Worker Assistance Programs and Labor Process: Emergence and Development of the Employee Assistance Model

Abstract

Worker Assistance programs (WAPs) assess and refer for treatment workers who have experienced personal problems that detract from their job performance. Researchers and program practitioners have long recognized the influence of organizational and sociocultural influences on the development and operation of workplace programs. This article attempts to broaden our understanding of WAPs by suggesting that they have historically emerged, developed and been responsive to evolving labor process control strategies, and to economic and labor force conditions. To explore the influence of labor control strategies on worker assistance, this article identifies the labor process perspective and representations of the theme of social control in the worker assistance literature. Next, it presents the concurrent evolution of management control strategies and WAPs. Attention is given to new developments of control strategies in technocracies, external Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) and managed health care. The article concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and substantive implications of this research, and recommendations for future study.