ILPC 2026

This study problematizes the relationship between work and health from the subjectivities of retail workers. The research is presented in a context where there is an alarming underreporting of accidents and occupational diseases in the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) model and in companies. The institutional framework for occupational health invisibilizes the health of workers, increasing their lack of protection and causing numerous impairments in their health status, which are not recorded in official statistics, being attributed to the lifestyle of people rather than working conditions. This is in addition to the growth of precarious employment, job instability, low wages, and low collective representation, typical of the retail sector, factors that generate negative effects on their quality of life and health.

Considering the above, this study questions how the supermarket workers mean their experiences in occupational health, and what are the actions and practices that guide to manage and negotiate their health problems at work. More specifically, we ask how they perceive the relationship that exists between work and health, especially in the face of a scenario of vulnerability, individualization and responsibility, as in which they are inserted. The question will be addressed through three edges: 1) How companies and the OHS system manage the health problems of workers, which concludes the existence of a responsibility award to the worker of their health status, while the organization of the work and the functioning of the SSO system are excluded, through an ideological discourse and diverse coercive strategies; 2) The practices and meanings that workers develop when faced with the non-recognition of their illnesses and accidents, finding various resistance practices focused on the need to continue working and functioning in a context that harms their health; and 3) How occupational health problems affect the construction of workers' identities, concluding that they produce fragmentations and important breaks in how they perceive themselves and the "others".

The paper is based on a qualitative sociological study, framed the FONDECYT project "Positional Experiences: Subjectivities in the Social Transformation of Chile" of the University of Chile, and the thesis project of the same institution. The study was conducted in Santiago de Chile with 23 in-depth interviews with workers, union leaders, and members of the joint committees and managers of local supermarkets.

The approach to the relationship between work and health from the subjectivities of the workers is innovative in the academy, even more considering that it allows us to investigate the processes through which this new class of services and retail workers perceive and build themselves. Health, work and identity have been a topic that has not been tackled in sociology, but this research provides evidence of the great importance it has in understanding the work processes in modernity, in conjunction with the actions and discourses of the workers in front of them.