Brazilian Workers Research Articles

Physical Behaviours in Brazilian Office Workers Working from Home during the COVID-19 Pandemic, Compared to before the Pandemic: A Compositional Data Analysis.

Work from home has increased greatly during the COVID-19 pandemic, and concerns have been raised that this would change physical behaviours. In the present study, 11 Brazilian office workers (five women, six men; mean [SD] age 39.3 [9.6] years) wore two triaxial accelerometers fixed on the upper back and right thigh continuously for five days, including a weekend, before COVID-19 (September 2019), and again while working at home during COVID-19 (July 2020). We determined time used in five behaviours: sedentary, standing, light physical activity (LPA), moderate-to-vigorous activity (MVPA), and time-in-bed. Data on these behaviours were processed using Compositional Data Analysis, and behaviours observed pre-COVID19 and during-COVID19 were compared using repeated-measures MANOVA. On workdays during-COVID19, participants spent 667 min sedentary, 176 standing, 74 LPA, 51 MVPA and 472 time-in-bed; corresponding numbers pre-COVID were 689, 180, 81, 72 and 418 min. Tests confirmed that less time was spent in bed pre-COVID19 (log-ratio −0.12 [95% CI −0.19; −0.08]) and more time in MVPA (log-ratio 0.35, [95% CI 0.08; 0.70]). Behaviours during the weekend changed only marginally. While small, this study is the first to report objectively measured physical behaviours during workdays as well as weekends in the same subjects before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Amebic abscess and sexual contact.

A 57-year-old, previously healthy, Spanish man presented in February 2021 with a one-week history of right upper quadrant (RUQ) abdominal pain and fever. On examination, main findings were a blood pressure of 90/50 mmHg, a heart rate of 105 bpm, a temperature of 37.6°C, jaundice and abdominal pain (RUQ). He referred no significant past medical history and had never traveled outside Europe. On secondary direct questioning during hospitalization, he admitted to previous unprotected contact (including oral-anal sex) with a Brazilian female sex worker. Blood tests revealed an elevated white blood cell count (16 400 cells/ul with 14 700 neutrophils/ul), elevated C-Reactive protein (206 mg/l, normal range 0–5), procalcitonin levels of 18.23 ng/ml (normal range < 0.25 ng/ml), elevated AST, ALT, GGT, alkaline phosphatase and LDH levels (205, 227, 157, 263 and 838 U/l, respectively) with a total Bilirubin of 4.35 mg/dl (HIV, hepatitis B and C and syphilis serology...

Contentious Cogovernance and Prefiguration: A Framework for Analyzing Social Movement–State Relations in Public Education

This article offers a framework for analyzing social movement participation in public education through a focus on universities in Brazil. It builds on the literature on social movement–state relations, participatory governance, and community organizing in schools, drawing on the case of the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement and the National Program for Education in Areas of Agrarian Reform (PRONERA) to illustrate the need to recenter the idea of conflict as a central and ongoing process of social movement participation in public schools and universities. The article also introduces the concept of prefiguration and highlights how students can prefigure in the formal public school system the types of social and economic practices they hope to build in the future. Contentious cogovernance and prefiguration are tools not only for improving educational equity but also for increasing the strength and internal capacity of social movements, paralleling the role Paulo Freire envisioned for nonformal popular education within grassroots organizations.

South-South migration: a study on refugees working in small and medium Brazilian enterprises

Abstract This article aims to analyze the integration of refugees from the global South in the workplace of small and medium enterprises in the city of São Paulo, based on interpersonal relationships between Brazilian employers, refugee workers, and Brazilian workers. The literature focuses on South-South migration, refugees in Brazil, and their stereotypes in the workplace. The research was qualitative, using a case study. Semi-structured individual interviews and non-participant observation were conducted with 28 respondents: 7 refugee workers (2 Haitians, 2 Angolans, 1 Congolese, 1 Nigerian, and 1 Beninese); 7 Brazilian employers (4 owners and 3 managers in the services, commerce, and industry sectors); and 14 Brazilian co-workers. Results show managerial incentive to different forms of communication seeking to break the language barrier as well as explicit racism. The employers only began to worry about the integration of refugees when they had problems with Brazilians, such as disrespect for Halal food of Muslim refugees and the perception that refugees transmit diseases. Brazilian workers and employers stereotype refugees from African countries (including Haiti) as a homogeneous group of “black Africans,” reflecting a total lack of knowledge about their geographical and cultural diversity. This lack of knowledge strongly influences interpersonal relationships and makes it difficult for refugees to integrate into the workplace. This article contributes to the reflection on South-South migration, since the literature usually explores South-North and North-North migration.

Burnout among primary health care workers in Brazil: results of a multilevel analysis.

Burnout among health care workers may hamper the quality of care and effectiveness of health systems. Hence, we examined the prevalence of burnout in primary care teams, including community health workers; and investigated associations between individuals' characteristics, team and primary care center factors, and burnout. We carried out a cross-sectional study among primary care teams in the city of São Paulo, Brazil (n = 2940). We randomly selected 66 primary care centers. The Maslach burnout inventory was used to investigate burnout. We used multilevel modelling to examine the associations between individuals' characteristics, team and primary care center variables with burnout. We addressed 351 primary care teams, with 11.4% of participants presenting severe burnout. The variance in burnout among primary care workers was partially explained by individuals' characteristics, and by team and primary care center factors. Severe burnout was associated with the following: (1) individuals' characteristics: being black, being younger, a higher length of employment in primary care, and presenting a lack of feedback from supervisors; (2) team factors: working in deprived areas and not receiving the support of a multidisciplinary team; and (3) primary care center factors: inadequate infrastructure (less than one office available per team), and having a bad/very bad relationship with the community council. To reduce burnout among primary care teams, stakeholders should: (1) train managers/supervisors on leadership styles that prioritize performance feedback, support, and communication skills; (2) allocate catchment areas to teams according to each community's vulnerability; (3) provide a multidisciplinary team to support primary care workers; and (4) offer suitable facilities and infra-structure.

Is there a trade-off between efficiency and cooperativism? Evidence from Brazilian worker cooperatives

Worker cooperatives seek both compliance with cooperative principles or “cooperativism” and economic efficiency. To fill the evidence gap on whether the two goals collide or coincide, we drawn on microdata including over 7,000 Brazilian cooperatives. Stochastic frontier models were used to estimate the relative level of efficiency and to relate it with cooperativism level measured as participatory decision-making and integration to cooperatives’ networks. Results showed that the former dimension of cooperativism presented a positive effect that dominated the negative effect of network integration. So that efficiency (weakly) increased with an index aggregating the two cooperativism’s dimensions. This was coherent with case studies attesting Brazilian cooperatives capacity to overcome threats to efficiency with organizational changes including the introduction of probation, dismissing and hiring of non-member workers, thus preserving core principles. Results were also consistent with theoretical studies which both argue that shirking and high transaction costs are the main threats to efficiency facing cooperatives and also that these are mitigatable by common principles fostering consensus and a participatory environment minimizing conflicts and disclosing private information. Government support to creation of cooperatives is recommendable as a poverty alleviation policy whether homogeneous social groups more prone to mutual trust are prioritized.

Struggles of Delivery Workers in Brazil: Working Conditions and Collective Organization during the Pandemic

Abstract This article aims to analyze food delivery workers’ working conditions and ongoing collective organization during the pandemic in Brazil. The discussion involves historical analysis, based on empirical research carried out with delivery couriers over the past eight years in Brazil and on analysis of the delivery workers’ strikes in July of 2020. Our view is that their work is subsumed to a new type of work organization, management and control, defined here as uberization. Recent investigation shows that their working conditions are worsening during the Covid-19 pandemic in terms of reduced working hour value alongside unchangingly long workdays. These conditions have been met by platform workers’ collective organizations demanding better working conditions. Our findings indicate an ongoing political struggle involving different institutions, and the central role of communication between workers through digital platforms as the first form of organization. From the class composition framework, we understand that there is a germ for political composition involving Brazilian riders, in line with the circulation of workers’ struggles around the world, especially in Latin America.

Health of illegal workers from cattle slaughterhouses in Northeast Brazil.

Slaughterhouse workers are at high risk of accidents and pathogen contamination. Despite good technology and large production, the slaughter industry still has clandestine settlements in several cities of Brazil's countryside. This illegal activity represents severe risks to the health of consumers and slaughterhouse workers. Only a few studies show the health of clandestine slaughterhouse workers, considered as a hidden population because of their illegal activity. Thirty workers (6 women and 24 men) answered a questionnaire about the work and health conditions of clandestine slaughtering from a small city in Northeast Brazil. The authors also did local observations of the slaughtering, which broadened the view of this activity. Most slaughterhouse clandestine workers are young, have little educational background, and work without legal rights. Clandestine workers - men and women - have severe health problems related to the activity of cattle slaughtering, which include physical injuries, metabolic diseases and psychological disorders. Women appear to be more affected by these health problems. Working conditions are adverse, dangerous and offer risks of contamination, injuries and chronic diseases. The workers' poorness, low income and low education level can explain the vulnerability to the diseases observed in illegal slaughtering. This is the first study to analyze the health of illegal slaughterhouse workers in Brazil's countryside.

Working through the fog of a pandemic: Street-level policy entrepreneurship in times of crises.

Imposing significant challenges for both street‐level implementation and policy (re)design, crises alter the environment for street‐level policy entrepreneurship (SLPE), wherein street‐level bureaucrats engage in policy formulation processes to secure future policy outcomes. Nevertheless, like street‐level implementation in general, SLPE is studied during ordinary times but rarely during crises. Focusing on community‐health workers in Brazil during the Covid‐19 crisis uncovered a defensive motivation for SLPE, which aimed to legitimize community healthcare as an integral part of pandemic treatment, reforming the government's hitherto neglectful approach to community health services. Moreover, the continuing crisis created an unusually prolonged window of opportunity for securing community healthcare provision. By utilizing collective efforts and drawing on powerful politicians' mobilization, SLPE during crisis shares similarities with, yet differs from, SLPE during ordinary times, while further closing the interstices between local, professional, and political perspectives in the formulation of policy decisions.

Migrant workers in the Brazilian formal labour market

In the last decade, Brazil has been experiencing a new cycle of international migration. The migrant population living in Brazil grew by 20% approximately, according to International Organization for Migration. The objective of this paper is to analyse the insertion of foreign workers in the Brazilian formal labour market, investigating returns to schooling of migrants compared with natives and the positive or negative discrimination that can exist in the formal job market. To perform the research of this paper, the Annual Report on Social Information database is used, analysing the period from 2010 to 2017. The methodology used to calculate the rate of return on education of native and foreign workers is based on Mincer's equation. Mincer’s equation is estimated econometrically, in which the dependent variable, the log of wage or labour income, is regressed in years of schooling of the person and other controls. The return to education demonstrates a positive discrimination of international formal workers in Brazil and a convergence in return rates between native and immigrants: international return rate is approximately 37% in 2010 and approximately 20% in 2017, while native return rate remains constant during the period, approximately 15%.

Adaptation and psychometric validation of a questionnaire about organizational safety culture and climate for the Brazilian reality

Surveys are the most widely used instruments to assess safety opinions, attitudes and behaviours of workers, as a reflection of a dimensional manifestation of an organization’s safety culture. The fact that there are few instruments of this nature adapted to the Brazilian reality motivated the attempt to validate tools used in Portugal in this field. The questionnaire to workers about occupational safety culture and climate (QTCCS) will be explored in this article. The main objective is to present the data from the cultural adaptation and psychometric validation process of this instrument, and it can be confirmed that this intention was properly achieved. Through a study carried out with a sample of 200 workers from a company in the northeast of Brazil, it was statistically confirmed that it is possible to maintain the factorial structure of the original instrument when applied to Brazilian workers of different characteristics.

Openness Toward Organizational Change Scale (OTOCS): Validity evidence from Brazil and Portugal.

Openness toward organizational change is central to employees' responses to organizations' strategic actions. This study aims to assess the validity evidence of the Openness Toward Organizational Change Scale (OTOCS) by examining the internal structure of the measure (e.g., dimensionality, reliability, measurement invariance) and its relations with other variables such as quality of work life, burnout, job satisfaction, and work engagement. A cross-sectional study was conducted using total sample of 1,175 workers, with 565 workers from Portugal and 610 from Brazil. The data provided satisfactory validity evidence based on the internal structure: the expected dimensionality was confirmed, acceptable levels of reliability were found, and measurement invariance was achieved among countries and sex. The measure also demonstrated satisfactory validity evidence based on the relations to other variables, being negatively associated with burnout and positively associated with work engagement, job satisfaction and quality of work. The OTOCS proved to be a relatively short self-report measure with satisfactory validity evidence to be used among Brazilian and Portuguese workers.

Impact of anxiety, stress, and burnout symptoms in Brazilian health professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic

Aim of the studyOur study aimed to investigate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Brazilian healthcare workers who work directly with patients diagnosed with COVID-19.Subject or material and methods634 individuals divided into three groups. Non-health workers (n = 372) with a mean age of 36.6 years (SD = 9.14) and 85.5% female; Health Workers (n = 94) with a mean age of 37 years (SD = 7.97) and 90% female; COVID-19 Health Workers (n = 168) with a mean age of 36.23 years (SD = 7.97) and 90% female. We administer the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Checklist - Civilian Version, the Generalized Anxiety Disorder 7, and Burnout Inventory. We conduct data collection via Google Forms.ResultsHealth workers working in the front line in the fight against COVID-19 showed higher levels of anxiety and psychological distress when compared to health professionals who do not deal directly with COVID-19 and professionals who are not in the area of health.DiscussionOur findings suggest that health professionals who work on the front lines in the fight against COVID-19 tend to have higher levels of concern and anguish about the future, a high level of stress, mental tiredness, irritation, and fatigue.ConclusionsThe findings indicate that these public demands psychological and psychiatric support to face the pandemic's challenges

Putting a Price on Tenure

Government employees in Brazil are granted tenure after three years of taking their entrance exams. Firing a tenured government employee is all but impossible, so tenure is a big perquisite. But exactly how big is it? No one has ever attempted to estimate the monetary equivalent of tenure for Brazilian government workers. We do that in this paper. We use a modified version of the Sharpe ratio to estimate what the risk-adjusted salaries of government workers should be. The difference between actual salary and risk-adjusted salary gives us an estimate of how much tenure is worth for each employee. We find that the median value of tenure is R$ 4517 for federal government employees, R$ 2560 for state government employees, and R$ 672 for municipal government employees.

Practicing Intersectionality: Brazilian Domestic Workers’ Strategies of Building Alliances and Mobilizing Identity

Domestic workers, as essentially black women in highly precarious conditions, lacking social protection, and often not recognized as proper workers, are considered particularly hard, or even impossible, to organize compared to the “standard” male industrial worker. Yet they have been mobilizing for decades in several countries, including Brazil, where they won new labor rights in 2015. Through an ethnographic study of domestic workers’ unions in Brazil, I argue that what has made their mobilization possible is precisely the intersectional dimension of their oppression. While gender, race, and class have produced multiple forms of exclusion, these vectors of oppression have also enabled domestic workers to build alliances with women’s, black, and workers’ movements, thus giving domestic workers more visibility and more resources to organize their members. I have identified three forms of alliance building, each determined by domestic workers’ unions’ particular framing of gender, race, and class issues: rigid autonomy, critical alliance, and encompassing unionism.

Risk factors for sick leave in Brazilian oil industry workers.

Studies point to a complex and multifactorial aetiology for sickness absence, but there is still insufficient evidence on how occupational and non-occupational risk factors contribute to this phenomenon. This study aimed to identify occupational and non-occupational factors related to sickness absence in oil industry workers, as well as their population attributable fractions (PAF). A retrospective cohort study of 2028 oil industry workers was conducted in the state of Bahia, Brazil, between January 1, 2012 and December 31, 2016. Study data were obtained from workers´ medical register. The dependent variable was the first event of sick leave for five or more days, and the independent variables were gender, age, years of work, type of work activity, level of education, work schedule, awkward working postures, body mass index, smoking, physical activity and alcohol consumption. Cox regression analysis identified risk factors to the outcome and PAF were calculated. Being female (HR 1.79), being older (HR 1.44), non-graduated ones (HR 1.44), being of operational staff (HR 1.18), overweight (HR 1.13), obesity (HR 1.39), smoking (HR 1.61) and former smoking (HR 1.30) were risk factors for sickness absence in this cohort. Of all sickness absence in the study population, 6% could be attributed to overweight, 10% to obesity, and 8% to smoking. To prevent sick leave, we recommend programs focused on combating smoking and encouraging healthy habits, aiming at weight control and the prevention of chronic diseases. Population attributable fractions point that a universal approach, aimed at the total population will be more cost-effective than health promotion programmes restricted for high-risk populations.

Planning and Reasons for Retirement: Focus Groups with Brazilian Workers

The publication of studies and the discussion between different sectors of the Brazilian society about the importance of the retirement planning is growing, but it is still quite timid. The objective of this qualitative research was to describe the perceptions of a group of workers living in Brasilia about how they are preparing for retirement, their intentions, and reasons for retiring. Divided into six focus groups, 33 Brazilian workers (23 women) from 47 to 69 years old participated in this study. Qualitative data was analyzed using the Iramuteq software. A closed questionnaire with sociodemographic issues, intentions for retirement, and financial planning was also applied. Content analysis gave rise to five classes. The results corroborate the scientific literature: planning for retirement involves several dimensions, not just the financial one; retirement preparation programs (RPPs) must be offered by organizations and can have different formats; HR practices in addition to the RPPs should be implemented to manage age-diverse teams; bridge employment has been the most chosen option as an intention for retirement in the current scenario; family relations quality and having more time to take care of yourself represent important reasons in the retirement decision process.

Female healthcare workers and the Covid-19 pandemic in Brazil: a sociological analysis of healthcare work.

The article aims to discuss the care provided by female healthcare workers in Brazil during the Covid-19 pandemic, based on a sociological analysis by authors who discuss such care as devalued and poorly paid work performed to a large extent by low-income women. The work involves social constructions of emotions and has used the body as a work instrument in care for others. In addition, the increasingly precarious nature of health work in Brazilian society, aggravated in recent decades, with an increase in temporary contracts, loss of labor rights, overload of tasks, and adverse work conditions, among others, adds to the increase in medical and hospital care in the Covid-19 pandemic. In this context, female healthcare workers experience lack of personal protective equipment, fear of coronavirus infection, concerns with their children and other family members, and illness and death of coworkers and themselves. The article highlights the need for government attention and management of healthcare work and professional societies, analyzing the work conditions female healthcare workers are experiencing in confronting the pandemic.

Living on the Edge: Brazilian Creative Workers in the Gig Economy During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Living on the Edge: Brazilian Creative Workers in the Gig Economy During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Becoming ambivalent subjects of labour rights: subaltern mobilisations, the law and the state

ABSTRACT This article engages with feminist debates on the possibilities and limitations of a politics of rights through a study of domestic workers’ mobilisations in Brazil. Although rights are always ambivalent or limited, they are nonetheless necessary to subaltern groups and represent one of their main repertoires of contention. More specifically, I propose to look empirically at what rights do once they are won, and how a legislative victory affects the movement that was demanding those rights. I show that the law 150/2015 that extends basic labour rights to domestic workers in Brazil has had ambivalent effects: while it maintains a differentiated legal status for domestic workers and was adopted amidst a hostile political context that prevents its good implementation, the law has enabled, nonetheless, the strengthening of a rights-based idea of citizenship and opened new mobilisational opportunities for domestic workers. I argue that rights contribute to the formation of active political subjects, and can be analysed as a powerful resource for subaltern mobilisations.