ILPC 2026

 This paper aims to detail how slaughterhouse work is increasingly being based upon a degrading social relationship with negative health outcomes for workers. The working conditions imposed in slaughterhouses have resulted in growing physical and mental illness for workers. Such conditions are explored through an analysis of work in a factory operated by Brazil Foods (BRF) in Toledo, Paraná State, Brazil. Drawing upon interviews and documents provided by workers’ organizations, our case study explores how work degradation serves as the central structuring element of the labor process in this plant. We also note that although there has emerged a collective organization of workers to confront these labor conditions, this has mainly occurred beyond the aegis of the official unions. This fact leads us to contemplate several important geographical issues, since the rise of collective worker action beyond the official union structures challenges the legal spatial order of how labor relations are supposed to work in Brazil.