Difference between revisions of "325--2011--Week 4 Questions/Comments"

In The Workplace as an Ecological System, McEvoy points out two important things that caught my attention.  The first stresses the role the worker’s body plays as the biological core the ecological system in the workplace.  The relationship between people who work and the technology they operate is complex.  Companies need workers to operate their machinery, but this also requires that workers will be safe while working, as McEvoy points out “the constancy of the body’s vulnerability to injury even as technology changes,” (74).  The second aspect of McEvoy’s essay was the role of technology in the ecological system.  Technology plays an important role in shaping people’s consciousness of occupational hazard by laying out the boundaries between injuries that society perceives as preventable, as inevitable costs of economic like, or as no injury at all.  Therefore, as the worker’s body is at the core of the ecological system in the workplace, technology structures it.  McEvoy explains that technology does this in three ways: “by posing hazards directly, by shaping the social organization that exposes workers to risk, and by influencing society’s awareness of danger to its working population,” (79).  To support this McEvoy references the Farwell vs. Boston and Worcester Railroad case in 1842, in which a worker Nicholas Farwell lost his arm when a locomotive derailed.  During this trial McEvoy mentions “the three great common-law defenses” available to the defendant: assumption of risk, the fellow servant rule, and the rule that any contributory negligence on the part of the injured plaintiff was an absolute bar to recovery.  Together, the three defenses shielded employers from nearly all liability for work injuries, thus granting them near-absolute authority to control the pace and conditions of work.

In The Workplace as an Ecological System, McEvoy points out two important things that caught my attention.  The first stresses the role the worker’s body plays as the biological core the ecological system in the workplace.  The relationship between people who work and the technology they operate is complex.  Companies need workers to operate their machinery, but this also requires that workers will be safe while working, as McEvoy points out “the constancy of the body’s vulnerability to injury even as technology changes,” (74).  The second aspect of McEvoy’s essay was the role of technology in the ecological system.  Technology plays an important role in shaping people’s consciousness of occupational hazard by laying out the boundaries between injuries that society perceives as preventable, as inevitable costs of economic like, or as no injury at all.  Therefore, as the worker’s body is at the core of the ecological system in the workplace, technology structures it.  McEvoy explains that technology does this in three ways: “by posing hazards directly, by shaping the social organization that exposes workers to risk, and by influencing society’s awareness of danger to its working population,” (79).  To support this McEvoy references the Farwell vs. Boston and Worcester Railroad case in 1842, in which a worker Nicholas Farwell lost his arm when a locomotive derailed.  During this trial McEvoy mentions “the three great common-law defenses” available to the defendant: assumption of risk, the fellow servant rule, and the rule that any contributory negligence on the part of the injured plaintiff was an absolute bar to recovery.  Together, the three defenses shielded employers from nearly all liability for work injuries, thus granting them near-absolute authority to control the pace and conditions of work.

<< Mike R. >>

<< Mike R. >>

== Edison Bowers, “Ís It Safe to Work?  A Study of Industrial Accidents” ==

== Edison Bowers, “Ís It Safe to Work?  A Study of Industrial Accidents” ==