Now available from ILR Press/Cornell
University Press--
Cleaning Up: How Hospital Outsourcing
Is Hurting Workers and Endangering Patients
by Dan Zuberi
Cornell University Press is pleased to
announce the publication of Cleaning Up by Dan Zuberi under its
ILR Press imprint. This book looks at how, to cut costs and maximize profits,
hospitals in the United States and elsewhere are outsourcing such tasks
as cleaning and food preparation to private contractors, exploring this
issue from two perspectives: its impact on patient safety and its role
in increasing socioeconomic inequality.
For more information about Cleaning
Up, see below and visit the book’s page on the Cornell University
Press web site: http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100031650.
This book is available from most booksellers
or directly from Cornell University Press via our website and our ordering
department (tel: 1-800-666-2211). (If ordering the book directly from Cornell,
use the promo code CAU6 at checkout or when calling to receive 25% discount
off the paperback edition’s US$19.95 list price.)
Customers in Europe should order from our
U.K.-based distributor, NBN International (www.nbninternational.com);
in Australia and New Zealand, please order from Footprint Books (www.footprint.com.au).
Cleaning Up is also available as
an ebook from Amazon/Kindle,
Apple
iBooks, and Kobo.
Sincerely,
Mahinder Kingra, Director of Marketing
Cornell University Press
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# # #
About Cleaning Up
To cut costs and maximize profits, hospitals
in the United States and many other countries are outsourcing such tasks
as cleaning and food preparation to private contractors. In Cleaning
Up, the first book to examine this transformation in the healthcare
industry, Dan Zuberi looks at the consequences of outsourcing from two
perspectives: its impact on patient safety and its role in increasing socioeconomic
inequality. Drawing on years of field research in Vancouver, Canada as
well as data from hospitals in the U.S. and Europe, he argues that outsourcing
has been disastrous for the cleanliness of hospitals--leading to an increased
risk of hospital-acquired infections, a leading cause of severe illness
and death--as well as for the effective delivery of other hospital services
and the workers themselves.
Zuberi’s interviews with the low-wage
workers who keep hospitals running uncover claims of exposure to near-constant
risk of injury and illness. Many report serious concerns about the quality
of the work due to understaffing, high turnover, poor training and experience,
inadequate cleaning supplies, and on-the-job injuries. Zuberi also presents
policy recommendations for improving patient safety by reducing the risk
of hospital-acquired infection and ameliorating the work conditions and
quality of life of hospital support workers. He makes the case that hospital
outsourcing exemplifies the trend towards “low-road” service-sector jobs
that threatens to undermine society’s social health, as well as the physical
health and well-being of patients in health care settings globally.
About the Author
Dan Zuberi is Associate Professor of Social
Policy at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Differences
that Matter: Social Policy and the Working Poor in the United States and
Canada, also from Cornell/ILR.
Praise for Hazard or Hardship
“In Cleaning Up, Dan Zuberi describes
the alarming trend of rising hospital-based infection rates in North America.
In compelling detail, he discusses the key role that hospital cleaning
staff play in this problem and links rising rates of infection to deteriorating
employment conditions. He shares the results of a qualitative research
project he conducted that unveils the extreme financial difficulties many
of these workers have experienced in the wake of the outsourcing of their
jobs. He goes on to argue that while outsourcing may save money in the
short term, it leads to deteriorating working conditions and living conditions
for the cleaning staff, reduces the effectiveness of team functioning in
hospitals, and may ultimately increase costs.”
--Christopher Paul Landrigan, MD, MPH,
Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and Children’s
Hospital Boston
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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