Occupational stress,rescue workers and English law

Abstract

This paper shows how two strands of English case law, one establishing liability to compensate for shock suffered by those at the scene of disaster, and the other concerned with physical injury suffered by rescuers, were brought together in the 1960s to provide a remedy for a rescuer suffering from what the law describes as ‘nervous shock’. It further traces the development of employers' liability in this context, but finds that the law provides few examples of the contractual duty of employers to protect employees generally against stress that may cause psychological injury. It points out that there is no case law on the liability of employers for stress suffered by rescue workers, whether professional or otherwise. It notes that law reports give little guidance as to the medical evidence judges require to persuade them that nervous shock has been suffered. Finally, it spells out that EC-inspired regulations could now be used to require employers to assess, and take steps to control, stress to which their employees, including rescue workers, are exposed.     

Employee stress litigation: The UK experience

This paper considers the extent to which stress-induced illness can be regarded as a personal injury that could give rise to civil action for damages against employers in the UK. It outlines the results of a brief survey of personal injury solicitors, which indicates that claims are already being initiated by employees who allege they have suffered a stress-induced illness. The potential for claims within industrial tribunal cases that have already been decided is also examined. Consideration is given to the hurdles that litigants will have to surmount, such as proving that their condition was in fact caused by some feature of their working conditions, showing that it was foreseeable that they would suffer a stress-based injury, and demonstrating that their employer was in some way at fault. This leads to a questioning of what employers can do to protect themselves from such claims, or at least defend them successfully. The paper points out that success is likely to depend heavily upon the quality of expert medical opinion, and also upon policy conditions that may influence those adjudicating on such cases. It is concluded that the cost of losing claims may be significant, and that employees who ignore the warning signs do so at their peril.     

Inequity at work: Its measurement and association with worker health

Abstract

This paper considers the extent to which stress-induced illness can be regarded as a personal injury that could give rise to civil action for damages against employers in the UK. It outlines the results of a brief survey of personal injury solicitors, which indicates that claims are already being initiated by employees who allege they have suffered a stress-induced illness. The potential for claims within industrial tribunal cases that have already been decided is also examined. Consideration is given to the hurdles that litigants will have to surmount, such as proving that their condition was in fact caused by some feature of their working conditions, showing that it was foreseeable that they would suffer a stress-based injury, and demonstrating that their employer was in some way at fault. This leads to a questioning of what employers can do to protect themselves from such claims, or at least defend them successfully. The paper points out that success is likely to depend heavily upon the quality of expert medical opinion, and also upon policy conditions that may influence those adjudicating on such cases. It is concluded that the cost of losing claims may be significant, and that employees who ignore the warning signs do so at their peril.     

The Detrimental Side Effects of Minimum Wage Laws

The adverse effects of minimum wage legislation demonstrate how a government policy presumably intended to help people worst off in society can actually end up causing far more harm than good. In this case, the victims are unskilled laborers. By making it illegal for employers to pay unskilled workers wages equal to their marginal revenue productivity, it causes unemployment for all workers whose productivity happens to be below the minimum wage. It also widens the wage gap between whites and minorities because there are disproportionate numbers of unskilled and uneducated minorities compared with whites.     

Occupational Upgrading and the Business Cycle

Many economics theories suggest that the assignment of workers to occupations changes over the business cycle: expansions allow workers to upgrade to occupations that pay higher wages and require more skill. This paper provides some empirical evidence from the USA that such upgrading does occur and that, as predicted, it has greater effects on less‐skilled individuals. Furthermore, the skill composition of new hires changes over the business cycle, even within occupations. Consistent with a job competition model, the education levels of new hires within occupations are higher when the unemployment rate is high and this effect is more pronounced in lower‐paying occupations. The changes in assignment imply that low‐skilled individuals suffer most from recessions in terms of occupation quality and unemployment. The results are consistent with employers responding to a greater supply of educated workers by increasing hiring standards, and so imply that the social return to education may be lower than the private return. However, the results are also consistent with more neo‐classical models of the labor market.     

Risk, Statistical Inference, and the Law of Evidence: The Use of Epidemiological Data in Toxic Tort Cases

Toxic torts are product liability cases dealing with alleged injuries due to chemical or biological hazards such as radiation, thalidomide, or Agent Orange. Toxic tort cases typically rely more heavily than other product liability cases on indirect or statistical proof of injury. There have been numerous theoretical analyses of statistical proof of injury in toxic tort cases. However, there have been only a handful of actual legal decisions regarding the use of such statistical evidence, and most of those decisions have been inconclusive. Recently, a major case from the Fifth Circuit, involving allegations that Benedectin (a morning sickness drug) caused birth defects, was decided entirely on the basis of statistical inference. This paper examines both the conceptual basis of that decision, and also the relationships among statistical inference, scientific evidence, and the rules of product liability in general.     

Is there a liability of localness? How emerging market firms respond to regulatory punctuations

In the 1990s, emerging economies all over the world deregulated, privatized and liberalized their domestic markets. These regulatory punctuations caused radical institutional changes for emerging market firms (EMFs). We argue that, for EMFs, regulatory punctuations created a liability of localness, parallel to the liability of foreignness that firms face when they go abroad. Whereas liability of foreignness comes from the differences caused by changing one's geographic place from ‘here’ to ‘there’; liability of localness comes from changing one's point in time from ‘then’ (pre-exogenous regulatory shock) to ‘now’ (post-exogenous regulatory shock). In both cases, firms incur additional costs, and the ones that survive are ones that best develop strategies for coping with “being in a strange land”. We apply our arguments to the Mexican banking industry, which was privatized and liberalized in the 1990s.     

Work–family conflict and crossover in volunteer emergency service workers

Abstract

A growing literature indicates that organizational and work demands place pressure on the partners and families of volunteer workers as it does on paid workers. This study evaluated a conceptual model integrating work–family conflict and stress crossover theoretical frameworks, to investigate the mechanisms by which emergency service volunteer work, specifically, predicts outcomes for the partners of volunteers. Matched data from 102 couples in which one partner was an Australian emergency services volunteer – firefighter, ambulance officer or emergency rescue volunteer – were analysed using structural equation modelling analyses. Findings suggested that one mechanism by which inter-role conflict related to partner adjustment was through elevated withdrawn marital behaviour and decreased intimacy reported by the couple, which indirectly affected partners’ distress. This finding regarding withdrawn behaviour appears to be novel and may also be applicable to paid workers. Alternative mechanisms involving role overload and angry marital behaviour were not supported. These findings extend limited research which has adapted organizational theory to understand processes affecting volunteer workers, and advance conceptual accounts of the mechanisms through which the partners and families of workers are impacted by inter-role conflict.     

Risk management in an IPA setting--Part I

Over the past several years, HMO enrollment has grown the most in independent practice association (IPA) and network models. HMOs in general have expanded as a means to control the cost of health care. Key customers, including large employers and government agencies such as the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), require such control. IPA and network models retain a greater sense of choice on the part of participating physicians and patients than do closed-panel group- or staff-model programs. As physician and patient choice increases, however, the HMO's control over health care diminishes. Thus, customers require HMOs to manage health care. The HMO must market, develop delivery systems, meet regulatory requirements, and make profits. It must control both the quality and the cost of health care. Doing so without the level of control found in staff-model HMOs has created unique challenges for IPA HMO managers. IPA-model HMOs adapt quality improvement programs to this lesser level of control. Staff-model HMOs and hospitals closely link quality assurance to risk management. Programs designed to improve quality will naturally also reduce the risk of providing care below standards. This relationship is less clear in IPA- and network-model HMOs, in which the HMO does not provide the care. Thus, IPA-model quality improvement programs often do not address their risk management implications. This two-part article examines the differences between staff-model and IPA-model HMOs in liability and in ability to manage risk. In the first part, the nature of the risks is described. In the next issue of the journal, the management of those risks will be discussed.     

Talking about work stress: Discourse analysis and implications for stress interventions

This study used discourse analysis to explore the way in which employees understand work stress. Twenty-two female clerical workers in a Canadian city participated in focus group meetings where they talked about and made sense of their experiences of work stress. The women's accounts were analysed using discourse analysis methods (i.e. an examination of how talk is constructed). The findings revealed that talking about being stressed provides a socially acceptable way of expressing discomfort and regaining a sense of importance that is lost through feeling under-valued and under-appreciated in the organization. In contrast, admitting to being unable to cope with stress was considered to be 'abnormal'. The stress discourse fosters a sense of helplessness and ambiguity by not acknowledging external influences on clerical workers' experiences, such as their place within the power structure of the organization, and by limiting their sense of agency and control over problems experienced at work. The implications of these findings for organizational culture and interventions are discussed. For example, employers are encouraged to be conscious of the messages being sent to employees about how negative emotions or distressing experiences at work are to be addressed (i.e. how 'stress' is to be managed). Recommendations are made for future research using discourse analysis, such as the examination of alternative discourses that aim to improve conditions at work.     

The Economics of Labor Coercion

The majority of labor transactions throughout much of history and a significant fraction of such transactions in many developing countries today are “coercive,” in the sense that force or the threat of force plays a central role in convincing workers to accept employment or its terms. We propose a tractable principal–agent model of coercion, based on the idea that coercive activities by employers, or “guns,” affect the participation constraint of workers. We show that coercion and effort are complements, so that coercion increases effort, but coercion always reduces utilitarian social welfare. Better outside options for workers reduce coercion because of the complementarity between coercion and effort: workers with a better outside option exert lower effort in equilibrium and thus are coerced less. Greater demand for labor increases coercion because it increases equilibrium effort. We investigate the interaction between outside options, market prices, and other economic variables by embedding the (coercive) principal–agent relationship in a general equilibrium setup, and studying when and how labor scarcity encourages coercion. General (market) equilibrium interactions working through the price of output lead to a positive relationship between labor scarcity and coercion along the lines of ideas suggested by Domar, while interactions those working through the outside option lead to a negative relationship similar to ideas advanced in neo‐Malthusian historical analyses of the decline of feudalism. In net, a decline in available labor increases coercion in general equilibrium if and only if its direct (partial equilibrium) effect is to increase the price of output by more than it increases outside options. Our model also suggests that markets in slaves make slaves worse off, conditional on enslavement, and that coercion is more viable in industries that do not require relationship‐specific investment by workers.     

Efficient Labour Contracts: Impediments and How to Circumvent Them

Efficient labour contracts on wages and employment could contribute to a reduction in unemployment in Europe. Their implementation is hindered by institutional settings and asymmetric incentives at different levels of the bargaining process. Employed workers have no incentives to forego wage increases at the firm level for potential employment gains, while employers’ federations possess no means to guarantee an employment increase for the sector covered by a wage agreement. Decentralization of wage bargaining does not solve this incentive problem. It is demonstrated that the introduction of marketable certificates may reduce the asymmetric incentive effects enabling contracts with higher employment.     

Do Temporary Workers Receive Risk Premiums? Assessing the Wage Effects of Fixed–term Contracts in West Germany by a Matching Estimator Compared with Parametric Approaches

The wage effects of fixed–term contracts (FTCs) are analysed with the German Socio–Economic Panel (GSOEP) for West Germany. Taking selection on observables into account results in an estimated wage effect of −6 percent up to −10 percent. Controlling additionally for selection on unobservables leads to wage effects of −23 percent, which may be explained by self–selection of workers. The results also highlight the importance of asymmetric information as an explanation for the incentive for employers as well as workers to enter FTCs.     

基于CRRA效用准则的资产负债管理

本文在连续时间不完备市场框架下,考虑了投资者终端时刻资产负债比率的期望效用最大化问题。假设金融市场由1个无风险资产与多个风险资产构成,其中风险资产的价格过程由几何布朗运动刻画;投资者在整个投资时间水平内面临一个由几何布朗运动刻画的外生负债。利用随机动态规划方法,给出了相应的HJB方程与验证定理,并得到了最优投资策略与最优值函数的解析表达式。进一步,通过敏感性分析与数值算例发现：（1）外生负债的预期增长率与当前时刻的资产负债比率对最优投资策略没有影响;（2）在不考虑外生负债时,在最优策略下,投资到风险资产上的资金比例随着风险资产波动率或相对风险厌恶系数的增大而减小,而在考虑外生负债时,并非如此,只有满足一定条件时最优投资策略才是风险资产波动率或相对风险厌恶系数的减函数;（3）不考虑外生负债时,最优值函数是投资时间水平与风险资产预期收益率的增函数,风险资产波动率的减函数,但在考虑外生负债时该结论只在各参数满足一定关系时才成立,否则结论相反。     

Wage Bargaining with On‐the‐Job Search: Theory and Evidence

Most applications of Nash bargaining over wages ignore between‐employer competition for labor services and attribute all of the workers' rent to their bargaining power. In this paper, we write and estimate an equilibrium model with strategic wage bargaining and on‐the‐job search and use it to take another look at the determinants of wages in France. There are three essential determinants of wages in our model: productivity, competition between employers resulting from on‐the‐job search, and the workers' bargaining power. We find that between‐firm competition matters a lot in the determination of wages, because it is quantitatively more important than wage bargaining à la Nash in raising wages above the workers' “reservation wages,” defined as out‐of‐work income. In particular, we detect no significant bargaining power for intermediate‐ and low‐skilled workers, and a modestly positive bargaining power for high‐skilled workers.     

Insolvency Proceedings and Workers’Rights: the Italian Case

ABSTRACT: In this paper the author analyses different types of insolvency proceedings in the context of the Italian legal system, focusing on the possible effects of bankruptcy law on employment relationships. The concept of‘privileged workers’claims is discussed, taking into account their rank of preference as stated by statutory law and according to the interpretations offered by jurisprudence. One section is expressly devoted to the recent legislation providing a Guarantee Fund for severance allowance claims in case of insolvency, but also in the event of mere nonpayment by the employer. After having covered the concept of 'super-privileged claims', the paper discusses more widely possible forms of protecting workers in a situation of company crisis and links between social legislation on the one hand, and bankruptcy law on the other. Finally, the author emphasizes the more effective protection now offered by the Italian legal system to workers’claims, although the trade unions have considerable difficulty in keeping the workforce united when insolvency proceedings are opened.     

Evaluation of Legal Liability for Technological Risks in View of Requirements for Peaceful Coexistence and Progress

Legal liability for risk‐generating technological activities is evaluated in view of requirements that are necessary for peaceful human coexistence and progress in order to show possibilities for improvement. The requirements imply, given that political decision making about the activities proceeds on the basis of majority rule, that legal liability should be unconditional (absolute, strict) and unlimited (full). We analyze actual liability in international law for various risk‐generating technological activities, to conclude that nowhere is the standard of unconditional and unlimited liability fully met. Apart from that there are enormous differences. Although significant international liability legislation is in place for some risk‐generating technological activities, legislation is virtually absent for others. We discuss fundamental possibilities and limitations of liability and private insurance to secure credible and ethically sound risk assessment and risk management practices. The limitations stem from problems of establishing a causal link between an activity and a harm; compensating irreparable harm; financial warranty; moral hazard in insurance and in organizations; and discounting future damage to present value. As our requirements call for prior agreement among all who are subjected to the risks of an activity about the settlement of these difficult problems, precautionary ex ante regulation of risk‐generating activities may be a more attractive option, either combined with liability stipulations or not. However, if ex ante regulation is not based on the consent of all subjected to the risks, it remains that the basis of liability in the law should be unconditional and unlimited liability.     

Venice Hospital decision vacated. Key Enterprises of Delaware, Inc. v. Venice Hospital

The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit recently ordered an en banc rehearing of its widely reported hospital downstream diversification antitrust case. The so-called Venice Hospital case had found antitrust liability in the operation of a durable medical equipment (DME) joint venture between a hospital and a DME vendor. The Eleventh Circuit, however, has vacated its prior decision and, pending its en banc opinion, reinstated the district court's decision that the defendants did not violate antitrust law.     

突发事件应急救援人员的派遣模型研究

本文针对突发事件应急救援人员派遣问题,考虑位于不同出救点的救援人员到达救援需求点执行救援任务的应急救援时间满意度,以及救援人员对不同应急救援任务的胜任程度,以应急救援时间满意度最大以及救援人员完成救援任务的"效果"最佳为目标,建立了突发事件应急救援人员派遣的优化模型。针对优化模型的特点,给出了有效的求解方法。最后,通过一个算例分析说明了构建的模型及所给出的求解方法的可行性和有效性。