"Work environment" and "Worker experience": theoretical tools for atypical and transformative collaboration between workers and health specialists

Abstract

The book "Workers' experience, class consciousness and psychology of work" was used by millions of workers who became the protagonists of the analysis of their work, without having to appeal to external specialized categories that would have fragmented their experience. At the same time, this system allowed specialists ( physicians, psychologists, safety experts, etc.) to discover the enormous scientific advantage of knowing the real work and, therefore, understanding the risks and reducing or anticipating the damage that work actually entails. As Ivar Oddone used to say: to change, you have to know. And here, at last, we knew, in a structured and comparable way, the harmfulness, making full use of two joint languages. The historical, idiographic language of workers who experience first-hand how spaces, light, noise, technology and organization are transformed into working practices, and the analytical language of the scientific community, capable of detecting and anticipating risks. As a result, a new and atypical collaboration has developed between workers and specialists, transforming thousands of workplaces.