Zeitschrift fur Arbeitswissenschaft最新文献

The Fairwork Project is an international action-research project that currently operates in over 20 countries. The project focuses on working conditions in the platform economy, in order to develop 'fairness ratings' for digital labour platforms. With respect to Germany, the project evaluated the working conditions offered by ten digital labour platforms, by scoring them against the Fairwork principles and producing a national league table. We found that even in a highly regulated labour market context like the German one, platform workers experience precarity and insecurity and have limited access to employment rights. A number of platform workers are classified as employees rather than self-employed, and this guarantees a number of employment rights, including entitlement to minimum wage, health and safety protection and social protection. However, the existence of an employment relationship does not necessarily ensure platform work to be fair as other factors, including the existence of complex networks of subcontracting, erode labour standards and deprive workers of basic employment rights. Practical Relevance: While there are tens of millions of digital platform workers around the world performing functions essential to society-as demonstrated drastically by the Covid-19 pandemic-by supplying food, care and passenger transportation services, many platform workers face low pay, precarity as well as poor and dangerous working conditions. Exposing fracture lines of inequalities affecting particularly women, migrants and minority-ethnic groups who form the core part of the gig workforce, the international Fairwork research project aims not just to understand the gig economy, but to change it.

Stress and its complex effects have been researched since the beginning of the 20th century. The manifold psychological and physical stressors in the world of work can, in sum, lead to disorders of the organism and to illness. Since the physical and subjective consequences of stress vary individually, no absolute threshold values can be determined. Machine learning (ML) methods are used in this article to research the systematic recognition of patterns of physiological and subjective stress parameters and to predict stress. The logistics sector serves as a practical application case in which stress factors are often rooted in the activity and work organisation. One design element of the prevention of stress is the work break. ML methods are used to investigate the extent to which stress can be predicted on the basis of physiological and subjective parameters in order to recommend breaks individually. The article presents the interim status of a software solution for dynamic break management for logistics.Practical Relevance: The aim of the software solution "Dynamic Break" is to preventively prevent stress resulting from mental and physical stress factors in logistics and to keep employees healthy, satisfied, fit for work and productive in the long term. Individualized rest breaks as a design element can support companies in deploying human resources more flexibly in line with the dynamic requirements of logistics.

The discussion about globalization has included the topic of working conditions in international supply chains for many years. In this context, the International Labour Organization (ILO) has focused on Special Economic Zones (SEZ), especially, the so-called Export Processing Zones (EPZ). It is common for developing countries to attract investors by offering special framework conditions, for example, the granting of tax holidays and the repeal of national labour protection laws (in cases where such laws exist). In recognition of this practice, many years ago the ILO developed compliance guidelines on "decent work." In this paper, Juan Carlos Hiba addresses this issue from the ILO's perspective. Marina Jentsch discusses why the topic is still relevant by comparing developments (or lack thereof) in recent years and uses data from the textile industry to illustrate certain points. The World Trade Organization (WTO) and some regional trade agreements increasingly show a trend to restrict the use of subsidies and countervailing measures and provide rules addressing the special treatment of free trade zones and their incentive systems. In the final section, Klaus J. Zink discusses the future of these zones in light of the increasing criticism levelled at the ecological impacts of production and the working and living conditions of workers. Practical relevance: The German and European planning underway for a Law on Corporate Due Diligence in Supply Chains clearly demands a better understanding of this topic.

Operational processes in the care sector are becoming increasingly digitalized due to rising workload. Insufficient involvement of caregivers in this digitalization process results in poorly integrated technological developments along with a lack of technology acceptance. Therefore, in order to lay a firm foundation for successful technology development, it is utmost essential to understand the intention of professionals to use technology in outpatient care. This paper develops a model that outlines the factors influencing the intention of caregivers to use digital technologies in outpatient care, based on a case study examining the introduction of a textile sensor mat. In the developed model, the care situation is investigated for the first time as a factor influencing the intention to use digital technologies, in addition to technology acceptance. Apart from deriving the factors of the model and inspecting the strength of their influences, the practical relevance for technology developers in other care contexts is also determined.Practical Relevance: Demographic change in the German population is leading to major challenges in various sectors. Specifically, in the outpatient care sector, which is already severely affected by a shortage of skilled workers, this change is particularly noticeable with an increase in patients and a high workload for caregivers. Therefore, digital technologies are increasingly being used to make the daily work of caregivers easier in terms of physical and psychological factors. The model developed in this study describes-based on a case study on the introduction of a textile sensor mat-conducive and obstructive factors for the introduction of technology in outpatient care and thus contributes to successful digitalization in this field.

Following a short discussion concerning the contradictions of the COVID-19 working time ordinance (COVID-19-ArbZV) with the existing ergonomics evidence on the design of working time and its effects on safety, health and wellbeing possible effects of this regulation with regard to the risks of accidents, health and social impairments have been estimated using computer based risk assessments for selected working time systems constructed in accordance with the ordinance.The results show significantly increased risk estimates for all analyzed systems and for all domains, demonstrating a sincere loss in the effectiveness and efficiency of health and safety prevention. Applying these results to the medical sector leads to the conclusion of an elsewhere empirically demonstrated reduction in patient care and patient safety.It is argued that increasing working and reducing rest times of the available work force is not an effective solution for problems of lacking human resources due to its adverse side effects on employees and third parties. Health and safety protection via working time regulations based on ergonomics evidence obviously is not a prominent approach in the FRG.Practical Relevance: A reorientation towards health and safety approaches taking ergonomics evidence into due account is required in the FRG.

The working group "Work Design and Research" of the Confederation of German Employers' Associations (BDA) describes important research needs for a working environment in the coming years (2021+) from a practical perspective of various German industrial and service sectors. The aim is to describe the many facets and changes in the world of work, to derive relevant positions and theses for work research from the employer's point of view, and to stimulate discussion on the further development of work science. Socio-technical aspects are considered, such as the impact of digitization and artificial intelligence on work design, sustainability in the economy. Different work organization characteristics, such as mobile work, agile work, leadership requirements, are also the focus of the theses.

In recent decades, the safety and health of workers in Europe has steadily improved, in no small part due to the implementation of the results of ergonomics research. However, European OSH systems are facing a number of challenges, which have been increasingly brought to the attention of policymakers and the public in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. This article examines some of these central challenges to occupational safety and health from a European perspective. It is based on a position paper prepared by the German Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA) together with other European OSH institutes from the research network PEROSH on the occasion of the EU Commission's consultation process for a new European OSH strategy. The article not only highlights the European specifics of many challenges. Rather, it also understands these challenges as strategic fields of action for ergonomics, in order to demonstrate the potential of ergonomics in the development of joint European OSH solutions-as basis for the solution of problems caused by globalisation.

The demand to adapt the work processes to hygiene- and contact reduction requirements in order to curtail the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany has led to short-term and sometimes radical changes in companies and organizations. Based on 52 expert interviews with company and organization representatives, this research project analyzed which pandemic-related changes in the context of work occur on a supraregional and cross-sectoral level, how they are to be evaluated, and which new ways of working might also prove beneficial to companies after the pandemic. In line with existing studies, an increasing flexibilization of work location and working hours, an acceleration of the digitalization of work processes, and effects on leadership culture were identified. Other key experiences relate to the adaptation of internal and external communication processes and the operational handling of crisis-related challenges. Based on the results, good practices were derived in form of normative-narrative use-case based scenarios.Practical Relevance: Dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic has been the central challenge for many companies over the past year and a half. The presented results show measures that have been successfully implemented in practice to overcome the challenges posed by the crisis, as well as approaches for the future development of forms of work. The measures are contextualized by outlining necessary framework conditions and success factors, thus promoting transfer to other companies and sectors of the economy.