Gelpi, E.

Gelpi, E.

Saturday, 02 April 2011 21:42

General Profile

The printing, commercial photography and reproduction industries are important worldwide in terms of their economic significance. The printing industry is very diverse in technologies and in size of enterprises. However, regardless of size as measured by production volume, the different printing technologies described in this chapter are the most common. In terms of production volume, there are a limited number of large-scale operations, but many small ones. From the economic perspective, the printing industry is one of the largest industries and generates annual revenues of at least US$500 billion worldwide. Similarly, the commercial photography industry is diverse, with a limited number of large-volume and many small-volume operations. Photofinishing volume is about equally divided between the large and small-volume operations. The commercial photographic market generates annual revenues of approximately US$60 billion worldwide, with photofinishing operations comprising approximately 40% of this total. The reproduction industry, which consists of smaller-volume operations with combined annual revenues of about US$27 billion, generates close to 2 trillion copies annually. In addition, reproduction and duplication services on an even smaller scale are provided onsite at most organizations and companies.

Health, environmental and safety issues in these industries are evolving in response to substitutions with potentially less hazardous materials, new industrial hygiene control strategies, and the advent of new technologies, such as the introduction of digital technologies, electronic imaging and computers. Many historically important health and safety issues (e.g., solvents in the printing industry or formaldehyde as a stabilizer in photoprocessing solutions) will not be issues in the future due to material substitution or other risk management strategies. Nevertheless, new health, environmental and safety issues will arise that will have to be addressed by health and safety professionals. This suggests the continued importance of health and environmental monitoring as part of an effective risk management strategy in the printing, commercial photography and reproduction industries.

 

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Friday, 25 March 2011 06:07

General Profile

Hotels and restaurants are found in every country. The economy of hotels and restaurants is intimately tied to the tourism industry, to business travel and to conventions. In many countries, the tourism industry is a major part of the overall economy.

The primary function of a restaurant is to provide food and drink to people outside the home. Types of restaurants include restaurants (which are often costly) with dining rooms and extensive serving staffs; smaller, “family-style” restaurants and cafes which often service the local community; “diners”, or restaurants where serving short-order meals at counters is the major feature; fast food restaurants, where people line up at counters to place their orders and where meals are available in a few minutes, often for taking out to eat elsewhere; and cafeterias, where people go through serving lines and make their selections from a variety of already prepared foods, which are usually displayed in cases. Many restaurants have separate bar or lounge areas, where alcoholic beverages are served, and many larger restaurants have special banquet rooms for groups of people. Street vendors serving food from carts and stalls are common in most countries, often as part of the informal sector of the economy.

The primary function of a hotel is to provide lodging for guests. Types of hotels range from basic overnight facilities, such as inns and motels that cater to business travellers and tourists, to elaborate luxury complexes, such as resorts, spas and convention hotels. Many hotels offer auxiliary services such as restaurants, bars, laundries, health and fitness clubs, beauty salons, barber shops, business centres and gift shops.

Restaurants and hotels can be individually or family-owned and operated, owned by partnerships or owned by large corporate entities. Many corporations do not actually own individual restaurants or hotels in the chain but rather grant a franchise of a name and style to local owners.

The restaurant workforce can include chefs and other kitchen staff, waiters and head waiters, table busing staff, bartenders, a cashier and coatroom personnel. Larger restaurants have staffs which can be highly specialized in their job functions.

The workforce in large a hotel typically will include reception clerks, door and bell persons, security personnel, parking and garage staff, housekeepers, laundry workers, maintenance personnel, kitchen and restaurant workers and office staff.

Most hotel jobs are “blue collar” and require minimal language and literacy skills. Women and immigrant workers comprise the bulk of the workforce in most hotels in developed countries today. In developing countries, hotels tend to be staffed by local residents. Because hotel occupancy levels tend to be seasonal, there is usually a small group of full-time employees with a sizeable number of part-time and seasonal workers. Salaries tend to be in the middle to low income range. As a result of these factors, employee turnover is relatively high.

In restaurants, workforce characteristics are similar, although men comprise a larger proportion of the workforce in restaurants than in hotels. In many countries salaries are low, and the staff waiting on and busing tables may depend on gratuities for a major portion of their income. In many places, a service charge is automatically added to the bill. In fast food restaurants, the workforce are often teenagers and the pay is at the minimum wage.

 

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Monday, 21 March 2011 14:50

General Profile

Adapted from 3rd edition, “Encyclopaedia of Occupational Health and Safety”.

The scope of the teaching profession extends from the nursery school to the postgraduate institution. Teaching involves not only academic instruction but also scientific, artistic and technical training, in laboratories, art studios and workshops, and physical training on sports grounds and in gymnasia and swimming pools. In most countries almost everyone comes at some time under the influence of the profession, and the teachers themselves have backgrounds as diverse as the subjects taught. Many senior members of the profession also have administrative and managerial duties.

In addition, the development of policies and activities to promote life-long education necessitates a reassessment of the conventional concept of teachers within traditional establishments (schools, universities). Members of the teaching profession carry out their tasks using formal and informal educational methods, in basic and continuous training, in educational establishments and institutions as well as outside them.

Apart from pupils of school age and university students, new kinds of students and trainees are coming forward in ever-increasing numbers in a great many countries: young jobseekers, women wishing to return to the employment market, retired persons, migrant workers, the handicapped, community groups and so on. In particular, we find categories of persons who were formerly excluded from normal educational establishments: illiterates and the handicapped.

There is nothing new in the variety of apprenticeship facilities available, and private self-education has always existed; life-long education has always existed in one form or another. There is, however, one new factor: the growing development of formal life-long educational facilities in places not originally intended as places of education and through new means—for example, in factories, offices and leisure facilities and through associations, mass communication media and assisted self-education. This growth and spread of educational activities has resulted in an increasing number of persons engaged in teaching on a professional or voluntary basis.

Many types of activity falling within the field of education may overlap: teachers, instructors, lecturers, promoters and organizers of educational projects, educational and vocational guidance workers, career advisers, adult education specialists and administrators.

Regarding the membership of the teaching profession as represented in employment markets, one finds that in most countries they make up one of the most significant categories of the salaried workforce.

Recently, the importance of teachers’ trade unions has increased continuously, keeping pace with the ever-increasing number of teachers. The flexibility of their working hours has enabled teachers to play a significant role in the political life of many countries.

A new type of educator - those who are not exactly teachers in the previously held conception of the term - can now be found in many systems, where the school has become a centre for permanent or life-long educational facilities. These are professionals from various sectors, including handicrafts experts, artists and so on, who contribute permanently or occasionally to these educational activities.

Educational establishments are opening their doors to diverse groups and categories, turning more and more towards external and extramural activities. Two major tendencies can be observed in this connection: on the one hand, relations have been established with the industrial workforce, with industrial plants and processes; and on the other, a growing relation has been established with community development, and there is increasing interaction between institutional education and community education projects.

Universities and colleges endeavour to renew teachers’ initial training through refresher training. Apart from specifically pedagogical aspects and disciplines, they provide for educational sociology, economy and anthropology. A trend still facing many obstacles is to have future teachers acquire experience by doing training periods in community settings, in workplaces or in various educational and cultural establishments. The national service, which has become general in certain countries, is a useful experience in the field for future teachers.

The immense investments in communication and information are auspicious for different types of individual or collective self-teaching. The relation between self-teaching and teaching is an emerging problem. The change-over from the autodidactic training of those who had not attended school to the permanent self-teaching of young people and adults has not always been correctly appreciated by educational institutions.

These new educational policies and activities give rise to various problems such as hazards and their prevention. Permanent education, which is not limited to school experience, turns various places, such as the community, the workplace, the laboratory and the environment, into training premises. The teachers should be assisted in these activities, and insurance coverage should be provided. In order to prevent hazards, efforts should be made to adapt the various premises for educational activities. There are several instances where schools have been adapted to become open centres for the entire population and have been equipped so as to be not only educational institutions but also places for creative and productive activities and for meetings.

The relationship of teachers and instructors with these various periods in the lives of trainees and students, such as leisure time, working time, family life and the duration of apprenticeships, also requires a considerable effort as regards information, research and adaptation.

Relations between teachers and students’ families are also on the increase; sometimes members of families occasionally attend lectures or classes at the school. Dissimilarities between family models and educational models necessitate a great effort from teachers to reach mutual understanding from the psychological, sociological and anthropological standpoint. Family models influence the behaviour pattern of some students, who can experience sharp contradictions between family training and behavioural models and norms prevailing in the school.

However great the variety, all teaching has certain common characteristics: the teacher not only instructs in specific knowledge or skills but also seeks to convey a way of thought; he or she has to prepare the pupil for the next stage of development and stimulate the pupil’s interest and participation in the process of learning.

 

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Sunday, 13 March 2011 19:03

General Profile

In 1993, the worldwide production of electricity was 12.3 trillion kilowatt hours (United Nations 1995). (A kilowatt hour is the amount of electricity needed to light ten 100-watt bulbs for 1 hour.) One can judge the magnitude of this endeavour by considering data from the United States, which alone produced 25% of the total energy. The US electric utility industry, a mix of public and privately owned entities, generated 3.1 trillion kilowatt hours in 1993, using more than 10,000 generating units (US Department of Energy 1995). The portion of this industry that is owned by private investors employs 430,000 people in electric operations and maintenance, with revenues of US$200 billion annually.

Electricity is generated in plants which utilize fossil fuel (petroleum, natural gas or coal) or use nuclear energy or hydropower. In 1990, for example, 75% of France’s electrical power came from nuclear power stations. In 1993, 62% of the electricity generated worldwide came from fossil fuels, 19% from hydropower, and 18% from nuclear power. Other reusable sources of energy such as wind, solar, geothermal or biomass account for only a small proportion of world electric production. From generating stations, electricity is then transmitted over interconnected networks or grids to local distribution systems and on through to the consumer.

The workforce that makes all of this possible tends to be primarily male and to possess a high degree of technical skill and knowledge of “the system”. The tasks that these workers undertake are quite diverse, having elements in common with the construction, manufacturing, materials handling, transportation and communications industries. The next few articles describe some of these operations in detail. The articles on electric maintenance standards and environmental concerns also highlight major US government regulatory initiatives that affect the electric utility industry.

 

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