Listening to workers and social assistance and of health in tempos of the pandemic: goals of health and working conditions

Abstract

In 2020, the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus was one of the most serious conditions in public health (PAHO, 2020). In Brazil, the pandemic caused negligence in the management of public policies to emerge; the underfunding of the public health system, of science and the devaluation of workers. This work intends to listen to health and social assistance workers; analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of these public policies, and identifying the problems related to hygiene and safety at work. The methodological path chosen was quantitative and qualitative research, whose data will be analyzed through the triangulation of methods, in the light of the dialectical hermeneutic approach. The research universe is the State of São Paulo, with an intentional sample, considering the 20 municipalities with the highest contamination and mortality due to the disease. The search will take place online on Google forms and Google meets. A questionnaire on quality of life at work and a semi-structured interview will be applied to health and social assistance workers in the sample municipalities, as well as representatives of unions, associations or forums representing the professional categories. It is worth mentioning that before the pandemic, the country was already experiencing great instability in the world of work with the advance of the neoliberal offensive, combined with labor, social security reforms and the dismantling of policies resulting from Constitutional Amendment 95/2016, which froze spending on policies public, for 20 years. On the other hand, the pandemic demanded the social isolation of all, further aggravating the inequalities and insecurity of many families in situations of social vulnerability, who survive from informal work or in precarious ways and / or unemployment. In order to face calamity situations, it is also necessary to think of workers, who have rights to be respected, such as the right to life and the performance of work in safe conditions. Health and social care workers are instrumental in ensuring social protection and the lives of entire populations. Thus, the guarantee of safe conditions for professional practice is a sine qua non. One of the strategies for containing infection by the new coronavirus pointed out by the WHO is the testing of all workers, regardless of the presence of symptoms. In this dimension of analysis, conducting research to listen to these workers becomes essential, in this pandemic moment, to get closer to reality, in order to measure the daily lives and difficulties of these professionals in serving the population. (AU)