Keynote 2: The Impact of Workplace Reorganization on Worker Well-Being

Description: Millions of workers in the US have jobs that do not provide adequate income to support their families, provide few—if any—benefits, lack opportunities for economic advancement, and expose workers to a wide variety of significant health and safety risks.  These challenges to worker well-being arise in part because of business models and organizational practices that allow firms to carefully oversee the service or product quality produced by the workforce while shedding many of the responsibilities historically associated with employment. This change in both the present and future structure of work has profound implications on how employers, workers, health and safety professionals, researchers and policymakers can address occupational health and safety.  

Learning objectives: At the end of this session, participants will be able to: (1) analyze what economic and market factors lead businesses to adopt organizational practices that lead to a restructuring of how work and workers are managed; (2) identify features of organizations and organizational practices that may subject workers to a higher risk of health and safety risk due to changes in how industries and business have responded to economic and market factors; (3) explain how different types of regulatory interventions affecting workplace responsibility might positively or negatively impact worker well-being.