Muscular-skeletal disorders of the upper limbs resulting from work involving repetition strain (RSI) are now the most frequent work-related diseases in early or late industrialized countries. The author maintains that in addition to being work-related diseases, RSIs are symbolic illnesses revealing the contradictions and social pathogenesis of the new cycle of development and crisis in capitalist production. Discussing the social and historical dimensions of this process, the author insists that the low efficacy of technical interventions by labor engineering, ergonomics, and clinical medicine in the prevention, early and adequate diagnosis, and treatment of such post-modern illnesses and the difficulty in rehabilitating and reincorporating such workers reflect precisely a broader determination of health and illness, since the appropriation, incorporation, and use of technological innovations and the new forms of work management are defined according to the exclusive interests of capital. Thus, a growing contingent of young workers (mainly females) from different labor categories are losing or under threat of losing their health and work capacity, two essential and closely linked public values. The solution to the SRI issue must be political and collective.
Repetition Strain Injury; Occupational Health; Women's Health