Even before the current economic trough, working at 39,000 feet could be tough for flight attendants like Rene Foss. On board, she and colleagues could face sick passengers, air rage, complicated security measures, and long, tiring work hours.
But the recent economic woes have spawned a whole new set of stresses.
"We're seeing layoffs, pay cuts and job concessions - and with these, a lot of financial insecurity," said Foss, 40, of Manhattan.
Lately, major airlines have pressed flight attendants for significant concessions. Among them: 10 percent to 15 percent pay cuts and up to 15 more hours flying a month. Foss' employer, which she wouldn't name, has been seeking similar accommodations.
But for now, she expunges stress with her own homegrown formula: acting. On Friday nights at Manhattan's Rose's Turn cabaret, Foss stars in a musical comedy show she wrote, "Around the World in a Bad Mood." The show satirizes life as a flight attendant and provides an antidote to the stresses of Foss' day job. As she pointed out, "It's cathartic to get on stage and sing funny songs."
For many other stressed-out workers, today's working world
is anything but a laughing matter. With a dour economy, employees
in companies with bare-bones staff can face long hours and double
workloads. Often, they may juggle numerous tasks and face tight
deadlines, as bosses, patients or customers breathe down their
necks. Or they may worry about layoffs or reduced hours
and pay.
Such conditions can sap workers' spirit and energy. And the results, along with exhaustion, frustration and even rage, potentially can lead to serious health problems. Yonkers-based American Institute of Stress, a nonprofit research and advocacy group whose members include physicians, reports that job stress "is far and away the leading source of stress for adults," and a huge health problem for many Americans.
Although some workplaces have found ways to tighten their budgets without ratcheting up stress levels, statistics show stress is causing a significant problem.
Consider the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Despite an overall decline in 2001 in injuries and illnesses in private industry that required recuperation away from work beyond the day of the incident, the number of days anxiety, stress and neurotic disorders took employees away from work beyond the day they left jumped 20.3 percent from 2000.
Such absences can be costly. The cost of unscheduled absenteeism per employee hit a record $789 per year in 2002, up from $755 in 2001, according to a 2002 survey by CCH Inc., a provider of human resources and employment law information, even as the absenteeism rate fell slightly to 2.1 percent last year. Stress accounted for 12 percent of all absenteeism.
Such rising costs seem to counter business' cost-cutting mindset these days. Yet, close observers debate how well businesses try to understand work stress problems.
On one hand, Helen Darling, president of the Washington Business
Group on Health, a nonprofit that helps corporations find solutions
to health issues, believes companies do strive to help workers
with stress. Among a range of other offerings, "all large
companies and most medium-sized companies and many small companies
have employee assistance programs," or EAPs, to help
with everything from child-rearing problems to on-the-job concerns,
she said.
But Dr. Paul Rosch, president of the American Institute of Stress, disagreed: "Many companies' stress-management programs are just lip service. They are designed to prevent companies from being held liable" if workers sue.
And Dana Friedman, president of the nonprofit workplace rights
group Women on the Job in Port Washington, believes many companies
misplace blame. "To companies, stress is often presumed to
be personal, and it causes work to suffer," she said. "But
in fact, it's the other way around. Studies show that stress from
overwork is three times more likely to spill over to one's
personal life than personal stress is likely to affect one's job."
Stress could be linked to personal problems, or even anxiety
about war and terrorism, experts say. But ample evidence shows
work stress is becoming increasingly prevalent, and perhaps approaching
epidemic proportions. The percent of full- or part-time workers
reporting high job stress rose to 45 percent in 2002, from 37
percent in 2001 and 26 percent in 1999. That's
based on the Yankelovich Monitor annual study of consumer attitudes
and lifestyles, based on about 1,500 workers surveyed.
A host of data underscores possible reasons for heightened stress. The Bureau of Labor Statistics states that between January 1999 and December 2001, 4 million workers were displaced from jobs held for at least three years.
And among other possible factors, work hours have climbed significantly
over the years. Dr. Joseph Schwartz, director of the Cornell University
Work Site Blood Pressure Study, cites data published by the Families
and Work Institute: Between 1977 and 1997, average weekly work
hours of adults putting in 20 or more hours per week increased
by 3 1/2 hours. In 1997, they
were averaging 47.1 work hours per week, the institute's data
show.
Those long days had negative consequences. A 2001 survey by Integra Realty Resources Inc., a real estate advisory and appraisal firm in Manhattan, found, among other things, that "at the end of the day large numbers of American workers say they are a physical wreck, with 58 percent complaining of workplace-related back or neck pain, 40 percent complaining of stressed-out eyes and 34 percent complaining of hurting hands."
Stress and its physical toll have affected Nydia Pautt, who sells women's suits for a Manhattan department store. Although she said she has a loyal clientele, the economy and other factors have taken their toll on sales and commissions. And that's led to concerns for this breadwinner with two children at home. Pautt said her income has fallen about 20 percent in the past year - and "recently a lot more than that." Although she hasn't gone to the doctor, she believes stress has "affected my health. A lot of times I sleep very little, and my stomach often feels sick."
Her symptoms are not unusual. Experts say stress' ill effects include headaches, personality changes, irritability, anxiety and depression, cardiovascular disease and hypertension linked to accumulated stress, and aches, lower back pain, and spasmodic pains in the neck and shoulders. Stress also could trigger skin problems, excessive hair loss, problems in reproductive organs, and cause stomach ulcers and irritable colon.
"Stress probably leads to many different illnesses," said Dr. Peter L. Schnall, a clinical professor of medicine at the University of California at Irvine. "But the areas with the most solid findings have involved links between job strain [job stress] and hypertension, and coronary heart disease and job strain, and some mental problems, including burnout and depression."
Many workers are at some risk of getting sick. And in some cases, as Benjamin Amick illustrates, the outcomes can be dire. Amick, associate professor at the University of Texas-Houston School of Public Health, found workers who spent most of their lives in a job in which they had little control over things such as flexible hours and when to take a break had a 43 percent increased risk of dying - sometime during their working life and up to 10 years after they stopped working.
About 30 percent of workers have hypertension, Schnall said. "But what's less known," he said, is that another 20 percent have elevated blood pressure levels only at work.
In a 16-year study at Weill Medical College of Cornell University that culminated in 2001, Schnall and colleagues found support for the so-called work-strain hypothesis: "Work characterized by high demands and simultaneously low control" leads to high blood pressure, Schnall said. Such jobs could include reservations agents, clerks, data entry and assembly line positions.
On four occasions, researchers studied 472 people working at
10 New York City work sites. Every three years, participants wore
a pressure monitor for 24 hours. Data showed that in the first
two times studied, which were the two most analyzed periods, men
who said they had chronic job stress had much higher blood pressure
than men without job stress. Women under job stress in
the study didn't have higher blood pressure than their nonstressed
counterparts.
But "job strain" isn't the lone culprit. Research also has found cardiovascular and mental health risks when workers must make huge efforts but are not highly paid or given enough status, and "threat-avoidant vigilant work." The latter include workers on constant alert, such as bus drivers and air traffic controllers, said Schnall, the University of California doctor.
Despite workers' health issues, corporate America is not doing enough to help, some critics say.
To Rosch of the American Institute of Stress, programs that do exist for stress reduction often are window-dressing, purchased from outside vendors without any measure of whether they work.
As an illustration, he said, several years ago, under the auspices of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, his organization reviewed programs. Few had any benchmarks to determine their effectiveness, Rosch reported.
Yet businesses haven't ignored the problem. Some may seek to reduce stress with in-house workout rooms; others use job rotations to reduce boredom.
"The best practice is a combination of services, starting with an effective and strong employee assistance program, or EAP," said Darling of the Washington Business Group on Health.
Among its health and well-being programs, Stamford, Conn.-based
Xerox Corp. subsidizes the Xerox Recreation Association, which
provides employees discounted memberships to fitness centers maintained
for its staff in four states (none in New York City or on Long
Island). In addition, Xerox has an "open-door policy,"
so an employee can discuss a work problem with upper
management, and other in-house offerings as health screenings
and flu shots.
The Xerox Recreation Program has proven beneficial. As evidence, Xerox spokeswoman Karin Stroh cited a two-year study in 1998-99 of employees in Monroe County, which includes Rochester, showing that participants' cost of health claims of those who participated in any Xerox Recreation Program offering was 30 percent less than those who did not.
Still, some critics say day-care centers and gym memberships aren't substitutes for dealing with problems such as harsh bosses and long hours.
Why eschew the root cause of work stress? "It's much easier for a company to build a day-care center than to tell managers to manage better or to change the way a company operates," said Friedman of Women on the Job and the former head of the Families and Work Institute.
And ironically, some companies that do engage in stress management may be inadvertently sabotaging it. Schnall explains: "Many companies are taking such constructive steps as providing more training to get employees into jobs that would give them more job-say. They're also bringing in computers to make jobs more interesting, giving people multiple tasks and also rotating jobs to reduce tedium." Yet the companies are increasing the workload, undermining any benefits of anti-stress efforts, he said.
So in the end, experts say the burden of stress management may fall on employees themselves - though some have the advantage of a good workplace environment.
Take Chris Van Dort, 53, a computer programmer who was part of the Cornell Work Site Blood Pressure Study. Van Dort said he's never had hypertension. Although he occasionally puts in long hours at his job at United Health Care, he enjoys his work and said his boss isn't breathing down his neck. And so he feels in control of his job. "I like working and my job," he said. "The environment here lets me work and keep my health."
As for Foss, the singing flight attendant, she's worried the airlines' cutbacks are likely to extract a physical as well as financial toll on flight attendants. "I don't think people understand how taxing our job already is," she said, pointing out the lack of fresh air, changes in cabin pressure and irregular hours.
So far, her health has generally held up - although she worries that longer hours could change that.
Feeling the Pressure
A 16-year study of 10 workplaces in New York City found that blood pressure rises significantly according to job stress. The chart below shows average change in millimeters of systolic blood pressure (the "upper" reading) for study's 296 male and 176 female participants. With diminished stress, male blood prressure drops more dramatically.
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/business/printedition/ny-bzcov043267209may04,0,659736
8.story
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com