Correspondents' Correspondence
LAND, THOMAS
Cheating Skid Row Genevahe ostrich-like approach to the problem of alcoholism in industry has gradually been giving way to greater enlightenment and professional counseling programs. Now Joseph...
...And this despite the fact that where meaningful attempts to reverse the situation have been made, the results have been most encouraging...
...Any national policy to combat alcoholism, he argues, would be unthinkable in the absence of job-related safety and health projects...
...Lack of mental stimulation, stress, frustration, monotony, and other psycho-social factors of employment are believed to encourage drinking during working hours—which individuals tend to continue afterward...
...This broader approach holds out a promise of doing away with the stigma of the label "alcoholic," often responsible for discouraging heavy drinkers from accepting help...
...I am personally interested in the efforts of the Canadian Labor Congress to create services which aim primarily at behavioral problems that impair job performance, rather than concentrate on problem-drinkers," Morris says...
...The first step a heavy drinker must take if he wants to avoid skid row is to recognize that he has a problem," Morris observed...
...For it can be observed that job performance can be seriously affected by a range of factors other than alcohol dependence...
...The Canadians hope to develop facilities catering to any group of workers with special problems...
...Morris also calls for special services to support problem-drinkers who are prepared to confront their difficulty...
...In the case of the ILO, however, Morris seeks urgent international action to strengthen national policies designed to intercept problem-drinkers before they start the slide to skid row.—Thomas Land...
...It is essential," he says, "to bring together representatives of government, management and labor to evaluate the existing national situations and programs and to set out guidelines and procedures for action that should be taken at the workplace...
...He charges that management in far too many industrial enterprises still refuses to face reality—pretending that no problem exsists and eventually dismissing alcoholic employees when they become too great a liability...
...today more than 4,000 companies run formal programs for their problem-drinkers...
...A series of recent authoritative studies conducted in many countries has found the incidence of alcoholism among adult workers running as high as 20 per cent...
...Morris wants to launch a series of comparative research projects to identify the categories of workers who are attracted to alcohol because of the character of their employment, as well as those whose work performance is easily disturbed by alcohol intake, or whose health might be damaged by the combination of exposure to occupational health hazards and alcohol consumption...
...He adds that the ILO has the necessary framework and machinery for common action...
...Just a decade ago, only a few North American companies tried seriously to prevent or cure alcoholism...
...Business lunches soaked in martinis are similarly thought to lead executives down the road to alcoholism...
...Now Joseph Morris, chairman of the workers' group in the Governing Body of the International Labor Organization (ILO) here, has put forward proposals to speed up the process based on experience in his native Canada...
...In some cases, up to 80 per cent of acknowledged heavy drinkers have thus been helped to keep their jobs—compared to the 95 per cent that were laid off before any help was made available...
...The same is true for societies as a whole...
Vol. 63 • July 1980 • No. 14
