Conveners
- Patrizio Tonelli: Facultad Latinomaricana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO Chile); School of Public Health, University of Chile. Email: patriziotonelli@gmail.com
- Jairo Luna-García: Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, National University of Colombia
- Mauricio Torres-Tovar: Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, National University of Colombia
Objective
To reflect on the current role of labour process studies in relation to workers' health and safety.
Outline
Since the 1970s, the study and understanding of workers' health has gained momentum by intersecting with the concept of the labour process. This perspective sought to move away from a limited understanding of health damage focused on the action of one or more workplace risks. Instead, it proposed addressing these issues within a broader framework that involved exploitation and class struggle. Thus, workers' health and illness were understood as a process influenced by the interests and power dynamics inherent in the capitalist mode of production, also reflecting the contradictions between capital and labour. This "political economy of workers' health" provided a significant theoretical framework for studies on workers' health, offering common guidelines based on factors such as - state of technology in society; - market development; - distribution of power among social classes; - dominant ideology in society.
The consequences and challenges in this area were profound, with repercussions of an epistemological, methodological, and political nature. First, the role of workers as a collective political subject, holding knowledge developed from their daily experiences and capable of taking actions to transform work environments, became increasingly significant. This contrasted with the traditional view of occupational health and labour medicine, which regarded workers as patients or objects of expert judgment and interventions. Second, interventions aimed at preventing health damage gained relevance, focusing on modifying environmental conditions or work organization, and in some cases even proposing the need for workers to take control on labour processes. This contrasted with the approach traditionally shared by labour struggles, state interventions, and business practices, which predominantly focused on compensating damages caused by accidents or illnesses, on providing access to reparative medical services, and, in other words, on "monetizing" work-related harm.
With this stream proposal, we aim to create a platform for gathering updated research and reflections that can foster a discussion on how this field of studies and interventions has addressed the labour changes that have shaped the globalized world over the past 30 years. To achieve this, we aim to gather contributions from diverse global contexts.
In recent decades, the world of work has undergone changes that have displaced or redefined the traditional spatial-temporal coordinates under which subordinate workers perform their duties. Corporate restructuring, driven by the integration of digital technologies that streamline and reorganize global processes, managerial changes in organization and employment relations, the growing dominance of the service sector, shifts in labour markets due to migration, increased female participation, and job precarization, as well as the decline of collective worker organizations in response to corporate power, are phenomena that require a reconsideration of how workers' health is studied and understood, along with the development of collaborative research approaches. Furthermore, the rigid boundaries between factory and territory, typical of the 1970s, have blurred to the point of disappearing, highlighting the need to understand the relationship between work and the environment in a new way.
Keywords
Workers' health, labour process, changes in the world of work, collective action, participatory research.
Format
The proposed stream is intended to have a hybrid format, primarily in-person but also allowing for remote contributions.
Thematic Lines
- Theoretical-methodological challenges in workers' health
- Organized workers' actions on health and safety
- Participatory action-research
- Scope and limitations of business action to guarantee the right to health at work
- Historical assessments workers' health studies
- Changes in labour processes and workers' health
- Workers' health in global supply chains and informal employment
Bibliography
Levenstein, C. (ed.) (2009). At the point of production: the social analysis of occupational and environmental health, New York, Baywood Publishing Company.
Laurell, Asa Cristina, Ciencia y experiencia obrera: la lucha por la salud en Italia, “Cuadernos políticos”, n. 41, México, DF, julio-diciembre 1984, pp. 63-83.
Laurell, A.C. (1978). Proceso de trabajo y salud, Cuadernos Políticos, número 17, México, D.F., editorial Era, julio-septiembre de 1978, pp.59-79
Walters, D.; Quinlan, M.; Johnstone, R.; Wadsworth, E. (2016). Cooperation or resistance? Representing workers’ health and safety in a hazardous industry. Industrial Relations Journal 47:4, 379–395
Walters, D., & Nichols, T. (2007). Worker Representation and Workplace Health and Safety. Londres: Pallgrave Macmillan.
Antunes, R. (ed.) (2020). Uberização, trabalho digital e indústria 4.0. São Paulo: Boitempo.