The covid-19 pandemic and the pandemonium of telework: reflections based on the action of social assistants in the health field

Abstract

The pandemic of the new coronavirus (COVID-19) imposed a reorganization of labor in various public and private economic sectors. Because the virus is highly contagious, sanitary authorities indicate social isolation as the main measure for limiting its spread, leading to the insertion of strategies of telework,  including in the field of healthcare. In this context, this article reflects on the organization of telework among social assistants engaged in services of Brazil’s federal Primary Healthcare program during the Covid-19 pandemic in a capital in southern Brazil. The methodology involved a review of the literature and research of documents concerning telework produced by agencies that regulate the profession of social service and by an institution that employs these professionals. The results indicate a difficulty in establishing a conceptual definition about telework in the theoretical and normative realms and in the field of social service, and that the reality of telework for the profession in the Primary Healthcare program intensified during the pandemic. This raises profound questions about the precarity of working conditions and institutional access to information and communication technologies needed to serve the population.