A importância da visão integrativa e humanista do meio ambiente do trabalho para a proteção da saúde dos trabalhadores

Abstract

This paper aims to demonstrate the importance of approaching the issues of work environment from a holistic and humanistic vision in order to promote human dignity and to achieve effective protection of the worker's health. Brazil has an advanced constitutional text on the environment, and developed infra-constitutional legislation on the subject and, as it regards the labor medicine and safety standards, has one of the most modern systems of collective access to Justice, but has not yet achieved a reasonable compliance of the standards regarding the environment of work. The proposal is, thus, to abandon the traditional concept of protection of the work environment that displays the health of the worker under the monetarist and private prism in dissonance with the position of prominence that are human rights. To have this change of paradigm it is needed, first of all, to identify the reasons why it is believed that the current model should be replaced. For this to take place, a critical analysis about the factors that led to the ineffectiveness of the current system of social environmental protection work, portrayed by high numbers of occupational accidents and occupational diseases, is held. It is highlighted as the main obstacle to be surpassed, a culture rooted in the minds of different social actors involved in labor relations, according to which the loss of health and life may be compensated by pecuniary payment; the worker's health matters exclusively to him. It is emphasized, moreover, that it is essential to have awareness that the worker is subject to rights and not object of the work contract, as well as it is human right and essential to anyone who works, to exert his activities in an appropriate and safe local allowing the free development of his personality. Moreover, it is necessary to extend the vision about the work environment in order to understand it as part of the global environment, applying to it the general theory of Environmental Law, especially its fundamental principles because of its significant axiological content and for being more beneficial to the employee and the whole society. It is concluded by presenting some suggestions that can be adopted by the various social actors to overcome the obstacles initially mentioned. Such measures are seen as challenges to be overcome since they involve a change in the framework of values of those who are somehow related to the topic. We emphasize the importance of the environmental education and the participatory democracy, because only with the combination of efforts of state agencies and the whole society it will be possible to implement a genuine Constitutional State of the Environment capable to privilege the ethical values and effectively promote human dignity