Shaping electricians. Discursive formations of electricians in discussions about musculoskeletal disorders

ABSTRACT

Electricians’ exposure to ergonomically challenging working positions and conditions makes them vulnerable to musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). Ergonomic behaviour and compliance with interventions may be expected to be intertwined with their understanding, knowledge, and habits regarding their occupation and regarding work environment and ergonomics. These habits and knowledge are initially formally shaped during vocational education and training. Therefore, the aim of this article is to explore how electricians and the electrical trade are conceived, expressed and (re)produced in a trade school context and how these may function to impede or facilitate implementation of healthy ergonomic habits and behaviours for electricians. Five semi-structured focus group interviews were performed with trade school related stakeholders regarding electricians and MSDs. Interview data was analysed using discourse analysis. Results show that discourses of ‘the architecture of electricity’ and of ‘time pressure’ informed the informants discussions. The discourses positioned electricians as tenacious and responsible, which, in turn, tended to both impede and facilitate the interviewed electricians’ ergonomic behaviour, with a macho-culture serving as a major impeding influence.

KEYWORDS:

• Discourse
• electrical trade
• electrician
• ergonomics
• musculoskeletal disorders
• vocational education and training

Introduction

Electricians are highly exposed to ergonomically compromising working positions (Moriguchi et al. 2013; Roli, Ali, and Neekhra 2020) and it is well established (Eaves, Gyi, and Gibb 2016; Kee and Karwowski 2001; Nordander et al. 2016) that prolonged exposure to ergonomically challenging working conditions leads to musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) and that these can become debilitating. The onset of persistent aches and pains following this type of exposure is, however, delayed (Gibb 2006). This delay complicates diagnosis of MSDs and helps explain why statistics on the prevalence of MSDs within the trade is limited, including statistics about sick leave or exit from the trade due to MSDs (however, see Järvholm et al. 2014; Kontio, Viikari-Juntura, and Solovieva 2018). Furthermore, the delays between cause and effect may be expected to negatively impact compliance with preventive behavioural measures and interventions (Glanz, Rimer, and Viswanath 2015) in the workplace.

Electricians’ ergonomic behaviour and compliance with interventions may be expected to be intertwined with their understanding, knowledge, and habits regarding their occupation in general, and regarding work environment and ergonomics in particular. These are first formally shaped during vocational education and training (VET) to become an electrician, as is their sense of vocational identity, or their ‘vocational becoming’ (Wyszynska Martina, 2018). Besides teaching and learning taking place in trade school, during and between classes, an important and signifying aspect of VET is workplace-based learning (or WPBL for short), during which students encounter tradespeople and are immersed in the occupational context of their chosen trade. During WPBL, teachers’ influence or control is minimal while any learning taking place may still be expected to be significant and formative regarding students’ ideas about what the electrical trade is, and about how to be an electrician within that field. Not only do students learn occupational skills in line with the curriculum, including occupational health and safety, but they also learn the values and the culture underpinning the trade. They begin to form an identity as ‘an electrician’, and they learn to become electricians (Stergiou-Kita et al. 2015). This aim is included in the learning goals of the curriculum for the WPBL which states that workplace-based learning is where students are expected to ‘develop occupational skills, vocational identity, an understanding for the culture of the trade and to become part of the trade community at a worksite’ (Skolverket 2011, 21, translated from Swedish). Even before entering the trade, students are thus exposed to ideas and practices from within the vocation about how to be and work as an electrician. These ideas and practices may be regarded as discursively produced and producing, influencing, and shaping students’ ergonomic behaviour and habits. At present, little is known about what ideas students are exposed to in school and during WPBL regarding being an electrician, and the electrical trade, nor about how these ideas might relate to ergonomics. The aim of this article is therefore to explore how electricians and the electrical trade are conceived, expressed and (re)produced in a trade school context and how these may function to impede or facilitate implementation of healthy ergonomic habits and behaviours for electricians.

Research on electricians and occupational health and safety tend to be oriented towards issues of safety in relation to sudden accidents, such as electrical injuries (e.g. Casey et al. 2021; Howe 2008; Rådman et al. 2016), rather than issues of exposure to challenging working conditions. Another important field of research is safety culture/climate (e.g. Austin et al. 2020; Casey et al. 2017; Choudhry, Fang, and Mohamed 2007; Åsa et al. 2015). However, research on occupational health and safety training, during VET to become an electrician, is scarce. Research on VET tends to focus on various educational issues, such as occupational health and safety, but relating to various clusters of trades (e.g. Andersson et al. 2014) rather than relating to one specific trade. Thus, research on electricians or the training of electricians is often combined with other trades with perceived similar or contrasting work environment issues, for example hairdressers (Hanvold 2015) or construction workers (Baron 2006; Sorensen 2011). Therefore, this article begins with a general introduction to the school system regarding VET in Sweden, followed first by research on electricians’ health and then on their trade identity development. This is followed by a description of the methods used in this study and the ways in which electricians, the electrical trade and ergonomic behaviour are discursively constituted in stakeholder group interviews about ergonomics in the electrical trade.

Vocational education and training in Sweden

How vocational education and training (VET) is constituted, how it is organised and the extent of students’ contact with their occupation through workplace-based learning (WPBL) differs over time and between countries (Michelsen and Stenström 2018; see also Werner et al. 2012). At the beginning of the twentieth century Swedish VET was unregulated, consisting of both apprenticeships and workshop schools (Helms Jørgensen, 2018). In 1938, vocational training was regulated through voluntary collective agreements between labour market organisations but was not included in the public schooling system, embedded in upper secondary school, until 1971 (Helms Jørgensen 2018). Because of an age limit of 20 years for attending upper secondary school, trade schools and VET also exist in the context of adult learning and continuing education. However, for the purposes of this study, the focus will be on initial-VET at upper secondary school level.

Current Swedish initial-VET allows for different types of VET on a spectrum moving from school-based to workplace-based education (Persson Thunqvist, Hagen Tønder, and Reegård 2019; Persson Thunqvist and Hallqvist 2014). However, all school-based VET still includes periods of workplace-based learning (WPBL for short), and workplace-based VET includes periods of school-based learning. The focus in this study is on school-based VET. School-based initial-VET, to become an electrician, is a three-year programme. During year two and three, students are expected to complete a total of at least 15 weeks of WPBL in the electrical trade. After completing the programme, students are qualified to be employed as electricians, during which their first year will be as an apprentice, after which they become a certified electrician.

Electricians’ health

Electricians’ work environment presents several health risks, including risks for musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). The potentially most severe health and safety concerns for electricians has to do with risks of electrocution and electrical injuries. However, while electrical shocks are common, they rarely result in health effects (Biering et al. 2022). Furthermore, electricians have comparably low accident rates, their most common risks being falls and loss of control of hand tools or equipment (Berglund et al. 2021).

A greater risk to electricians’ health are MSDs (Arbetsmiljöverket 2016) which may result in prolonged suffering. Many jobs are performed in tight spaces, in awkward twisted positions, and in prolonged stooping or kneeling positions. Frequently, jobs entail working in the ceiling, resulting in strenuous working positions, with arms/hands above shoulder-level and with a backward bent neck. Many studies of occupations where arms are lifted for prolonged periods have shown an increased risk of pain as well as clinical diagnoses in the shoulders and neck (van Rijn, et al., 2010; Nordander et al. 2016). Electricians have the highest exposure to strenuous arm positioning among 43 different occupations (Moriguchi et al. 2013; Hansson et al. 2010). According to the Swedish Work Environment Authority (Arbetsmiljöverket 2016), 9% to 12% of electricians report pain due to strenuous working positions. Electricians also report a one-year prevalence of 6% to 10% for work related pain. This pain has been located to the neck, shoulder, arms and back and has been severe enough to influence their work capacity.

Electrician students face a significant risk of being exposed to ergonomic risk factors in their chosen profession. Their risk of acquiring work related injuries has been calculated to be particularly high when compared to students in other vocational education programmes (Toomingas, Sandberg, and Lewné 2014). For example, Hanvold (2015, also Hanvold et al. 2014) studied student hairdressers, student electricians and media/design students, following them over a period of six and a half years, from their time in education and into their working life, focusing on reported neck and shoulder pain and assessed mechanical workload. Hanvold concluded that neck and shoulder pain increase during the transition from technical school to working life and suggested that there is a need for attention to the work environment among young workers and particularly those in manual working environments. With this in mind, any good work environment education would be expected to be an important part of preparing vocational students for a sustainable working life, based on implementing healthy ergonomic behaviours. However, since 2011, work environment is not taught as a separate subject area in trade school but is expected to be integrated into other subjects (Skolverket 2011). Furthermore, research has shown that teachers and supervisors base their planning of work environment education on their own experiences, and schools do not provide WPBL-supervisors with information about what ought to be included during the students’ WPBL (Andersson, Gunnarsson, and Rosèn 2015).

According to Statistics Sweden (2019), 98% of all electricians are men, and the electrical trade is the 9th most common occupation among men in Sweden. The industry has identified this domination of men in the workforce along with a macho-like jargon within the trade as problems needing to be addressed (Installatörsföretagen 2018; see also Howe 2008) since they are perceived as important underpinning causes of MSDs among electricians (Bengtsson 2015; see also McVittie, Hepworth, and Goodall 2017). Not only the industry but also researchers have pointed to these issues and advocated for more research. For example, after exploring how gender influences workers’ return to work after electrical injuries, Stergiou-Kita et al. (2016) called for research regarding the influence of masculine norms and gendered workplace expectations on workplace health and safety.

Theoretical framework: becoming a tradesperson

Vocational identity may be perceived dualistically, as being and not-being. On the other hand, vocational identity can be perceived as something that is formed, and transformed, in a process, indicating that a more suitable term might be ‘vocational becoming’ (cf. Dall’Alba 2009; Wyszynska Martina 2018). Thirdly, vocational identity can be perceived as a social construct and continuous discursive practice and performance (Brockmann and Laurie 2016). In the words of Brockmann and Laurie (2016:241), a vocational identity ‘is not an inevitable, natural category. Rather, it is constructed through discursive enactment within the constraints of regulatory regimes’. Since the present study is concerned with the education and training of students, combining vocational becoming and discursive practice enables a perception of identity formation as a process that is discursively produced and variable.

The term ‘discourse’ does not refer here to ‘mere talk’, but rather, drawing on Foucault ((1984) 1990), (Foucault 1991), ‘discourse’ is perceived to constitute social reality. By virtue of persuading and winning hearts and minds, discourse produces the objects of our knowledge and governs how we can meaningfully talk and reason about anything, how ideas are put into practice, and regulates the conduct of others and of the self (Foucault (1984)1990, 1988,1994; Hall (2001). This means that the meaning of, for instance, a ‘good electrician’ is produced socially and varies between different discourses such that depending on whether a discourse of health, tradesmanship or learning is drawn on, ideas about the ‘good electrician’ will differ.

Drawing on Foucault (1991, 1994, see also Hall 2001; Whetherell 2001; Winther-Jorgensen & Phillips 2000), subjects and ‘identity’ are also perceived as discursively produced and thus as socially and historically specific and contingent, yet contextually stable. In VET, the discourses produce imperatives regarding how students should act and think about themselves and others in relation to their trade and to ergonomic behaviour and MSDs which, by extension, will have material effects on electricians’ future health. The ideas, notions, and practices students are exposed to during their education and training, both in school and during WPBL, are thus not perceived as innocent or ‘mere talk’ but as producing and regulating subjects, and their bodies (Foucault (1984)1990; Hall 2001), through their acquisition of specific dispositions, tastes, and abilities. How the electrician is conceived, but also performed, in a certain situation is perceived as an expression of available discourses and subject positions at that specific point in time and space. Since subjects are continually constituted through simultaneously available, multiple, and potentially contradictory discourses, they are expected to be contradictory and paradoxical.

For VET-students, the ‘boundary crossing’ between the workplace and the school (Tanggaard 2007) means that vocational students are exposed to ideas and attitudes from both teachers and fellow students at school, and from tradespeople in the workplace. As cultures differ between work and school, ‘different forms of participation, subjectivity and identity’ (Tanggaard 2007, 454) are also cultivated. For the purposes of this study, the notion of boundary crossing may thus explain a transfer or correspondence of notions between the two contexts.

Methods and material

The empirical material for the study consists of five focus group interviews (Barbour 2007) that were part of a participatory development-project to improve occupational health and safety training in an Electricity and Energy Program at a local upper secondary school (Djupsjöbacka, Björklund, and Nordlöf 2018). Focus group interviews, being considered especially appropriate when developing health training and health interventions (Barbour 2007), were used to facilitate stakeholders’ (students, teachers, school management and WPBL supervisors, see Table 1) discussions about their perceptions concerning ergonomics and MSDs in the electrical trade: their causes, consequences/effects, and prevention. To widen the scope of the informants’ perspectives, follow-up questions and prompts in the form of verbal and written directions to consider different categories of interest, such as teachers, students, employers, the union, etc., were used. Ethical considerations such as informed consent and confidentiality (Vetenskapsrådet 2017) were observed. However, although we didn’t ask about it, participants sometimes talked about their own health. These instances have not been included in the analysis. The interviews were recorded electronically and then transcribed. The recorded and transcribed interviews were kept on password-protected servers at the university. Names have been changed to protect participants’ identities and, as mentioned above, participants’ talk about their own health has been excluded from the analysis.

Table 1. Informants in the focus group interviews and length of interviews.

Focus groups of stakeholders^1	Number of interview participants	Approximate length of interview
Students, year 1 + 3	n = 8 (4 + 4)	1 hour
Students, year 2	n = 7	1 hour
Teachers	n = 8	2 hours
School management	n = 3	30 minutes
WPBL supervisors	n = 5	2 hours
Total	n = 31	6,5 hours

Of the interviewees, only the principal and the vice principal were women. The teachers taught different courses in the program, theoretical or practical subjects, and had varying levels of experience from working as electricians, from no experience to several years of experience. Their teaching experience also varied from just a couple of months (directly in from working as an electrician) to 30 years as a teacher. The students’ experience from the trade is based on their workplace-based learning (WPBL). Year one students had not yet been on WPBL but might still be expected to have perceptions and ideas about the trade and the job as such, based for instance on older students’ and teachers’ talk and from school literature. Typically, year two students would have seven weeks of WPBL, while year three students had completed a total of 12 weeks of WPBL and were just about to enter their third and final WPBL period. The ideas regarding ergonomics, the electrician, and the electrical trade that were expressed during the interviews, and hence, students were exposed to in school and during their WPBL, prompted this article.

Performing the analysis

The empirical material for this study consists of focus group interviews, i.e. talk, while the ambition is to say something about what impedes or facilitates healthy ergonomics, i.e. habits and behaviours. The relationship between talk and behaviours is understood using Foucault’s concepts and ideas about discourse, power, knowledge, and the subject (see section above on Theoretical framework: becoming a tradesperson). More specifically, these concepts and ideas were used to shed light on the relationship between notions of electricians and the electrical trade and how these influence workers ergonomic habits and behaviours. To do this, the concepts were used as analytical tools to examine:

• What notions about the electrical trade were being drawn upon?

• What notions about electricians and what desirable worker subject was being produced?

• How do these notions about the electrical trade and electricians impede or facilitate healthy ergonomic behaviour?

In the data-analysis, statements concerning the electrical trade, electricians and/or ergonomics or occupational health and safety were first identified and coded using NVivo11. The material was then familiarised by listening to, transcribing, reading, and re-reading the transcribed focus group interviews. Recurrent and coherent meanings concerning how knowledge and power operate to govern and produce specific subjects was sought after. This process was repeated to achieve refinement of the analysis.

The electrical trade

Two discourses about the electrical trade that informed and shaped the informants’ talk about the trade and MSDs were: the ‘architecture of electricity’ and ‘time pressure’. These discourses served to normalise certain behaviours related to ergonomics, thus producing subjects that behave in specific ways.

The architecture of electricity

While electricians may work within many different fields, installing and repairing alarms and access control systems, automation within production- and processing-industries, and installing, administering, and repairing systems for computers and communication, the most common context exemplified in the data is electrical installation in construction and building, perhaps because this context is perceived to offer more challenging work environment issues. With this in mind, and in relation to work environment and ergonomics, the electrical trade (i.e. electrical installation) is conceived as being characterised by a couple of immutable features: 1) what we may call the architecture of electricity, and 2) time pressure.

The architecture of electricity refers to how electricity is drawn throughout buildings and between them, for instance, where cables are located, such as in the walls, above ceilings and sometimes under floorboards, in crawl spaces in attics and under houses, below ground or high above ground, etc. It also refers to the points at which the electrician’s work is visible to the end users, such as the placement of outlets, light switches, and light fixtures. For instance:

- Where is the electricity located? Mostly, it’s high up and far below. I mean it’s, light switches are at a good height, but you do those quick as nothing. . . . And often you are alone when you work. And then you will have to carry the tools yourself and all of that too. (Yr. 2 students)

- [It’s] repetitive work above the head, which weighs proper heavy on your shoulders and that’s most often what you get to do at an installation. . . . lighting and clamping cables and all that there is. So, it is very often upwards, as you notice when you’re in the workplace.

- And there can be a lot of weird angles too.

- Yes, that’s because the stuff isn’t placed as accessibly as you

- You have to bend unnaturally and

- You may sit or stand in some sort of weird position in order to be able to reach there. (Yr. 1 + 3 students)

The quotes above illustrate the kind of work environment electricians face. These quotes also show how the architecture of electricity is perceived as a given, as being integral to the trade and as something that cannot or will not be changed anytime soon. This architecture of electricity and the notion of its immutability creates a perception that electricians have no other option than to work within the confines of this architecture. In this way, the discourse produces imperatives for electricians about their ergonomic behaviour such that they must accept working in awkward physical positions, which, in turn, may lead to them compromising their physical health.

Time pressure

The second discourse permeating the talk about the electrical trade, specifically regarding electrical installation and MSDs, is time pressure. Time pressure is construed as an inevitable aspect of the industry and as such is also something that one needs to submit to if you aspire to working as an electrician. Working in construction, one generally works under a contract which your employer and the contractor have agreed upon, with a timetable and, by definition, a deadline to keep. The perception is that the contractor who promises to do the work quickest, for the least cost, will generally be the contracted partner. Furthermore, when the start-up or some other aspect of the construction is delayed due to, for instance, plans and blueprints being insufficiently advanced, though deadlines remain the same, it can mean that the workers have less time to do the job they are contracted to do.

- Sometimes the acquisitions might not quite be properly conceived. You must think for yourself when you receive documentation in which half isn’t even in it. And then you come out and the project starts and then already from the beginning there, people start to sort of, yeah but this, then? And that? And that? And this also wasn’t in it. Then the stress comes on already from day one. (WPBL supervisors)

Additional complications, which are perceived to put a strain on electricians’ timetables for completing their jobs, is that electricians need to be some of the first (to place the electrical cables) and last (to instal electrical outlets, light switches, and light fixtures) workers on site. Furthermore, and relating to this timetable, is having to contend with other tradespeople, such as carpenters and painters who need to be on-site between or at the same time as the electricians, depending on time pressures and how the construction has been planned out. The preferred situation is where the electrician, at the very least, does not have to work side-by-side with other tradespeople:

- In my experience everything works fine when we are left alone, when we don’t have eight other occupations around us, and we can organise our own work. I mean, it can be big jobs, let’s say that you have 1000 fittings to change. Instead of being in the middle of a ROT job² for instance, in which you have seven different categories [occupations] in a bathroom at the same time.

- You have to squeeze your ladder into a corner and then you have to go to the other corner anyway because that’s actually where you have to work but you can’t stand there.

- / . . . /

- Definitely it’s better if, when we do big jobs on our own. (WPBL supervisors)

Thus, the discourse of time pressure produces an additional (in addition to the architecture of electricity described above) set of ideas that serve as further imperatives about electricians and their ergonomic behaviour. It produces subjects that rush about, constantly trying to move quickly between tasks, and who may choose to adopt awkward standing positions, or use inadequate tools, to save time.

The electrician

The discourses of the architecture of electricity and time pressure both produce notions about the electrician as tenacious and responsible. While the notion of electricians as responsible may both impede and facilitate healthy ergonomic habits and behaviours, the notion of electricians as tenacious acts primarily to impede it.

Tenacious

Discourses of the architecture of electricity and time pressure produce a tenacious subject who subscribes to two related attitudes that may be perceived as being underpinned by a sense of resignation to the situation: 1) ‘I’m just gonna’ (Sw: ‘jag ska bara’), and 2) ‘do it just do it’ (Sw: ‘kör bara kör’). These attitudes, in turn, produce specific behaviours which, in the moment, may serve to improve productivity and the electricians’ sense of accomplishment, but which, at the same time, may be detrimental to electricians’ long-term health. Some installation work may in and of itself require electricians to adopt awkward working positions. Often, there are tools and aids available to alleviate these stresses, which electricians are expected to use, such as ladders, battery-powered screwdrivers, etc. However, in the flow of work the attitudes of ‘I’m just gonna’ and ‘do it just do it’ may undermine electricians’ sense of (long-term) self-preservation, to be replaced by a concern with maintaining the pace and the flow of work. If a specific tool or aid is not already at hand, the electrician may opt to do without due to a sense of it being quicker, and it’s just a small matter anyway. For instance, when placing an electrical outlet in the ceiling the ladder may not be quite high enough or correctly positioned (and what ought to be used is a scaffolding platform). Rather than adjusting this, which would take time, the electrician may choose to extend his arms upwards, above an ergonomically sound working position, or stand on tiptoe, or teeter on the edge of some makeshift step:

- You think that way often, I’m just gonna, I’m just gonna do this, I can’t be bothered to go and fetch the ladder, I can reach anyway. And then you stand there and reach for half an hour, [because] you can’t be bothered to walk.

- Yes, and then you’ve added to your pain bank for the future, that’s what you do. But you don’t think about it in the moment. (Teachers)

- Especially young people might not think ahead and if you know that maybe you might just be able to reach to make the installation, and you’re standing a bit crooked with your foot on a box or something and you’re in a hurry to finish soon, then you’ll not bother with getting a ladder but just stand there and reach for it. It’s just that you don’t think about it. But really you could have done it [the installation] without any trouble WITH a ladder, but it may have been on the other side of the room, so . . . (Yr. 1 + 3 students)

In conjunction with this notion, and contributing to exacerbating the situation, is the attitude of ‘do it just do it’. Although novice electricians may have learned the importance of pacing themselves in school, it is not perceived as quite so easy to apply in the workplace:

- Because like if, we’ve only learned that this is how you should do it, you should take it easy, and then you arrive at a construction site with a bunch of old foxes that have worked in construction for fifty years and try to say that, then they will throw you out [head] first and say, like, that’s not going to work.

- Keep working! [laughter]

- Yes. If we say that, then they just think you’re lazy so then you need backing from people higher up, like. (Yr. 2 students)

This attitude of ‘do it just do it’ thus serves to produce electricians who drudge on and do not stop for anything, whether it hurts or not, or if their muscles and bodies are fatigued or not:

- But the mentality between us students and everyone who works is that if anybody says that they hurt, then you say that they should just push through, that ‘shucks, that’s nothing’. That’s how it always is. (Yr. 2 students)

Also, permeating these attitudes is a sense of competitiveness: ‘You always want to feel that someone, that you are better than someone at least’ (Yr. 2 students). Taken together, these attitudes of ‘do it just do it’ and ‘I’m just gonna’ produce subjects prepared to push through awkward working positions and maintain a high pace when pressed for time, attitudes that are highly valued within the trade.

Responsible

In discussing MSDs, the discourses of the architecture of electricity and time pressure produce a responsible subject with conflicting concerns: electricians should act responsibly about their health and ergonomics but also towards their employer (loyalty) and towards their occupation as a tradesman (quality of work). These responsibilities do not always align, forcing electricians into making choices.

To be responsible about their health, electricians should ensure they have the tools, aids, and knowledge required to carry out their tasks, that they should ask for these things from their employer, and that they should be competent and committed in asking for them. However, it was not perceived as enough just to ask for, and use, available tools, aids, and knowledge. Electricians should also ensure that they achieve and maintain the physical condition perceived as being necessary to perform on the job, in the long-term. Proactively taking care of oneself, your body and health, was construed as important for ensuring an electrician’s capacity to stay on the job for many years to come:

- (Interviewer) So, what may cause MSDs among electricians?

- The wrong type of exercise.

- Or not exercising at all. That you’re completely unathletic and totally stiff and such.

- Well, it contributes, doesn’t it.

- I’d say so, for sure. (Yr. 2 students)

Conceiving of electricians as responsible produces expectations on them to exercise and take care of themselves. If they hurt or their muscles are sore, they may be expected to ‘suck it up’ and stoically suffer in silence. If you don’t, others will let you know that your pain is not worth complaining about because 1) you are not unique, others are in pain too, 2) others’ pain is worse, and 3) they still work and so should you, because the priority is to get the job done whether you hurt or not. The notion of the responsible subject also produces a sense of loyalty towards employers and towards the contract, thereby contributing to securing future contractability for the firm, while in the long run, ensuring one has a job to go to into the future. A perceived incommensurability within these responsibilities may explain why MSDs may be construed as ‘wussy’ and not as proper injuries. This, in turn, may exacerbate a notion that pains and aches are just not worth talking about, or even acknowledging to oneself, let alone to colleagues or managers. Rather, electricians are expected to work, whether in pain or not, and should not expect sympathy, but rather mockery and laughter from co-workers, if they do somehow indicate that they are hurting:

- It’s tricky because the injuries come in too late, you know. It’s like when you’re 40. That’s when you realise you’ve done it wrong for 20 years. . . . At the beginning it’s tough to stand with your arms [raised above your head], as an apprentice, but after a year or so, you can stand all day.

- / . . . /

- Also, I think that ninety per cent of everyone with MSDs work 8 hours a day anyway. - Oh yes, oh yes. That would not surprise me.

- / . . . /

- It’s something that’s become accepted in the trade. We get these problems, it’s nothing to fuss over, everyone knows that.

- You’re neck hurts? Well, let me tell you about my ailment too, then!

- Yes, yes, quit your whining, I have it worse! [laughs] (WPBL supervisors)

•  Further exacerbating this situation and deepening this culture of silence, is the positioning of tradespeople and teachers as responsible subjects, with a loyalty towards the trade, making them reluctant to talk with students about MSDs within the trade for fear of scaring them off. However, being a responsible electrician is not just about exercising and achieving a physically fit body in order to avoid or prevent pains and aches, but is also about learning and maintaining sustainable work habits:

- You know, a small change in behaviour can amount to lowering the risk by as much as 70-80%, that you get an injury. And so, if you know this, that if I take another step up the ladder or make sure that I have a ladder that allows me to reach, then that’s worth so much. And if you drill in that behaviour here [in school] and you take that with you to your first job and you develop that as a good habit. But to do that you need to know.

- You must have the knowledge (Teachers)

And if you have not acquired sustainable work habits from trade school, you are expected, in this regard, to become more responsible as you gain experience:

- But then with the years, as you get older you become, you know, no but no, I won’t go up here. This ladder is wobbly, no, no, I refuse. Yeah, stuff like that so.

- You get wiser like that through the years. (Teachers)

Finally, responsible electricians avoid doing repetitive and monotonous movements all day such as drilling holes in concrete an entire workday and then spending the following entire workday screwing up ladders on those holes to hold electrical cables:

- I usually try to drill a few holes, and then I do the next step, load them with plugs and set up the cable, so that you get some variation like that.

- That’s ingenious though. But that’s difficult to, in practice

- Yes, it’s, yeah sometimes I can think, no, I’ll go ahead and drill all these holes and then I’ll be done with them. (WPBL supervisors)

This comment about how it is clever to vary the work would suggest that this is not necessarily routine. Instead, responsibility towards the employer and the notion of ‘do it just do it’ comes into play, as in the quote above, suggesting that it might be easier and quicker to just do one thing at a time, not having to switch tools and tasks. Thus, the notion of a responsible subject juxtaposes ideas about healthy ergonomic behaviour and being a loyal employee. These two rationalities can cause conflicting imperatives regarding how to approach a task, as can be seen in the quote above.

Discussion

While the empirical data generated here comes from a small sample of focus group interviews regarding a very specific issue of work environment/ergonomics in the electrical trade, from a discourse analytic perspective, it is not the amount or vastness of data that is most important but the insights into current discourses that they may offer (Hall 2001). Thus, notwithstanding the sample size, this study contributes knowledge about how notions about the electrical trade and electricians impede or facilitate implementation of healthy ergonomic habits and behaviours and how this in turn will inform how students may come to think about themselves, as electricians, and to act in terms of ergonomics. As such, it offers a complex and multidimensional insight into some of the difficulties behind implementing sound ergonomic habits and behaviour inherent in the current trade climate, while also indicating several implications (see below). Furthermore, the conversations do not encompass the entirety of the electrical trade, but are focussed mainly on electrical installation, primarily within construction, but with some comments about service and industry work mixed in. This may be expected to have influenced the types of work environment or ergonomic issues and challenges that the informants took as examples.

Even if students, as part of their ‘vocational becoming’ (Wyszynska Martina 2018), achieve a level of knowledge and skill regarding healthy ergonomic habits, they will face a tough time implementing these due to the discursively produced attitudes in the trade coupled with their subordinate subject positioning as novice/junior electricians with limited say or influence. The results show that within a trade school context, the electrical trade and electricians are discursively conceived in ways that are normalised by the informants and perhaps justified in terms of productivity, but taken together, are problematic for developing ergonomically sound working habits. Conceiving of the electrical trade as characterised by an immutable ‘architecture of electricity’ and ‘time pressure’, together with the notions of electricians as ‘tenacious’ and ‘responsible’, serves to produce behaviour that, in this context, is more conducive to productivity rather than to healthiness. Overall, the studied discourses produce notions of the ‘good electrician’ as someone who is a team player and who is prepared to ‘take one for the team’ by ignoring pain and focusing on the here and now to get the job finished. Furthermore, attitudes of ‘do it just do it’, ‘I’m just gonna’, and the competitiveness, as well as the culture of silence and the perception of MSDs as wimpish, align with a macho-culture (cf. McVittie, Hepworth, and Goodall 2017) and are exacerbated by the homosocial nature of the trade (Connell and James Messerschmidt 2005; Bird 1996). Taken together, this may be expected to decrease the likelihood of electricians choosing sustainable work habits (see also Eaves, Gyi, and Gibb 2016).

Implications

Following Stergiou-Kita’s et al. (2015) study on masculinity and men’s workplace health and safety, this study has shown that discourses within the electrical trade also normalise risk, injuries, and pain, while celebrating a masculine ideal of physicality, bodily strength, enduring pain and hardship, and being tough, self-reliant, and loyal. These notions about masculinity (Connell 2008) make it difficult for workers to ensure that their work follows sound ergonomic practices. Therefore, implementing work environment education in trade school, to ensure that trainee electricians learn ergonomically sound ways of working, must also take into consideration the strong masculine cultural imperatives manifest within the occupation.

At the same time, as electricians go on sick leave or retire prematurely due to MSDs, a culture of silence within the trade makes it difficult for electricians to talk about MSD-related issues for fear of discrediting the trade and scaring off potential future electricians. Furthermore, this culture of silence serves to normalise a status quo and enables clients, employers and manufacturers of tools and aids, including developers and architects, to continue along the same tracks as they always have, rather than having to be creative and innovative when addressing these issues. The tough macho-culture needs to be managed and tackled through different interventions, for instance, by educating not just electricians but also other stakeholders regarding MSDs and attitudes towards it. It needs to become socially and financially (cf. Glimskär 2014) acceptable for electricians to stop and, for instance, take a break, or vary between tasks when one’s muscles are strained and exhausted.

Perceptions of immutability regarding the architecture of electricity and time pressure do not help in promoting change or improvement along these dimensions of the trade. Rather, innovation within the trade is concerned with continued streamlining to become even more efficient and quick, and workers are perceived as obliged to adopt the innovations (Glimskär 2014). A consequence of this may be even more problems with MSDs due to fewer opportunities for varied working positions. The architecture of electricity is strongly shaped by notions about where electrical installations ought to be placed, notions that are both restrictive and taken for granted, as well as perceived as natural and unchanging. Improving electricians’ ergonomic work environment requires innovation regarding the construction and placement of electrical installations, as well as the development of additional and improved tools and aids.

The results of this study indicate that it will be difficult for novice/junior electricians, once they enter the workforce, to implement their knowledge from trade school regarding healthy and sustainable work habits. To better understand how novice electricians adapt or modify their ergonomic behaviour once entering the work force, further empirical research is required. What barriers do they perceive to maintaining sustainable work habits? How might their knowledge about and/or resolve, to follow ergonomic best practice, transfer and transform into working life? And how can VET better address issues of masculinity and the social and cultural aspects of workplace health and safety?

Acknowledgements

The article is a result of the research project ‘Sustainable Electricians: a pilot’, with Mats Djupsjöbacka as lead investigator. The project was financed by the Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare (Forte Dnr. 2009-1761). The author would like to thank the Swedish Association of Electrical Contractors, the Swedish Electricians’ Union, and the Swedish National Electrical Safety Board for their input to the project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the FORTE [2009-1761].

Notes

1. Also interviewed were local union representatives (a focus group interview), a union representative responsible for work environment issues and a representative from the industry trade organisation (individual interviews). These interviews were however not included in the analysis for this article, since focus here is on the trade school context.

2. ROT is short for Repairs, Conversion, Extension and in Sweden is a type of work that may give the person that buys your services a tax reduction for the labour cost.