Starting from a historical review of occupational rehabilitation, this essay reflects on the possibilities of structuring a public policy towards a real social reinclusin of the injured and diseased workers, and not as a bureaucratic mechanism to reduce social security benefit costs. Aimed at workers with disabilities caused by traumatic accidents, the occupational rehabilitation department of the National Social Security Institute (INSS) in Brazil, which existed until the 1990s, proved to be inadequate to reintegrate workers with health problems of epidemic profile, particularly Repetitive Strain Injuries/Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders (RSI/WRMD). At that time, as a consequence of a privatizing policy, these structures within INSS were dismantled and companies had to assume the reintroduction of workers. The development of an occupational rehabilitation policy requires the inclusion of occupational health as a topic in economic development policies, the deconstruction of the current thought and system geared primarily by pension costs, the real articulation of Health and Social Welfare in national and local projects, the inclusion of a distributive quality in the modernization plans, the monitoring of workers' trajectory, and institutional transparency.
occupationl rehabilitation; reintroduction in the labor market; public policy; disability; institutional transparency; social security privatization