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Observatorio Latinoamericano de Salud.into distinct labor conditions and health problems. Inthe case of the stable work sector, a weakened socialsecurity system, exposure to specific hazardous processes,ergonomic exigencies, increase in the workingrhythm, and work formally prescribed continuouslyout of phase with work actually completed are consequences.In the case of precarious work, the workersexperience lack of social protection, multi-exposure tohazardous processes, generalized exigencies, and theexcessive physical and psychological wear out, triggeredby mobility and intermittence. Finally, in the caseof the non-work sector, workers are submitted to difficultyin the access to the health system, diverse modesof social cultural disaffiliation, and generalized deteriorationof health. Moreover, it is possible to observethe intensification of infant work as a family previoussurvival strategy and, in a number of cases, tomovement towards illegality (Diagram 3).Work and Health: Some Points of Departureto Think AboutIn prior work we have stated that workers’health is decided among the conditions they meet inthe two moments of their vital cycle: ProductionConsumption and Wear out Reproduction.The determining factors of health are developedthrough a set of processes, which acquire a distinctprojection before health, according to the social conditioningfactor of each space and time, namely in linewith the social relations in which they develop. Theseconditions can be the construction of equity, maintenance,and perfection, or, in contrast, they can be elementsof inequity, privation and deterioration.In the same way, society creates processesthat acquire protective and beneficial (healthy) propertiesor destructive and deteriorating (unhealthy) properties.When a process grows to be beneficial, itturns into a propitious aid to defense and support. Intime, it moves in the direction of favoring human life,individual and/or collective, and is a protective or beneficialprocess; conversely, when that process growsto be an element which provokes privation or deteriorationof human life, individual and/or collective, it is adestructive process.A process can correspond to differentdimensions of the social reproduction, and canbecome protective or destructive according to thehistorical conditions in which the corresponding collectivitydevelops [Breilh, 2003]. Nonetheless, it is es-RESTRUCTURING OF THE WORK FORCESTABLE WORKweakened social securityexposure to specific hazardousprocessesergonomic over exigenciesprescribed work out of phasew/completed workPRECARIOUS WORKlack of social protectionmulti-exposure to hazardousprocessesgeneralized over exigenciesNON WORKdifficulties in the accessto the health systeminfant workpsychological deterioration255