Employment and sociodemographic characteristics: a study of increasing precarity in the health districts of Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Coelho Maria, Assunção Ada, Belisário, Belisário Soraya

Description

The fundamental importance of human resources for the development of health care systems is recognized the world over. Health districts, which constitute the middle level of the municipal health care system in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, deal with demands from all parts of the system. This research seeks to provide the essential features required in order to understand the phenomenon of increase in precarity of employment in these health districts. Methods The legal and human resource management documents used by the Municipal Health Secretariat of the City of Belo Horizonte were adopted as the corpus for this research. In order to analyse the changes in employment (2002–2006), the data were collected from ArteRH, a computerized database dealing specifically with data related to human resources, which began operating in 2001. The workers were classified into permanent and non-permanent groups, and their contractual rights were described. Employment dynamics and changes were examined, concentrating on the incorporation of workers and on their social and employment rights during the period under study. The comparative data for the two groups obtained were presented in frequency distribution tables according to type of employment, sex, age group, level of education and wages from 2002 to 2006. Results There was a clear difference between the permanent worker and non-permanent worker groups as regards existing guaranteed employment rights and social security. The increase in the number of non-permanent workers in the workforce, the growing proportion of older workers among the permanently employed and the real wage reductions during the period from 2002 to 2006 are indicative of the process of growing precarity of employment in the group studied. Conclusion It is a plausible supposition that the demand for health reforms, along with the legal limits imposed on financial expenditure, gave rise to the new types of contract and the present employment situation in the health districts in Belo Horizonte.

Informations

• Publié par: biomed
• Publié le: 01 janvier 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 10
• Langue: English

Extrait

Human Resources for Health

BioMedCentral

Open Access Research Employment and sociodemographic characteristics: a study of increasing precarity in the health districts of Belo Horizonte, Brazil 1 2,3 Maria Cristina Ramos de Vasconcellos Coelho , Ada Ávila Assunção* and 2 Soraya Almeida Belisário

1 2 Address: Municipal Health Secretariat of the City of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, Faculty of Medicine of the Federal University of the State of Minas 3 Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil and National Council for Scientific and Technology Development, Brasília, Brazil Email: Maria Cristina Ramos de Vasconcellos Coelho  [e-mail]; Ada Ávila Assunção*  [e-mail]; Soraya Almeida Belisário  [e-mail] * Corresponding author

Published: 13 July 2009 Received: 22 June 2008 Accepted: 13 July 2009 Human Resources for Health2009,7:56 doi:10.1186/14784491756 This article is available from: http://www.humanresourceshealth.com/content/7/1/56 © 2009 Coelho et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract Background:The fundamental importance of human resources for the development of health care systems is recognized the world over. Health districts, which constitute the middle level of the municipal health care system in the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, deal with demands from all parts of the system. This research seeks to provide the essential features required in order to understand the phenomenon of increase in precarity of employment in these health districts.

Methods:The legal and human resource management documents used by the Municipal Health Secretariat of the City of Belo Horizonte were adopted as the corpus for this research. In order to analyse the changes in employment (2002–2006), the data were collected from ArteRH, a computerized database dealing specifically with data related to human resources, which began operating in 2001. The workers were classified into permanent and nonpermanent groups, and their contractual rights were described. Employment dynamics and changes were examined, concentrating on the incorporation of workers and on their social and employment rights during the period under study. The comparative data for the two groups obtained were presented in frequency distribution tables according to type of employment, sex, age group, level of education and wages from 2002 to 2006.

Results:There was a clear difference between the permanent worker and nonpermanent worker groups as regards existing guaranteed employment rights and social security. The increase in the number of nonpermanent workers in the workforce, the growing proportion of older workers among the permanently employed and the real wage reductions during the period from 2002 to 2006 are indicative of the process of growing precarity of employment in the group studied.

Conclusion:It is a plausible supposition that the demand for health reforms, along with the legal limits imposed on financial expenditure, gave rise to the new types of contract and the present employment situation in the health districts in Belo Horizonte.

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