Many ways to define the fundamental word of work exist today. Work carried out by the businesses of America a multitude of workers coordinate to complete a common assignment. In this model workers are treated as resources and not people or even employees. Often leading to high amounts of stress on the employees of that company as well as the employees’ families as it enables companies to view them as numbers and not people making a living. This treatment aids in supporting a long standing tradition of worker exploitation that has existed in the United States originating even before the advent of factories.
Though large companies view this treatment of workers as ethical the current treatment of most workers in the United States is unethical in nature. Current treatment leads to excess stress, exploitation of workers in America, and other unethical practices such as a lack of sick days, a denial of paternal or maternal leave, and an overall compromise in employ trust, so an increase in the rights of workers is necessary from an ethical standpoint. The largest effect of unethical treatment at the workplace is an increased amount of stress of the day-to-day workers.
Currently work practices culminates to a larger effect crescendoing to an end result of an overall crushing amount of stress that carry a wide variety of negative effects for those involved. According to a joint research team, out of the University of Tanzania headed by Lisa Jarman, as a researcher affiliated with the Menzies Institute for Medical Research, “a comprehensive WHP intervention in a naturalistic setting” would carry a possibly large impact in the amount of stress experienced by both male and female workers (Jarman).
Jarman’s team study also stood to reveal the prevalence of stress in jobs during the post-industrialized era. In a complimenting manner the study shows the impact that a WHP, or work health prevention program, can carry when dealing with the stresses created in the working world of today’s society. In the corporation centric American economy often employees are dehumanized turning them into nothing more than an asset for the company. In the article “Human Capital–The Most Critical Asset” Stephen Benowitz, the former associate director at the U.
S. Office of Personnel Management, analyzes the state of affairs in the management of human capital in America ultimately concluding that “Past efforts at the federal level have not succeeded in institutionalizing long-term change in the human-capital function” pointing out the lack of success in the regulation of the treatment of employees at large corporations in the United States (Benowitz). Benowitz article supports the notion that the governmental actions of regulating the actions of big business have been failing in their intent.
Without further regulation from federal sources or internal ones the continued use of a resource mindset will persist in the business that permeate the American landscape. If the extent of stress caused by the resource mindset of the employers continues to increase, can corporations continue to justify their morally questionable actions towards the very employees who keep them running? High levels of stress, previously mentioned to be a result from the modern workplace, negatively affect workers as they stand at a higher chance for mental illnesses as well as experiencing impaired judgement.
In the article “Workplace Stress, Stress Effects, and Coping Mechanisms in the Construction Industry” Paul Bowen, professor at the Department of Construction Economics and Management at the University of Cape Town, as well as three other coauthors display through data analysis that “workplace stress leads to psychological, physiological, and sociological strain effects” in turn requiring workers to find ways to cope with high amounts of stress (Bowen).
The impact of workplace stress permeates through the lives of employees as high stress can lead to a plethora of issues such as lack of sleep, nervous breaks, and depression. Current deadline centric practices in American business this stress is more often than not continuing to mount over employees. Stress caused from the stress inducing environments of the modern work world clearly can cause a bevy of other issues in the lives of the employees.
One often major concern for workers in America is the amount of leave they can afford to take off from their job. One major reason young workers seek leave is to fulfil their familial duties as either a paternal or maternal figure. In an NPR segment published by Danielle Kurtzleben, a political reporter focused on analyzing data for NPR, entitled “Lots Of Other Countries Mandate Paid Leave.
Why Not The U. S.? Kurtzleben analyzes the governmental policies regulating parental leave throughout the developed world concluding the United States is by far the least accommodating (Kurtzleben). Preventing a parent from spending time with their newborn child can clearly carry adverse side effects for all of the parties involved as the child’s bond to its parents is weakened, the parents are exposed to an increased amount of stress due to immediate separation, and the place of employment has a worker who is not performing at the optimal capacity.
In order to simply remove the issues brought forth from the lack of paternal leave an easy solution would see a government mandate of eight weeks of paid vacation following a childbirth. In the same segment Kurtzleben analyzes the state of sick days in the United States stating that out of other high income countries “the U. S. alone does not mandate sick leave” showing once more the inadequacies of the United States leave policies (Kurtzleben).
With no required sick days for the workers many may end up coming into work as they fear losing their wages from that day. Pressure caused by no mandated sick days serves to only promote the transfer of illnesses as more people feel obligated to come into work in turn allowing further transmission of their illness. Leave days illustrate the gross inadequacies of the United States’ policies regarding the leave that proves necessary to the health and wellbeing of its working citizens.
Although, conditions for most merican workers are not ideal some workers in America receive vastly improved conditions over others, and the majority of workers have better conditions than those around the world in developing countries. In some business fields the treatment of employees varies vastly from the majority of jobs in other fields one key example of this is the technology industry. Google as one of the largest tech companies to emerge from the so called “silicon valley” in California takes a unique view on the treatment of their employees.
In a memo entitled “The Google Workout” written by Eric Schmidt, the ceo of Google incorporated, lists “we provide first-class dining facilities, gyms, laundry rooms, massage rooms, haircuts, carwashes, dry cleaning, commuting buses. Programmers don’t want to do laundry serving as a small list of the amenities Google supplies their “Knowledge workers” (Schmidt). The forward thinking practices of Google seem to point out a different way of maximizing efficiency in employees as opposed to the by the numbers nine to five approach that is primarily used today.
Google’s technique has propelled them to the top of many articles hailing them as the future of workplace environments bringing the tech company some effective publicity. Conditions in the American workplace are ever changing. Current conditions are unethical however as a better way of handling the issues brought to the eyes in many business exist today. Further application through private sector action or government regulation is the obvious solution to many of the problems faced by the dated systems that support the American job market.
