MOOCS Saúde Mental Relacionada ao Trabalho - 07 - O que é o trabalho Parte 3

I ended the previous class by asking, "Why is it important for us to understand that work is historicizing/historicized and produces forms of illness? " Well, let's think about it. If ways of becoming ill are also determined by forms of work, it is essential to know how work is currently organized.

This will give us a light at the end of the tunnel to understand that some changes can be made, thought of, and reflected on, concerning work and how it is organized. We also mentioned that there are nomenclatures for ways of working, such as domestic, salaried, and rural work. But, “will we be referring to all these forms and nomenclatures of work as we consider the dynamics of illness and health at work in this course?

” The answer is “No. ” We will be talking specifically about the “salaried” work model. When we talk about salaried work, we think of salary as a financial return.

Working 8 hours a day to earn 7 thousand reais at the end of the month is different from working eight hours a day five times a week and earning 20 thousand reais. We are talking here about salaried work in which the labor is sold. We are talking about a type of work and human activity that takes place within the context of capitalism.

Therefore, capitalism, the forms of production, task organization, and the worker's understanding of their job will direct us to contemporary modes of illness. We will therefore consider that this salaried work is produced by and composed of a working class. “Is there a working class?

” Yes, there is, and this working class is organized and made up of men and women who sell their labor in exchange for a salary. If we stop and think about it, “Working Class” is a somewhat outdated and controversial term. The totality of a job depends on how we are paid for an activity and the delivery of a product, as well as through collective, salaried work.

The terms “Collective” and “Salaried” signal that there is work that is increasingly required to be carried out through teamwork. However, do you agree with me that it seems that these collective workspaces also develop in very individual ways? So, this is a paradox of the current work context.

At the same time that tasks need to be fulfilled by workers that are qualified and able to work in groups, more and more, individualizing and individualized forms of work are imposed on these workers. And when we think of suffering at work, this is very dangerous because the dynamics of illness are also related to social dynamics. Workers always represent their collective in some way, shape, or form.

There is also a difference between a productive and an unproductive worker. I'm going to read you a passage from the text to which you will have access. Antunes, 2013; “Productive workers are those who directly produce “added value” and directly participate in the capital appreciation process.

They, therefore, hold a central role within the working class. However, it must be added that the modern working class also includes unproductive workers. Unproductive in the sense of capitalist production in which the forms of work are used as a service, either for public use or for a use that is also capitalist in nature.

” Thus, this contemporary capitalism guiding these relationships and ways of presenting itself in the class will imply productive and unproductive work. We already understand that work is a complex concept and that there are many forms of work. There are different nomenclatures, and each of these terms will give a different meaning to how we understand the activity performed.

There are work organizations that impose the means of realizing the tasks to be performed by their workers. We are considering that the “Working Class” is a class constituted of men and women who sell their labor, and who depend on wages for survival and maintenance of their needs. In summary, this is what we are referring to and conceptualizing as the working class.

"Working Class" includes: The Industrial proletariat; Salaried workers in the services sector; The rural proletariat, who sell their labor to the capital; The precarious proletariat; The modern subproletariat; The new proletariat; Outsourced and precarious workers who often don't have work contracts to guide their activity; The informal economy, in which people sell their labor but are not inserted in the productive dynamics of either large or small companies, workers whose means of understanding their work are very mobile; Workers who are unemployed or have been expelled from the productive processes. We will not necessarily consider the “Capital Allocators”, or those who own the means of production and have high salaries as part of this working class. There is an important social difference in understanding illness, health production, and pleasure in the relationships between salaried workers and Capital Allocators.

Who knows, we might in the future produce other course materials to also discuss these dynamics, which are different. Why then do we study these social classes of salaried workers? Well, to understand that work practices are transformed and are inevitably associated with these transformations, and understand what is and what is not “The Working Class.

” How do the richest classes constitute themselves as the owners of this other class, which is “The Working Class? ” We are here inevitably referring to social relations. In other words, understanding the organization of this working class, who are not the managers of the capital and need to work to maintain their basic social needs, will help and give us clues to understand the modes of contemporary illnesses.

But beware of two fundamental aspects; the fact that it is possible to identify more or less antagonistic polarizations within these “wealthier” and “poorer” classes does not mean it is easy to identify the boundaries between those who are more qualified and receive higher wages and small detainers of the means of production, so this line is tenuous. How can we classify those who are the wealthier capital allocators and those who own a means of production on a smaller scale and smaller forms of organizing their work? The most important thing to understand here is that workers have different forms and dynamics of illness, pleasure, and giving meaning to their work.

The values that propagate socially tend to go from one end to another, i. e. , from those with more social power to those with less.

Thus, even among the poorest workers we can find those who arduously defend and act according to values that benefit the rich more than their class, the poorer classes that depend directly on the sale of their labor. An emblematic example of this is the discourse and behaviors of workers who put themselves at risk of suffering a fall by not using the mandatory safety gear even though they have access to such protective equipment. I'm reading here because several things are going through my mind.

“How are we selling our labor? ” “What values are driving us? ” “Do we belong to the salaried class?

” Don't worry if you didn't understand this very well, we'll come back to it later in the course. For the time being, I would like you to understand that the class boundaries of a society contribute to the historical debate over this social dynamic, and to understand some principles and elements that constitute this society. Therefore, we will be focusing on labor relations.

You’ve probably noticed by now that I like to close my classes with a question. I’ll leave you with this; "What does the world of work say about us? " "Why don't we just study the health effects and symptoms that work can cause?

" "Why are we trying to analyze what the world of work is? " In order to deepen this knowledge and realize that it is not so simple or easy to create the means, strategies, and interventions that can help us transform work illness factors.