WHITE WORKERS AND THEIR STRUGGLES 1907-1924

Ekurhuleni ◽  
2018 ◽  
pp. 14-27
Keyword(s):  
1965 ◽  
Vol 71 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. P. Garbin ◽  
John A. Ballweg
Keyword(s):  

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily S Barrett ◽  
Daniel B Horton ◽  
Jason Roy ◽  
Weiyi Xia ◽  
Patricia Greenberg ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection is a critical concern among healthcare workers (HCWs). Other studies have assessed SARS-CoV-2 virus and antibodies in HCWs, with disparate findings regarding risk based on role and demographics. Methods We screened 3904 employees and clinicians for SARS-CoV-2 virus positivity and serum immunoglobulin (Ig)G at a major New Jersey hospital from April 28 to June 30, 2020. We assessed positive tests in relation to demographic and occupational characteristics and prior coronavirus disease 2019 symptoms using multivariable logistic regression models. Results Thirteen participants (0.3%) tested positive for virus and 374 (9.6%) tested positive for IgG (total positive: 381 [9.8%]). Compared with participants with no patient care duties, the odds of positive testing (virus or antibodies) were higher for those with direct patient contact: below-median patient contact, adjusted odds ratio (aOR) = 1.71 and 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.18–2.48; above-median patient contact, aOR = 1.98 and 95% CI = 1.35–2.91. The proportion of participants testing positive was highest for phlebotomists (23.9%), maintenance/housekeeping (17.3%), dining/food services (16.9%), and interpersonal/support roles (13.7%) despite lower levels of direct patient care duties. Positivity rates were lower among doctors (7.2%) and nurses (9.1%), roles with fewer underrepresented minorities. After adjusting for job role and patient care responsibilities and other factors, Black and Latinx workers had 2-fold increased odds of a positive test compared with white workers. Loss of smell, taste, and fever were associated with positive testing. Conclusions The HCW categories at highest risk for SARS-CoV-2 infection include support staff and underrepresented minorities with and without patient care responsibilities. Future work is needed to examine potential sources of community and nosocomial exposure among these understudied HCWs.


2018 ◽  
Vol 94 ◽  
pp. 133-155 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan Money

AbstractUnderstandings of class have often been highly racialized and gendered. This article examines the efforts of white workers’ organizations in Southern Africa during the 1940s to forge such a class identity across the region and disseminate it among the international labor movement. For these organizations, the “real” working class was composed of white men who worked in mines, factories, and on the railways, something pertinent to contemporary understandings of class.The focus of these efforts was the Southern African Labour Congress, which brought together white trade unions and labor parties and sought to secure a place for them in the postwar world. These organizations embodied the politics of “white laborism,” an ideology which fused political radicalism and white domination, and they enjoyed some success in gaining acceptance in the international labor movement. Although most labor histories of the region have adopted a national framework, this article offers an integrated regional labor history.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Lundberg

Racism causes racial disparities in health, and structural racism has many components. Focusing on one of those components, this paper addresses occupational segregation. I document high onset of work-limiting disabilities in occupations where many workers identify as non-Hispanic Black or as Hispanic. I then pivot to a causal question. Suppose we took a sample from the population and reassigned their occupations to be a function of education alone. To what degree would health disparities narrow for that sample? Using observational data, I estimate that the disparity between non-Hispanic Black and white workers would narrow by one-third. This estimate is credible because of adjustment for lagged measures of demographics, human capital, and health carried out under transparent causal assumptions. The result contributes to understanding about inequality and health by quantifying the contribution of occupational segregation to a disparity: if we took a sample and reassigned occupations, the disparity would narrow but would not disappear. The paper contributes to methodology by illustrating an approach to macro-level claims (how segregation affects a population disparity) that draws on explicitly causal micro-level analyses (potential outcomes for individuals) for which data are abundant.


Author(s):  
David A. Zonderman

From the firing on Fort Sumter in April 1861 until the Confederacy surrendered in the spring of 1865, workers—North and South—labored long hours under often trying conditions at wages that rarely kept pace with wartime inflation. Though many workers initially voiced skepticism of plans for sundering the nation, once Southern states seceded most workers rallied round their rival flags and pledged to support their respective war efforts. The growing demand for war material opened employment opportunities for women and men, girls and boys, across the Union and Confederacy. Yet workers were not always satisfied with a job and appeals to back the boys in blue and gray without question. They often resisted changes pressed on them in the workplace—new technology, military discipline, unskilled newcomers—as well as wages that always lagged behind rising prices. Protests and strikes began in 1861 and increased in number and intensity from 1863 to the war’s conclusion. Labor unions, in decline since the depression of 1857, sprung back to life, especially in the war’s later years. Employers sometimes countered their employees’ increasing organization and resistance with industry associations that tried to break strikes and blacklist those who walked off their jobs. While worker discontent and resentment of “a rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight” were common across the sectional divide, Northern workers exercised greater coordination of their resistance through citywide trade assemblies, national trade unions, traveling organizers, and labor newspapers. Southern workers tended to fight their labor battles in isolation from shop to shop and town to town, so they rarely built a broader labor movement that could survive the hardships of the postwar era.


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