Work and health and contemporary capitalism: Economics as a social disease

Abstract

Work nowadays faces changes that bring important impacts on workers' health, such as accidents, large disasters, and diseases related to stress. These anomalies have been associated with raising tensions that resulted from globalization and the increase of inter-capitalist dispute. In this context emerges the phenomenon of financialization of the economy that leads organizations to want short-term results. Work management forms assume aggressive and even violent nature that stimulates competition between workers and teams by imposing ever-growing goals and loads. This context presents challenges to interventions that aim to change management models in order to make the work more humane and sustainable. The chapter addresses the following questions: What are the central contradictions in today's productive processes? How can one create a need among managers and other players for more sustained transformation of production models? What kind of demands do these changes require for intervention and surveillance activities in the context of workers' health?