Working Conditions and Work Environment in State-Owned Companies and Their Effects on the Health of the Population

Abstract

Working conditions and environment vary significantly according to the area or sector under analysis. However, there is a constant that may be considered as a framework: in every organization there are dependent variables, namely working conditions and environment, within which a dynamic, individual process of permanent change takes place.

The objective of this paper is to analyze working conditions and environment, taking J. Neffa’s theoretical framework as a reference, in the context of a state-owned company undergoing reconversion. The analysis is based on the perception of the changes that the cultural, social, political, economic, and technological environment has produced in state organizations. These constant worldwide changes, together with the strong instability of markets, have imposed on organizations a process of adaptation to new demands. This has made it necessary to consider the important role of the human factor in companies. From this perspective, the analysis of working conditions and environment has shifted its focus from objective factors to subjective ones. Among the latter, the life and health of workers and their ways of reacting to different working conditions and environments acquire particular importance.

The research group set out to analyze, from the standpoint of individual subjectivity, how working conditions and environment are perceived and how they affect areas such as productivity, absenteeism, turnover, and quality of working life. The research involved contact with national reality and, particularly, with that of the province of Santiago del Estero. Attention was focused on workers’ health from the new socioeconomic perspective currently prevailing in Argentina.

On the basis of the reality observed, the study attempted to define the dominant conception in this state-owned company: traditional or renewed. Both conceptions theoretically characterized the central axis of our research. The traditional tendency addresses the problem of occupational safety and hygiene and acts upon the emerging issue without taking into account its causality and multiple determination. The renewed conception emphasizes the meaning that work has for a person, as both a right and a social obligation. Aspects such as the reproduction of the human species, scientific and technological progress, and the improvement of general living conditions depend on it.

Working conditions and environment were considered as a whole from the renewed perspective, as a result of the insertion of the world of work into a broader context. This required a global and integrative approach.

The study concluded that, in our country, although research has demonstrated the positive effects of improving working conditions, and despite the efforts of the International Labour Organization to achieve the humanization of work, the profound crisis has prevented employers from investing in improvements to working conditions and environment. The traditional conception remains deeply rooted, while progress toward a renewed conception of working conditions and environment remains a social debt.