sugar levels. This is known as hypoglycaemia. Running low on energy, we reach for another "pick-me-up" of coffee or a sugar-hit, and the cycle repeats itself. Some researchers have called this "double-stress". The only way we can cope with stress at work (coffee, sugar-hits) winds up causing its own stress for the body. Next time, instead of reaching for a chocolate bar or a cup of coffee, try a piece of fruit and a big glass of water.
Many workers try to blunt the experience of stress by using depressants, such as alcohol and tranquillizers, rather than stimulants, such as caffeine, sugar and nicotine. These depressant drugs can be very effective in calming us down and relieving some of the anxiety-feelings stress causes. In the long-term, though, they do more harm than good.
Like caffeine, alcohol in moderation is not dangerous. Too much alcohol, of course, creates enormous personal and family health problems. It can also increase dangers in the workplace, by decreasing our ability to think clearly and act quickly.
The same is true of tranquillizers. Long-term use of tranquillizers can cause physical and psychological dependency. Tranquillizers also have many side-effects which are potentially dangerous. These may include high blood pressure and increased risk of cancer. Yet some doctors and many drug companies still promote tranquillizers as the best way to cope with the anxieties and tensions of today’s stressful lifestyle.
Women experiencing stress are more likely to be given tranquillizers than are men. This is part of the sexism still present in medicine that regards women’s health problems as being "more in the head" than men’s health problems.
Like alcohol, tranquillizers can cause drowsiness. This can increase the risk of accidents in the workplace. The solution should be to remove the root causes of the anxiety and the stress. Instead, drug companies manufacture tranquillizers that cause alertness, rather than drowsiness!
Fear On the Job
Uncertainty, lack of control and excessive demands are all stressors. They are also worsened when workers fear accidents or death due to the hazards of their jobs. Many of our members face injury or death almost daily. British studies indicate that mining and construction work is the most stressful of all jobs in the UK.
Canada’s mine safety record is particularly dismal. In 1986, we had a death rate of 102 fatalities per 100,000 miners. This compares to only 26 per 100,000 in Spain and 20 per 100,000 in Italy. Interestingly, countries with high unionization rates and tough health and safety legislation do have lower injury and death rates. The US, for example, with only 20 per cent unionization, has 3 times the mining death rate as Sweden, which has 80 per cent unionization.
Although Canada’s on the job death rate is fairly stable (though unacceptably high), its injury rate continues to increase. Accidents are considered part of the job, and the risks workers face are "part of the pay cheque". When accidents do happen, most employers quickly point the finger at workers. "Human error" is usually given as the reason. Sometimes lack of training will be added for a more balanced perspective.
The reality is that most jobs have danger built into them. The goal should be to restructure work so that it is as safe as humanly possible. Fear of death or injury should not be part of the pay cheque.
Workplace Stressors
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Physical Stressors
There are seven major physical stressors one might find in the workplace.
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Organizational Stressors
There are nine major organizational stressors one might find in the workplace.
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Social Stressors
There are seven major social stressors related to work.
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1. Excess hot or cold temperature, or temperature changes.
2. Excess noise.
3. Unlabelled toxic substances.
4. Dangerous work.
5. Poor workstation design.
6. Poor ventilation.
7. Poor lighting.
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1. Lack of control over your work situation.
2. Lack of opportunity to use your intelligence.
3. No say over what you are producing, or how.
4. Conflicting job demands.
5. Inadequate recognition for the work you do.
6. Insensitivity or lack of respect from supervisors or managers.
7. Shiftwork.
8. Inadequate pay.
9. Isolation from fellow workers.
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1. Lack of job security.
2. Unemployment.
3. Sexism.
4. Racism.
5. Ageism.
6. Contracting out.
7. Lack of child care/family supports or employment policies.
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Remember: There are three principle ways of controlling workplace hazards.
- Control at the source: Eliminate the stressors.
- Control along the path: Improve stress-managing, stress coping strategies.
- Control at the Worker: Try to fit the workers’ personality to the job.
Stress can be controlled using all three of these approaches. An important goal of any workplace stress awareness program should be to eliminate or reduce the stressors.
Fear of Not Knowing
In 1984, the US Academy of Sciences studied how much we knew about chemicals in our workplace and environment. The result: We don’t know very much. In fact, we have little or no health information on:
- 64 per cent of pesticides;
- 74 per cent of cosmetic ingredients;
- 51 per cent of drug compounds;
- 80 per cent of food additives;
- 79 per cent of other industrial chemicals.
Scientists are scrambling to plug the data gaps. But it could be a century or more before we understand the effects of those chemicals currently in our workplaces. To say nothing of the new ones introduced each year.
For most industrial workers, not knowing what they’re working with is a constant source of stress. Material Safety Data Sheets are brief and/or incomplete in their information. Information is often technical and confusing. Debates over how hazardous certain chemicals are usually breaks down into an "our scientist" versus "your scientist" argument. (Government scientists are more likely to believe that there is no safe exposure to a carcinogen. Industry scientists are more likely to believe the opposite.) Often, workers don’t even know the names of the chemicals they work with!
The Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System (WHMIS) gives workers more information about toxic substances in their workplaces. Until we know more about the long-term health effects of those chemicals, knowing their names is only the starting point.
How Noise Increases Stress
When we’re exposed to a sudden noise, adrenaline is released into our bloodstream. Our blood pressure, heartbeat, and muscle tension increase and our digestive and immune systems slow down. In short, we go through the class "stress response". For example: the US Navy studied people exposed to short bursts of loud noise over a 30-day period. They found these people to have higher levels of cholesterol (a potential cause of heart disease) and cortisone (one of the stress hormones). At least two other studies have similarly found that persons exposed to high noise have higher blood pressures and stress hormone levels.
Prolonged exposure to noise, even at 70 dB or 80 dB, can increase one’s risk of heart disease, high blood pressure, ulcers, colitis and migraine headaches. Many workers exposed to high noise levels particularly report headaches and "just feeling tired." They also have a higher rate of abnormal electroencephalograms (ECG’s), a test which measures brain wave activities. Other noise and stress-related health effects are: endocrine (hormone) and biochemical disorders, insomnia (sleeplessness) and increases in infectious diseases. Like many stressors, noise increases the risk of damage when workers are simultaneously exposed to viruses, bacteria or toxic substances. It likely increases this risk by shutting down the immune system as part of the stress response. This makes the body weaker in fending off illnesses or toxic chemicals.
There is also some evidence that high noise can lead to birth defects or low birth weight babies.
How much noise is stressful is difficult to pinpoint. Some researchers find that intermittent, unpredictable noise causes the most problems. One study of office workers found that typists doing dictation work experienced less stress than typists who also did telephone switchboard board work. It was the unpredictable phone-ringing that seemed to be the worst stressor.
Other studies find different patterns. Among sea workers, stress and illness rates are highest among engine crews where the noise levels are greatest (and continuous!). A particularly interesting study used monkeys. (This was thought to be more ethical than using humans.) One group of monkeys was exposed to the average sounds that blue-collar workers would experience daily, including construction worksite noises, 20 minutes of the TODAY show and a televised football game. (Presumably, these were male blue collar monkeys). Another group led a more quiet, executive lifestyle. After 9 months, blue-collar monkeys had an average 27per cent increase in blood pressure levels. These higher blood pressure levels persisted long after the noises stopped.
Another study looked at workers in two factories. Workers who experienced hearing-loss were found to have high rates of high blood pressure. Over time, excess noise and hearing loss may lead to high blood pressure. Or high blood pressure--which can be caused by stress-may increase the risk of hearing loss.
Either way, workers lose.
Unemployment
One of the greatest workplace stressors of all is not having any work. Unemployment continues to be a threat to many smaller communities and to workers employed in industrial jobs increasingly being transferred "offshore" or to machines. Moreover, unemployment rates remain unacceptably high. They are subject to rapid changes in and uncertainties of international economic decision-making over which national governments seem powerless to influence.
Work is central to our lives. When we meet new people, one of the first things we ask is "What do you do?" Our occupation is an important part of our self-concept. When we lose our jobs, we lose touch with that valuable part of ourselves. We lose a place to go every day, our "workplace" family. We often lose our self-esteem, and our self-confidence.
When we lose our jobs we lose our two main roles: worker and provider. We feel betrayed and abandoned when plants close or long-term layoffs wipe out years of our daily work without so much as a "thank-you."
Unemployment and Stress
Not all forms of unemployment are equally stressful. Seasonal workers who experience annual bouts of unemployment face less stress than workers who are laid off. Laid off workers experience less stress than those who lose their jobs when an entire plant closes down. The more permanent the job loss seems, and the more uncertain the future for the worker, the greater the stress.
Workers who suffer job-loss often go through a series of stages. These stages include:
- Anticipation
: Rumours about potential layoffs, or closures start to circulate. Studies have found that this leads to high stress and higher rates of hypertension (high blood pressure) and anxiety among workers.
- Actual job-loss
: Workers often react to plant closures with denial, then anger, then depression. Stress levels reach critical levels.
- Job-search
: For a brief while, workers may bounce back and begin to feel that they will be able to find an even better job as a result. They go into job-search overdrive.
- Exhaustion of benefits
: Many workers do not find new jobs, or find jobs that are significantly poorer than the ones they lost. For those who stay unemployed, Unemployment Insurance benefits eventually run out. Workers begin to feel profoundly depressed. They feel stigmatized that they are "worthless". Many unemployed workers isolate themselves and begin to drink more and smoke more. Their depression and stress begins to spill over to the rest of their family. Stress and poor health start being taken for granted.
- Apathy
: Unless they find a new job, chronically unemployed workers often become apathetic and resigned. At its deepest, this apathy can lead some workers to serious drug abuse or even suicide.
Dozens of studies have found that unemployed workers suffer high levels of stress and serious health problems. These health problems include high blood pressure, heart disease, arthritis, diabetes and ulcers. Unemployed workers have higher rates of suicide and violent death (over twice as much as employed workers!), heart disease and even cancer.
Nationally, US researcher, Harvey Brenner, has calculated that every 1per cent increase in the unemployment rate causes a 2per cent increase in the death rate for heart disease, suicide, liver cirrhosis (a symptom of alcoholism) and increases in the infant mortality rate and the rates of domestic violence. (The infant mortality rate measures the number of babies under the age of 1 who die. A higher rate usually means that these babies grow up in poverty without adequate nutrition or health care).
Unemployment creates stress in many ways. Below are some of the common ones:
- Loss of wages and benefits;
- Loss of a work family, leading to isolation and lack of social support;
- Lack of control over one’s life;
- Loss of a daily routine;
- Feeling abandoned, let down and worthless;
- Facing daily rejections when looking for new work;
- Not knowing what to expect next;
- Adjusting to new roles at home (this is a big problem for many men workers, who may not be used to being "house husbands");
- Hassles with employment insurance or welfare bureaucracies.
Workers who have relatively low-income and lower education suffer the greatest stress and disease as a result of unemployment. They are least likely to find new work, and most likely to have financial problems.
Self-Blame and Isolation
Not having enough money to make ends meet is stressful. Not having a regular pattern in one’s life is stressful. Not being certain about one’s future is stressful. But perhaps the most toxic part of unemployment is that it increases self-blame and isolation among workers.
People in powerful positions (politicians, professionals, corporate executives or shareholders) often argue there are lots of jobs. People are unemployed only because they are too lazy to work, or think themselves too good to work for lower wages. For example:
- In 1984, an Ontario judge ordered four young children to be Crown wards. Their father, a miner who became permanently unemployed due to an occupational injury, was dependent on family benefits (welfare) for survival. According to the judge, "I’m not satisfied this is the kind of upbringing that children should have, that they live off the public purse and not out of their own sweat and labour like the rest of us".
- That same year, acting Prime Minister, Jean-Luc Pepin, told the House of Commons that the reason for high unemployment among youth was that "they were lazy".
- In November 1984, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business claimed that there were 170,000 jobs available, but employers couldn’t find workers because "unemployment benefits land welfare rates are too high". Though their claim was later shown to be false, it told the rest of the country that the unemployed were fat cats too lazy to work for a decent wage. The answer: tougher UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE and welfare restrictions.
- In 1985, the Federal government accused older unemployed workers of not looking hard enough for new jobs. This included uprooting their families and moving across the country. For awhile, the government threatened to clamp down on their benefits.
- In 1986, a Thunder Bay cemetery manager refused to tell an unemployed man where his wife was buried. Because the man had been forced to go on welfare and couldn’t pay for the funeral, the City had paid the expenses. The cemetery manager defended his attitude by saying that "It’s a distinction of somebody getting something for nothing, and somebody paying for it".
- Restrictions on employment insurance severely penalize workers who quit their jobs. Yet many workers quit because of harassment.
These kinds of attitudes victimize the unemployed. Opinion polls show that most Canadians agree with them. Is it any wonder that most unemployed persons start to believe that it is their fault that they don’t have a job? That there is something wrong with them, and not with our political and economic system?
Self-blame is very high among the unemployed. Self-blame is also a lethal stressor. People who blame themselves for situations over which they have no control start to isolate themselves from their family and friends. Yet we also know that maintaining social support is very important in coping with the stresses of unemployment. Support from family and friends is very important in creating our self-esteem. The lower the support and the greater the isolation, the lower the self-esteem and the greater the stress. Unemployed workers in large urban areas do worse than their sisters and brothers in smaller communities. The greater sense of community and sharing that often exists in small towns seems to help against some of the stresses of unemployment.
Unemployment and Other Stress-Hazards
Unemployment is both a direct stressor, and an indirect stressor. When unemployment rates are high, many workers feel the stresses of economic uncertainty, whether they lose or keep their jobs. High unemployment rates tend to depress wages. This increases the economic stress on workers. High unemployment can also be used to justify weaker health and safety regulations, or environmental protection. These "unhealthy" policies can add to workers’ stress burdens.
At a broader level, high unemployment rates are associated with weaker labour and union bargaining power. US studies have found a direct connection between high unemployment rates, lower unionization rates and increases in the injury rates within the manufacturing sector. Similar studies in Canada warn us that the same may be true here.
The major stress-hazards associated with higher rates of unemployment are under-employment, lower wages (inadequate pay), poorer workplace benefits and chronic uncertainty about the economic future.
Underemployment and Inadequate Pay
Poverty is a source of stress for many Canadians. Poverty rates are highest for single mothers on welfare. But increasing numbers of working families are joining the ranks of the poor. Between 1979 and 1986 in Ontario, the consumer price index rose 63 per cent, the average wage rose only 53 per cent (indicating that all workers were falling behind) but the minimum wage rate rose only a paltry 33 per cent!
According to the 2004 Report Card on Child Poverty in Canada Currently, one in six Canadian children (1,065,000) are growing up poor. Three out of five of these poor children are growing up in households where their parents work. Working poverty is a growth industry. That is because most new jobs are at or near the minimum wage rate, or are part-time. In 1986, of 300,000 new jobs Canada-wide, only 74,000 were full-time. And at least 40per cent of people working part-time do so not from choice, but because nothing is available. Under-employment (part-time or lower-paying work) results from high unemployment, which in turn results from global economic policies based on short-term profit rather than long-term social and environmental benefit. Paul Grayson, a professor at York University, studied workers laid off at the SKF plant in Scarborough and the CGE plant in Toronto. Among CGE workers, only 66 per cent found new jobs after two years of looking. Over half of these workers complained that their new jobs were worse (lower paying, involving fewer skills) than their previous work. The same was true for the SKF workers. Most of the 70 per cent of male workers and 37 per cent of female workers who found new jobs (but it took them 3 years!) were receiving less pay and using fewer skills.
As one ship worker from Collingwood, laid off after 30 years work, put it, "I’m forced to drive taxi part-time and pump gas part-time. It’s really tough on us older guys".
Most working poor families are headed by "underemployed" single working mothers, most of them clerical or cleaning workers. Dr. Richard Earle of the Stress Institute of Canada has described these women as Canada’s most stressed workers.
One of the most galling examples of stressful underemployment is when government or government-funded services (such as hospitals) begin to contract out some of their work. Contracting out often results in longer hours, lower pay, reduced benefits and poorer working conditions. A few years ago 28 cleaners at Canada Post lost their jobs and their union when the government privatized their jobs. Their income dropped an average of $10 an hour (a barely livable wage in pricey Toronto) to $4.50 an hour offered by their new contractor. They also lost all fringe benefits.
Supported by their union, these workers struck for the right to remain in their union and to receive a decent wage. In the end, they settled for wages that were barely half of what they had been making. These wages made them "working poor". But according to Canada Post, this was OK because the post office was after "quality cleaners at a fair price".
Workplace Benefits and Chronic Uncertainty
Improved fringe benefits are one means workers have of coping better with workplace stressors. Sick-leave provisions, holiday time, health insurance benefits (including extended benefits), on-the-site child care facilities, fitness facilities, job-training and enrichment programs and other forms of non-income benefits help relieve some of the stress-burdens workers’ shoulder. In periods of high unemployment or chronic economic insecurity, workers find it more difficult to bargain for these benefits. It’s tough enough just trying to keep wage increases somewhere near inflation. By international standards, Canada has very poor workplace benefits. In many European countries, four and five week paid holidays are the standard. Workplace daycare facilities are common in the Scandinavian countries. Unemployment benefits, coupled with extensive retraining programs, are often close or equal to worker’s salary or wage levels from the previous job. Paid pregnancy leave provisions are much more generous. In Sweden, either parent can take 18 months parental leave at 90 per cent of salary. Families receive over $100 a month for child support, and day care is 80 per cent subsidized.
Inadequate workplace benefits can cause stress primarily because they fail to provide workers with the means and opportunities to deal with stressors in their family or personal lives. This is particularly true for women workers with young children.
There is a final stressor related to unemployment: chronic fear or uncertainty for the future. Unemployment rates are still higher than they were in the 1960s and 1970s. Transnational companies continue to gobble each other up, causing massive layoffs and plant closures. New jobs tend to be lower paid and less secure.
Whether we keep our jobs or not, economic uncertainty creates a low level of stress for all workers. In Grayson’s study of laid-off SKF workers, those workers who did find new jobs experienced a brief period when their stress levels went down and their health improved. But pretty soon their stress levels went back up. The reason: they’d found a new job but having been laid off once, they knew it could happen again at any time.
Sometimes this uncertainty can be more stressful than unemployment itself. A survey of 40,000 women workers in the US found that uncertainty about future job security had a more damaging effect on health than the certainty of unemployment.
Deskilling and Insecurity
Centuries ago, workers were highly skilled crafts persons. They were "professionals." The word professional actually means "I profess". It refers to the vows a worker would make before joining a workers’ guild. Craftspeople learned their trade by apprenticeship, and exercised a great deal of control over their labour. They produced goods from start to finish. They took pride in their work, and experienced a sense of accomplishment and completion.
The Industrial Revolution changed all that. In the name of efficiency and higher profits, machines began to take over a lot of the work from crafts persons. Rather than workers controlling the machines, the machines began to control the workers. And management controlled the machines. In the past 20 years the speed with which machines have taken over work has increased enormously. Office automation is particularly rampant. Most new jobs are in the clerical or service sectors, and tend to be semi-skilled or un-skilled, low-paying and non-unionized. The result: massive deskilling.
Deskilling is not new, but it is becoming more widespread. Deskilling means "to reduce the ability to use one’s knowledge effectively," and "to reduce the ability of one to make a difference". Deskilled workers no longer feel that they make a difference, that they are worth anything any more. They are just another cog in the wheel of production.
The most stressful outcome of deskilling is the effect it has on workers’ self-esteem. Work remains central to our lives. Workers need and want to feel that they are making a contribution to society, their families and their communities. But as production is broken down into smaller and smaller pieces, workers no longer feel a part of the whole. They no longer see the whole. Many deskilled workers become depressed and anxious. They feel isolated and no longer in control of their lives. Much of their work life loses its meaning, its sense of importance. As one clerical worker complained, "I see people here working at fragments and you don’t know how the fragments fit into the whole picture. I would be more satisfied with my job if I could do it from start to finish."
There are four different ways in which deskilling causes stress: work underload; monotony/machine-pacing; lack of career mobility; and job insecurity.
Work Underload
Having too much work is stressful. But not having enough can also create stress. When jobs are too narrow or one-sided and don’t offer any creative challenges or stimulation, many workers actually become anxious.
Every person grows up "wanting to make a difference", to do something meaningful with her or his life. We all have dreams and hopes. When our jobs rob us of the skills we’ve acquired, or treat us an unthinking machines, we lose our dignity. Our dreams and hopes are stolen from us. This can create a subtle but deep depression. We often feel less human. We lose our self-confidence because we never have opportunities to exercise our skills or to witness ourselves as competent. Eventually, we may even begin to see ourselves as failures because we can’t move on to more challenging jobs.
Self-blame is a powerful and insidious stressor. Work underload is a powerful source of self-blame.
As one printer said about he automation in his workplace, "We used to be a highly skilled industry. We had long apprenticeships and were proud of being all round printers. Now we’re doing some minimal operation, pasting pieces of paper together. There’s a lot of anxiety among the people I work with, and we’ve had our share of heart attacks and high blood pressure."
As jobs become more deskilled, workers find it more difficult to exercise any decision-making. Many find it stressful to work in situations where they know things are going wrong, but they have no power to change them. They have to suspend their thinking abilities and simply do what the machines, or their supervisors tell them to do.
Monotony and Machine-Pacing
An auto worker said, "They say they are only going to put robots on boring jobs. But in an auto plant, all the jobs are boring." Boredom is one of the biggest complaints among deskilled workers. As offices are transformed by technology into factories, increasing numbers of clerical workers are finding their jobs to be sheer drudgery
"The boredom factor here is miserable. That’s the worst thing in the world, to be bored. I’d rather start at the beginning of a project and follow it through to the end, even if it were heavy manual labour. At least I’d have the satisfaction of looking at it."
Unless we receive occasional challenges (and as long as we have the authority to rise to these challenges), our bodies go into the stress-response. When jobs are just the same old routine, workers often adopt a "broken attitude." They become pessimistic about the future, depressed and fatalistic.
Machine-paced work is frequently boring and monotonous. Worse yet, there are rare moments when the work suddenly becomes extremely demanding. Rather than relieving workers of their boredom, this adds more stress to the situation. Workers usually don’t have control over the sudden demands the machines might make. A larger pattern is created: long periods of monotony (which can cause fatigue and increase the risk of accidents) with intermittent moments of high anxiety and crisis. When animals are treated like this in experiments, their stress levels go up, they live shorter lives and they frequently lose interest in their surroundings. What’s true for them may also be true for us.
Sometimes mass hysteria breaks out among workers who must perform repetitive, boring work. In one case, workers at a shoe factory noticed that the air-conditioning unit was broken. They grew concerned about the fumes which, it turned out, were not toxic at all. But soon they all started fainting--not just one worker, but 3 out of every 4 workers! Seventy workers in all wound up in hospital, where they quickly recovered. Why did it happen? Primarily because of the boring, repetitive nature of the work. When the "trigger" incident (the broken air conditioner and the smelly fumes) happened, it was like a golden opportunity for something exciting or different to happen. And it did. Managers might scoff at these incidents of "industrial hysteria", but they are symptoms of the chronic stress and depression experienced by workers.
Indeed, one study of auto assembly-line workers found that only 10per cent were in good mental health. Nine out of 10 were suffering the boring drudgery of their duties.
Lack of Career Mobility
As we grow older, we often grow more skilled and prepared to meet greater challenges. As automation sweeps our workplaces, just the opposite is occurring. Our opportunities are shrinking. Canadian studies have warned that many clerical jobs will disappear or change as office machinery becomes the rule. Though clerks will have to receive training to work on the machines, they won’t really be running them. The actual skills they require will decline. Technical professionals will be running the machines. Their skill levels will increase. These professionals will be trained in new skills. Few clerical workers displaced by office technology will be given the opportunity to become technical professionals. The result: a further division between workers.
There is also the stress of feeling stuck, that there is no room to move, no opportunity for promotion, no new challenge on the horizon. Like work underload, lack of promotion opportunities leads to depression and fatalism. Many workers begin to feel that it is their fault. First, their jobs deskill them or underutilize their skills. Second, they see no chance for new, more challenging work or promotions. Finally, they believe it must be their problem because they’re not skilled enough to either find the new work, or to beat out the dozens of other competitors when that odd promotion becomes available.
"Careerism" and getting stuck in one’s job is particularly stressful for upper white-collar or professional workers. We are more than our work. But it is hard in our society to keep in touch with our sense of inner strength and our personal values when all around us the emphasis is on competition, advancement and beating out the next guy.
Job Insecurity
The net effect of deskilling is job insecurity. More and more workers are finding that technological change and the transnational nature of business operations translate into no more guarantees about their working future. Our parents might have been able to spend 30 or 40 years with the same company. Few of us can do that today, and probably none of our children will in the future.
Many studies have found that industrial workers face the greatest insecurity about their future. Many industrial jobs are being lost to technology. (This is not always a bad thing. Some industrial jobs are really too dangerous for humans to be doing anyway.) Workers in industries where there have been a lot of plant closures frequently worry about when they will be next. Plant closures are often a dramatic way of deskilling workers.
When the SKF plant in Scarborough closed in the early 1980s, most workers who did find other jobs reported using fewer skills and received lower pay. They also reported ongoing stress. Having lost their careers once, they believed it would be easy to lose them again. Some workers at a tire plant that closed down in the mid-1980s who had put in 15 or 20 years as a skilled machinist wound up driving taxi for a living. No other jobs were available.
One of the most damaging consequences of deskilling is that workers become disconnected from their community. Swedish studies have found that deskilled workers faced with boring, monotonous, dead-end jobs are the least likely to be involved in their unions, in community groups, in political organizations or other efforts to make society more caring and fair. In time, these workers became more isolated. They are more likely to drink excessively, watch endless hours of television and lead less healthy lives.
As the Director-General of the International Labour Organization warned almost 20 years ago:
The imbalance in technological strategy has substituted machines for workers. It has failed to create employment opportunities to match the growing population; it has contributed to growing inequalities and to a rural exodus and massive urban squalor of unmanageable proportions. Job satisfaction and the humanization of work may prove to be one of the most urgent social problems of the coming years.
The solutions are there: shorter work-weeks, more worker control, legislation on plant closures and capital flight (when transnationals pull their money out of countries) and a host of other reforms. Indeed, most Canadians support these kinds of policies. A recent poll found that 69per cent of Canadians approved of shorter work-weeks with no loss in pay.
We have the wealth to transform and humanize work. We can use the richness of the skills of all workers. What we need are political policies that put people before profits.
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