Risks at the chemical plant: accidents and contamination in worker s representations. / Riscos na usina química: os acidentes e a contaminação nas representações dos trabalhadores.

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2001

RESUMO

Risk at work is a matter that has always prominent in discussions about workers’ health and safety. It has been studied for several theoretical approaches, some essentially ‘technicists’ and others adopting a point of view that attributes special relevance to the social features. Each one of these approaches gives a different importance to the workers’ opinion about the risks, but both give more attention to accidents than diseases caused by work. This research intended to investigate workers’ representation of risks that they are exposed to in their professional activity. By using Bourdieu’s sociological theory and the Moscovici’s Theory of Social Representation, it has sought to compare the representations of more evident risks, such as accidents, with those that are less obvious to a layman, like contamination by chemical products. A case study was carried out making use of the ethnographic approach in one particular company - a large chemical plant with a complex organizational structure - whose activity is characterized by the presence of different kinds of risks. The variety and complexity found allowed a comparison of the representations of different kinds of risk within the different social groups present in the plant. It was verified that the access to technical information (which depends on the position occupied by the worker in the company structure) and the way that relationship between the company and workers is established (which is direct linked to work organization) were the more relevant aspects in the construction of representations. The way these two aspects were composed in each case meant that some representations were closer to the ‘official discourse’ of the company, while others were completely different. And, the later were usually identified by the companies’ technical and management staff as an erroneous view held by the workers. It was concluded that a true safety policy is one which encompasses a more complete and effective approach to risk analysis than the traditional one, which adopts only the technical point of view as a truth. This policy needs to be participative in that the workers are allowed access to the relevant technical information and have a forum in which to express their representations of the risks.

ASSUNTO(S)

saúde ocupacional psicologia social social psychology psicologia organizacional occupational health risk etnografia etnography organizational psychology riscos ocupacionais

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