Work and Health of Dockers Workers in Lisbon: a comparative study with the Port of Santos, Brazil

Abstract

This project presents a proposal to investigate work organization and health of workers of the port of Lisbon. This post-doctoral research, under the guidance of Dr. Raquel Cardeira Varela, historian, researcher and coordinator of the Research on Labor Studies and Social Conflicts of the Universidade de Nova Lisboa, which constitutes an important public university of the Lisbon metropolitan area.The process of ports' modernization is transforming the forms of work organization and work processes, identities, forms of sociability and values of a professional category, dockworkers. Ongoing changes and their repercussions on the experiences of health, illness, as well as the strategies of care of these workers, still little known, are here taken as objects of this research.The main objective is to analyze the work processes in the Lisbon Port in the forms of work organization of the port companies and in the configuration of different experiences of health and illness of workers. The specific objectives include work processes analysis focusing, specifically, on the work organization; evaluation of signs and symptoms of fatigue; of musculoskeletal disorders; of back-pain problems; and work-related accidents, linking these aspects to the work organization of the Lisbon Port. It also proposes a comparison of the results found in the Lisbon port with the results found in the research "Santos Port modernization process: Implications for the health and illness of workers" (this project is financed by the National Council for Research and Technology-CNPq-Brazil, Process 0 473727/2008). To achieve these goals the research proposes an interdisciplinary look shared with researchers of the Research Group on Global History of Labor and Social Conflicts of the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, Universidade de Nova Lisboa, in order to ensure a more detailed analysis on the research object.The methodological steps involve quantitative and qualitative approaches, covering the knowledge of work processes and conditions through a non-exhaustive research on working conditions of selected activities, based on ergonomics; the knowledge of workers health/illness data through an evaluation of fatigue, musculoskeletal disorders, back problems and work accidents. It is also intended to evaluate work organization procedures in the Lisbon Port through the workers' discourse.The research results will help to expand knowledge on work processes, work organization and implications for health-illness process of Lisbon Port workers (fatigue, prevalence of work-related back pain, musculoskeletal disorders and occupational accidents) and on how workers build representations and meanings of work under the logic of globalized capital and the conflicts generated in this relationships within the Lisbon Port.The research presents elements that can contribute to the development of work and health policies for dockworkers in Portugal, from the research in the Lisbon Port, in search of guarantees of public health policies for these workers.