O trabalho da/o assistente social como forma de trabalho improdutivo assalariado : uma análise a partir da expansão do Serviço Social na Rede Federal de Educação Profissional, Científico e Tecnológico no período 2003-2018

Abstract

The present doctoral thesis has as its object the work of the social worker as a form of unproductive salaried work based on an analysis of the expansion of Social Service in the Federal Network of Professional, Scientific and Technological Education in the period 2003-2018, developed in the Program of Postgraduate in Social Work at the Federal University of Alagoas. The investigation aimed to answer the following research problems: What is the particularity of the social worker's work that makes it being considered a form of work? How is the work of the social worker configured, considered as a form of unproductive salaried work? The general objective of this research is to apprehend the fundamentals of the relationship between Social Work and the work category, starting from its nature as salaried work, considering that its social function is the provision of services that constitute, essentially, as a form of unproductive work. The research methodology is composed of bibliographic and documentary studies. The theoretical references express a historical-critical understanding of social reality, based on Marxian theory. The empirical data refer to the particularities of the expansion of the Brazilian public service labor market within the scope of the Federal Network, in order to demonstrate how the form of salaried work of the social worker is configured. This study contains five sections: the introduction delimits the thesis object, the second section deals with wage labor in capitalism and its particularities in the production of goods and in the provision of services, the third exposes the work relations of social workers in the public service, the fourth analyzes Social Work as unproductive salaried work and the fifth presents the main arguments of the thesis about: the relationship of ontological dependence between the work that transforms nature and the work of Social Work; the direct relationship of identity between abstract work and Social Work; Social Work as unproductive salaried work, inserted in the circuit of value; a definition of who would constitute the working class; the social function of Social Service work; the analogy between Social Work and work, in the conception of work as a producer of only use values; the salaried condition of the social worker and his/her link to the working class;the heterogeneity of the working class and the different social functions between productive and unproductive workers; the distinction between the work that produces goods, considered as a natural and eternal necessity of humanity, and the work that provides services, constituted by purely social relations; the nature of unproductive salaried work of social workers and the role these workers play in the process of capital appreciation. The thesis argues that there is in Marx a definition of the working class that considers that productive or unproductive workers are inserted in the valorization process and sell their labor power in exchange for salary or income because they have nothing but the labor power to be used as a medium of exchange to obtain in the market the goods and services necessary for their survival.