The federal ergonomic standard in Brazil: its social historic process

Brazil has a Federal Ergonomic Standard enacted in 1990 that attracts the attention of practitioners in occupational health and safety fields because it is viewed symbolically as a political gain and because of its technical advances. The 1990 ergonomic standard modified a former one that was issued within a set of 28 occupational health and safety regulations established in 1978. This article focuses on the social and historical steps in a persistent workers' struggle for a healthier work environment in the late 1980s that resulted in this federal standard as a "command-and-control" regulation pioneering a wide tripartite process of policy-making in Brazil.