Abstract

One of the ideas in the name of which the connection between wage labor and health/illness is rationalized in the present asserts that there is a beneficial relationship between organizational efficiency and worker health. In contrast to its apparent originality, this articulation is not new at all. Between 1930 and 1955 in Argentina, a group of physicians upheld that if biotypology programs were implemented in the workplace, it would be possible to improve performance and reduce costs associated with labor accidents and occupational illness, while at the same time looking after and improving the lives of workers. This article analyzes the topics and strategies that formed the occupational biotypology program (such as vocational guidance, personnel selection and human motor surveillance), as well as the objections to the program formulated at the time, as a way to contribute to more contemporary critiques of the rationalities that in the present seek to placate the conflict between company productivity and worker health