Social Aspects of Industrial Alcoholism Programmes

Abstract

The industrial alcoholism programmes for problem drinkers assume various forms in different countries. They are said to have been initiated in the U.S.A. at some large-scale production plants in the 1940s.¹ It is characteristic of the American systems that single factories or firms have separately, when it was considered necessary, created their own systems. In the 1970s federal agencies have begun to promote measures to arrange systems covering even more work places.² In Norway on the other hand, the employers’ and employees’ central organisations have founded in collaboration with the state a mutual agency which has functioned since the year 1963. This organ, called A.K.A.N., performs a sort of ‘missionary work’ at places of employment, having as its purpose the formation of industrial alcoholism programmes along certain lines. The starting point for these arrangements is that the employer and the employees agree upon a common means of action.³ In Finland on the contrary, the employers’ central association and the employees’ central labour organisation made a recommendation in 1972 according to which is proposed the establishment of industrial alcoholism programmes at places of work based on joint negotiations. During the last few years, many large places of employment have arranged these programmes, though their share in the total labour force does not rise more than few percentage points.⁴

Reprinted, with permission, from Report 87 for the Social Research Institute of Alcohol Studies, Helsinki (1975)