"IS IT WORTH ME GOING BACK TO THAT DOWN?": AN ANALYSIS ON THE WORKING CONDITIONS OF SOCIAL WORKERS ENTERED ON THE CREAS and CRAS in NATAL/RN
Labor. Social Policy Work. Social Assistance. Social Work.
The following project aims to analyze the working conditions of the caseworkers included in the Social Assistance Referral Centers (SARC) and the Specialized Referral Centers of Social Assistance (SRCSA), in the city of Natal/RN, in order to know and reflect on the limits and possibilities in the professional daily life, worried about their salaried profile and determinations of the capitalist system. For this, the research method used is based on historical-dialectical materialism, whose essence considers aspects of history and socioeconomic conjuncture which is part of the group to be studied, as well as the temporary and contradictory dynamics of reality and its multiple peculiarities. The methodology adopted is based on documentary and field research, through which we seek the theoretical-methodological contribution in the discussions on Work, Social Policies and Social Work, also performing eight (8) semi-structured interviews with caseworkers from the units mentioned. In view of the four administrative regions of Natal/RN, which are: south, west, east and north, and that there are eleven SARC and four SRCSA distributed among them, we looked for include at least one SARC and one SRCSA per region, thus contemplating the interview with a caseworker in each of the institutions. With the support of the information obtained and as a product of the content analysis, we understand, therefore, some tendencies that we can synthesize through the opposition of what has been supported by the Unified Social Assistance System (USAS) and what has in fact been materialized in the professional practice, in a paradox about which the Brazilian social assistance policy is established, since it is still easily observable the recurrent picture of work precarization in this area. This precariousness, which affects not only the material conditions of work, but also the quality of the services offered to users, as well as the health of workers, increasingly subjected to the processes of illness and abusive acts present in labor relations. In fact, we consider the importance of analyzes that are dedicated to the patterns of work in the contemporary scene, highlighting aspects that involve the professional practice, but also its repercussions in the other dimensions of workers' lives, looking for reduce through collective struggle the distance between the acquired rights and their realization.