Work and health in the years of the productive restructuring. The case of the workers of the Ex-Propulsora Siderúrgica, Ensenada, Buenos Aires

Abstract

In this article we analyze the constructions of the workers in respect of their body, health, diseases and work accidents in relation with work, and workplace and conditions at a big metallurgical enterprise during the productive restructuring. We are going to analyze how they are related by two principal questions, both marked by contradictions and ambivalences: on one hand, we have what concerns work as a vital and constitutive activity of the subject. Here the subject’s corporeity is both compromised and valued as a worker. On the other hand, we find work as political relations among workers, shop stewards, bosses and union leaders, that expresses fights over power at the workplace. Both issues problematize the way in which the workers conceive their own health and body, which is understandable if we consider it to be a wide historical, economic - political, ideological and cultural experience.