A lot of people are convinced that the future is going to be getting a micro-chip implanted in your lip along with a cashless society for social control.
Your email pal, Tom L.
Doug Henwood wrote:
> The more paranoid among us have long thought that the anti-smoking campaign
> was part of a broad campaign of intensified social discipline, along with
> the drug war. Two items from today's Wall Street Journal confirm this.
> First, a short from the front page:
>
> <quote>
> EMPLOYERS GO BEYOND background checks and test employee attitudes.
>
> Employers long used honesty tests to screen new hires, but many now want to
> find out potential employees' attitudes toward drug use, workplace violence
> and sexual harassment. Industrial psychologist Kurt Helm, who designs such
> tests, says traditional background checks only show whether a potential
> employee has a history of past abuses, and not future tendencies. "It just
> says they haven't been caught yet," he says.
>
> BTi Employee Screening Services Inc., Dallas, which provides
> background-checking services for other firms, uses an attitudes survey on
> its own hires. "You like to know what people are thinking. You don't want
> to hire your problems," says John Pate, vice president of operations.
> </quote>
>
> You like to know not only what they're doing, but what they're thinking!
> And the innocent are just those who haven't been caught yet.
>
> And the other item is an article on the $27 billion threat of casual drinking!
>
> <quote>
> Casual Drinkers Are Seen
> As Big Productivity Problem
>
> By RON WINSLOW
> Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
>
> Health researchers say they have uncovered a hidden source of productivity
> problems for American corporations: casual drinkers.
>
> A survey of 14,000 employees at seven major U.S. companies found that
> workers who aren't considered problem drinkers cause, in aggregate, far
> more incidents of absenteeism, tardiness and poor quality of work than
> those regarded as alcohol-dependent. The findings suggest that seemingly
> innocuous events such as an after-work trip to the bar or a family birthday
> party can add up to a significant drag on productivity.
>
> "This research is a wake-up call," says Bruce Davidson, manager of employee
> assistance and work-life programs at Compaq Computer Corp.'s Digital
> Equipment Corp. unit, which wasn't a participant in the study. He notes
> that while employers have made significant investments to deal with workers
> with chronic alcohol problems, they have paid scant attention to the
> potential impact of alcohol use among a much broader segment of the work
> force.
>
> The $2 million report, known as the Worksite Alcohol Study, was sponsored
> by the National Institute for Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse, part of the
> National Institutes of Health; and by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a
> Princeton, N.J., health-care philanthropy. The seven participating
> companies -- all of whom insisted on anonymity -- included an insurer, an
> oil company, a utility, a paper manufacturer, a building-materials concern
> and two conglomerates.
>
> Big Price Tag
> The NIAAA estimates that alcohol problems cost U.S. employers $27 billion a
> year in productivity alone, a bill attributed largely to alcohol-dependent
> workers. But hardly anyone has considered the possibility that an
> occasional hangover after a party or a little too much wine at lunch among
> a much broader segment of the work force might add up to a significant
> adverse effect on corporate performance.
>
> Thomas W. Mangione, director of the study, likened the results to similar
> findings during the past decade that casual drinkers, not alcoholics, cause
> the lion's share of drunk-driving-related accidents and fatalities. Dr.
> Mangione is a senior research scientist at JSI Research & Training
> Institute Inc., a nonprofit organization in Boston that specializes in
> health issues.
>
> "It's subtle," he says. "It is individual people who don't do this very
> often, but because there are so many ... in aggregate it totals up to a
> very big problem."
>
> Dr. Mangione and his colleagues didn't set out to look at productivity
> issues among casual drinkers. Instead, they conducted a broad assessment of
> alcohol use and the workplace through surveys, interviews and focus groups
> conducted at several sites at each of the participating companies.
>
> They found that people considered occasional drinkers, in total, cause
> nearly 29% more incidents such as absenteeism, tardiness, less than
> acceptable work or arguments with colleagues than workers who said they
> didn't drink at all.
>
> Workers with alcohol problems cause 28% more such incidents than casual
> drinkers but, in total, just 41% of total alcohol-related productivity
> problems, compared with 59% for the occasional drinkers. In addition, in
> what the researchers say is contrary to conventional wisdom, researchers
> found that nearly one-quarter of managers and executives drink some alcohol
> during the workday, compared with 8% of hourly workers.
>
> The finding of moderate workday alcohol consumption among managers comes
> even as once-common three-martini lunches have largely disappeared and as
> many companies have cut back on open-bar holiday parties. But top
> management's tolerance of alcohol use may be a barrier to addressing its
> occasional misuse in the broader population, experts say.
>
> David C. Deubner, vice president, occupational medicine, at Brush Wellman
> Inc., a Cleveland manufacturer of beryllium products, says the findings
> help him understand why he finds people at higher levels of management less
> concerned about the problem than plant managers and workers.
>
> Dr. Deubner, who was instrumental in developing strong workplace alcohol
> policies at Conrail Inc., the Philadelphia rail company, says he plans to
> use the data to spur top management at his company to pay more attention to
> the issue. But he also concedes that it isn't clear what effective remedies
> are available.
>
> 'Quite Effective'
> "We have worked out procedures that are quite effective in working with the
> addict," he says. "If we decide that 50% to 60% of our productivity impact
> is due to an additional 60% of the work force that we haven't dealt with,
> do we have technologies to deal with that?"
>
> The alcohol study's findings come at a time when global competitiveness, a
> tight labor market, and robust stock market valuations are putting
> ever-increasing pressure on companies to squeeze every ounce of
> productivity out of their employees.
>
> At the same time, a resurgence of health-care costs is focusing renewed
> attention on the impact that personal behavior can have on both medical
> expenses and job performance. But Dr. Mangione counsels that companies
> shouldn't take the study's data as a mandate to delve into the private
> lives of generally productive employees.
>
> Rather, he and his colleagues call for employee-awareness campaigns and
> other similar public-health efforts. They also recommend that employers
> examine their overall attitudes toward alcohol and how this part of the
> corporate culture may influence the behavior of their workers.
>
> John Saylor, manager of employee assistance programs for AMR Corp., Fort
> Worth, Texas, which wasn't a participant in the study, says one important
> finding offers guidance to employers seeking to address the issue. The
> productivity problems were most apparent at some individual sites at each
> of the participating companies, he said, indicating a local culture within
> a company that encourages misuse of alcohol.
>
> "That says there is something you can target," Mr. Saylor says. Susan
> Martin, program director for work-site alcohol problems at NIAAA, says:
> "Work cultures vary widely, and there are informal norms of do's and don'ts
> of drinking that contribute to wide variation." She adds: "Companies often
> don't enforce their own policies, and that contributes to the problem."
> </quote>