Conclusion:
unions, work and health
The industrial restructuring and the introduction of ‘new
management’ techniques in the ‘90s in Brazil connected
the lack of bargaining power of unions, the growing precarity and
stress in workers’ lives and the rapid growth of stress-related
illnesses.
First, these ‘new management’ techniques use the knowledge
of workers in order to increase productivity and the individual
workload. Therefore they allocate more importance to the workers
to re-shape their workplace, but without giving them the tools and
organisational instruments to defend and represent their interests
collectively. As there is little information available to the workers,
it is hard or often impossible to recognise the risks and make the
connection between RSI and MSD and their job.
Second, some trade union organisations have a certain technical
competence on health issues based on scientific biological or chemical
risk assessment. The new management techniques and new disorders
however demand a quite different approach as the workers themselves
and specific workers’ knowledge are directly incorporated
in the restructuring processes. External assessment by (union) experts
is therefore more and more confronted with its limits.
The tightening labour markets and the re-design of work are reproducing
more precarity and stress in people’s working lives, putting
their health and social anchoring at further risk and therefore
putting the issue of health and safety in the centre of the constitution
of industrial relations. Unions are thus challenged to address the
issue of new forms of work organisation and power on the shop floor.
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