O assentado trabalhador canavieiro no Pontal do Paranapanema: processos de degradação da saúde.

The Pontal do Paranapanema is a conflictive territory composed of public lands but appropriated through falsified documentation that are the source of disputes between landowners, sugar-cane agribusiness groups and movements fighting for agrarian reform. The process of sugarcane expansion in the region led to the "enclosure" of the reform agrarian settlements by sugarcane plantations. Because of various difficulties, or even to obtain resources to improve their lands, settled workers have sought jobs in the sugar-cane mills. Currently, the sugarcane harvest is at an advanced stage of mechanisation, a fact that has repercussions on the different functions performed by the workers and on the risks in the work environment. To better understand these processes, we conducted interviews with people involved in mechanized work in the sugarcane sector and used interviews from the DataCETAS database. The results of the research show that the mechanization of cane cutting may have provided an improvement in working conditions, but the intense work and frenetic pace imposed on workers in order to increase labour productivity produce various risk agents in the work environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]