Reducing exposure to psychosocial risks by implementing direct participation practices. An approach to the experience of workers in manual jobs

Looking at psychosocial risk prevention, this paper analyses changes in working conditions arising from the implementation of direct consultative group participation practices at three companies with a Taylorist work setup. Trade union representatives negotiated and supervised implementation of these practices to enrich work and avoid competitiveness and intensi-fication, in order to make employment healthy. This sub-study is based on focus groups and category content analysis of manual workers' testimony. The study aims to understand how implementing these practices could lead to better working conditions in these jobs, as indicated by some quantitative population-based studies in Spain and the EU. Consultative direct group participation does not represent a questioning of corporate prerogative or imply democracy in the workplace. However, applied under the right conditions, it would reduce the dramatic division between design and execution at work at an operational level; would enrich simple and standardised work; and would create collaborative dynamics and solidar-ity in individualised roles, thereby increasing influence and opportunities for acquiring and applying skills and knowledge and enabling support from colleagues and superiors without intensifying or extending work. In this way, group direct participation could reduce harm-ful and unequal exposure to psychosocial risks, leading to working conditions which would generate fewer mental and cardiovascular health problems. Nothing more, nothing less.