Representações sociais acerca do trabalho precarizado em frigoríficos de Dourados-MS: da inclusão perversa à exclusão social

Abstract

It is understood that within the dimension of social representations, possibilities arise for adjustments to accommodate the contradictions between the materiality of vulnerable life and the psychosphere. It is also within social representations that conflicts and maladjustments are addressed, translated into forms of loss of sovereignty over one's own body, through the denial of limits and the processes of suffering and illness observed. The proposed exploration of social representations allows for the analysis of interpretations that commonly circulate among those who share the same work organization, the same territory of degradation. The analysis of social representations, treated as theories about the daily life of work governed by neoliberal rationality, brings the worker's own understanding of the aspects of super exploitation of their limits. Therefore, between globalization as a fable and perverse social inclusion, social representations are analyzed from certain dimensions of exclusion processes. When social exclusion is conceptualized from the perspective of precarious employment and access to the labor market, reference is made to a multidimensional and dynamic social process. This process is a result of the alignment between the capitalist mode of production and social structures, which bring with them inequality, poverty, stigmatization, and discrimination. These aspects of the social structure and its dynamics imply the impossibility of upward social mobility and access to basic social systems. As a consequence of this area of degradation, the effects of the transformation of work organization on the integrity of bodies were decisive in the constitution of a Technical Epidemiological Nexus (NTEP). Another effect of this scenario of illness was the elaboration of the Regulatory Standard for meat processing plants (NR 36), built through a broad tripartite debate (workers, federal government, and employers), as a preventive measure against the most common illness processes in meat processing production lines. The objectives of this study were to characterize the conditions of social vulnerability resulting from the organization of work; to characterize the health/illness process as an impediment to work capacity and the sale of labor power; and to characterize the effects of absences due to work incapacity. Regarding methodology, this is a qualitative study. The research subjects were five female workers from two multinational meatpacking companies (JBS and BR Food), located in the municipality of Dourados-MS. After conducting semi-structured individual interviews, transcriptions were made, followed by categorization using core meaning analysis and content analysis techniques. Regarding results and discussion, this study highlights that there are dynamic dimensions of social exclusion that are accentuated in the context of precarious and servile employment in meatpacking plants. It was observed that social exclusion has a central element, namely, the necessary excluded, the most impoverished fringes of the working class, those who are employed without experience requirements, as semi-skilled or unskilled labor. Alongside this, the neoliberal rationality inherent in the globalization of markets and commodities prescribes the precarization of the working class's life as a recipe for the benefit of the capitalist mode of production. From a psychosphere perspective, the hypothesis of the precarization of working conditions assimilated as a reality within the very rationality of individualization and the denial of solidarity was confirmed, aiming to make the subject perceive themselves as a unit of production among competitors. Within the stratification of the working class, the precariat is reduced to the role of servitude, considered the thin line that brings them closer to the unemployed. They are subjected to the division of tasks, evaluation criteria based on goals, high turnover, as well as the reduction of wages and rights. In light of all this, we can conclude that the process of social exclusion unleashed in the production lines of meatpacking plants is primarily economic in nature, regarding the disconnection from the world of work, as a consequence of the illness caused by precarization. Inability to work, resulting from illness, triggers the cultural and social aspects of social exclusion. Therefore, after becoming detached from the world of work, a process of erosion of citizenship, denial of rights and recognition is observed, leading to ruptures in societal, community, and solidarity ties. The territory of degradation is also a territory of servitude for the precariat, and the process, initiated by illness, becomes a permanent condition of social exclusion.