THE POLITICS OF STRESS: THE CASE OF AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL

Analysis of the 1981 Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization strike suggests that workers who employ the concept of stress to describe undesirable job conditions risk unexpected negative consequences. In deciding not to make subjective claims that can only be addressed in political terms,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal of health services 1984-01, Vol.14 (4), p.569-587
Main Author: Tesh, Sylvia
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Airline traffic
Aviation
Condition/Conditions/Conditioning/ Conditional/ Conditioned
Expert Testimony
Humans
Job Description
Occupational Diseases - etiology
Occupational Diseases - physiopathology
Occupational Diseases - psychology
Original Articles on Occupational Health Policy
Politics
Scientific/Scientism/ Scienticity/ Scientization
Stress, Psychological - complications
Stress, Psychological - physiopathology
Stress/Stresses
Strikes, Employee
Testimony
United States
Work/Works/Working
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Summary:Analysis of the 1981 Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization strike suggests that workers who employ the concept of stress to describe undesirable job conditions risk unexpected negative consequences. In deciding not to make subjective claims that can only be addressed in political terms, workers necessarily appeal to outside experts to provide scientific, objective descriptions of job conditions. Unfortunately, different experts define stress in strikingly different ways, allowing for a kind of shell game in which the very existence of stress can become problematical. In addition, the stress experts have been unable to offer more than weak data to support the theories that link difficult working conditions to pathological outcomes. Thus workers are likely to lose labor disputes that depend on the stress discourse. A major reason for such an outcome is that job conditions, as part of the social world, lend themselves poorly to a form of inquiry designed to investigate the physical world.
ISSN:0020-7314
1541-4469
DOI:10.2190/JH2E-F62P-WMX8-7NQF