1980_09 The Daily Collegian September 1980

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Page 2
THE DAILY COUECIAN
i
Victims take job stress
THE DAILY COLLEGIAN
Pag.3
Editor's note
The Dally Collegian will frequent¬
ly run David Armstrong's American
Journal, a syndicated column out of
Berkeley.
Lucia Alvarez works for an elec¬
tronics firm in the booming 'Silicon
Valley,' south of San Francisco. One
of thousands of workers, most of
them women, who assemble pocket
calculators and other wonders of
computer chip technology by hand,
Lucia Alvarez is unhappy with her
job. For one thing, the pay is lousy
—only S3.28 an hour, and Alvarez
has two children. Equally bad. the
work makes her irritable and ner¬
vous and sometimes ill.
'Everyday, the same thing," the
tight, 'and you have to do the work
sitting still, you can't move around.
And you have to work fast. I smoke
and gulp coffee on my break, and
when I get home, I'm in a terrible
mood. I take it out on my kids."
Alvarez also gets migraine head¬
aches. *l have to call in tick once in
awhile.*
Lucia Alvarez is one of millions of
Americans who experience stress on
the Job—stress that can cause
psychological problems and under-,
mine    health.    Alvarez's    fellow
workers in the electronics industry
complain of headaches, skin rashes,
nose bleeds, dizziness, nausea and
fainting—ailments   that. often  go
David Armstrong's
American
Journal
away over the weekend. In part,
their symptoms may be caused by
exposure to toxic substances on the
job. Almost certainly, some are
exacerbated by the stress of working
monotonous, fast-paced, dead-end
jobs, day in and day out.
'Everybody seems to be aware
that stress can cause health prob¬
lems,* says psychologist Michael P.
Lerner, president of the non-profit
Institute for Labor and Mental
Health, *but not enough Is being
done about the fact that most stress
is rooted in the workplace. A lot
of companies have stress reduction
programs, but they are mainly for
management. Most workers stay
away because they are afraid that
admission of having trouble coping
with stress will be used against
them in future promotiont.* More¬
over,  says Lerner,  'most  people
blame themselves Instead of the
workplace. They don't realize that
stress Is not their fault. *
Typical of the blame-the-victim
mentality that prevails In the work¬
place was a recent study of health
problems in the electronics industry
by the National Institute for Occupa¬
tional Safety and Health that
attributed the Incredible variety of
ailments to 'mass psychogenic ill¬
ness*—group hysteria. The possi¬
bility that the workplace itself could
be the cause of sickness was down¬
played.
Workers compensation laws re¬
flect a similar outlook. Employees
who complain of stress-related
illness must prove that the stress
comes from the workplace and not
the home. If he had his way, Lerner
would reverse'that requirement by
assuming that worker stress comes
from the Job unless proven other¬
wise.
Lerner outlined a wide-ranging
prescription for curing the ills of the
workplace in a day-long conference
the Institute for Labor and Mental
Health recently co-sponsored with a
number of labor unions In Oakland,
California. The work world must be
changed,* Lerner declared. 'It must
be reordered by a different princi¬
ple.* In addition to revamping
workers compensation laws, Lerner
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proposed:
• "stress support groups" In which
workers could share problems as a
way of identifying and dealing with
the pressures of their jobs;
•five-minute exercise breaks, plus
worker access to swimming pools,
gyms, and masseuses—Utopian-
sounding Ideas that are down-to-
earth   realities   in- some   foreign
' countries;
• health and safety committees,
with a majority of members elected
by workers, that would recommend
ways to employers to reduce job-
related stress.
This last point ties in directly to
Lemer's underlying philosophy—
workplace democracy. According to
Lerner, a federal study In 1977
showed that, 'stress was directly
correlated with lack of power, the
lack of opportunity to use one's
Intelligence and the lack of oppor¬
tunity to use creativity* on the Job.
Allow workers greater decision¬
making power, Lerner argues, and
the prognosis for ending stress-
related illnesses improves dramati¬
cally.
Fail to introduce democracy to the
workplace, he warns, and things will
only get worse for the millions of
lucia Alvarezes across the country
who smoke too much, earn too little
and Just don't feel well most of the
time.
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CSUF Police Chief Bill Anderson Is
tired of hearing his department leforrod
to as a "security force.'
"We are a police department," ho
said, 'but we have been fighting the
misnomer of 'security force'."
The 17 campus
authorized state
powers of off-campus police
Anderson said the 17 full-time officers
all have A.A. degrees, and 'the major¬
ity* of them have bachelors degrees. He
said they all have basic certlficaters and
most have intermediate certificates from
the state' s Peace Off icers Standards and
Training organization.
In addition to the full-time officers,
CSUF employs five dispatchers to work
the police radios and telephones, five
CETA employees, two of them 'parking
officers*'and three security guards for
building lock-up, plus three student aids
to help cite parking violations and watch
bicycle racks for thefts.
Two of the full-time officers concen¬
trate on the oVarmltories.
The officers are paid through the
CSUC system, to the tune of about
The authority of the off kers extends to
a one-mile radius around the campus.
Anderson said be sees CSUF as *a city
of 20,000, acitywithunic^je problems.'
He said one of the unique problems Is
an 'extremely high pedestrian traffic
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cannot be tolerated here.
Anotner prootem is me strange irai-
fic patterns. We go from mass rush and
congestion to bare streets, than to a
mass rush and congestion again.*
Anderson said 'services* to students
consume 90 per¬
cent" of the department stime.
He listed such things as responding to
calls from Injured people, delivering
emergency messages to classrooms (In
the event, for instance, of a death in the
family of a student or teacher), giving
people directions around campus, and
unlocking classroom doors for people on
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