Life Beyond Work? Notes on long working hours, political emancipation, and workers’ health

Abstract

The main objective of this essay is to examine the themes of long working hours, political emancipation, and workers’ health, focusing on the Life Beyond Work (VAT) movement. It argues that the intensification of working hours is a public health issue, both historically and currently, with aggravating factors related to race and gender. These contemporary expressions can be seen in street protests and parliamentary debates and have intensified in Brazil with the VAT movement. Through bibliographic research, it was found that the relationship between the absence of free time, job precarization, illness, racism, and patriarchy is part of the same capitalist framework, which continuously transforms the forms of exploitation and oppression of the working class. Therefore, it is recognized that both working time and non-working time are key aspects of inequality and social labor precarization in Brazil. In conclusion, political resistance through the fight for free time ultimately constitutes a struggle against structural inequalities, where the lack of freedom is yet another aspect of the exhaustion of human and social relations under 21st-century capitalism.