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Occupational Safety and Health Beyond Occupational Risk: Employment Conditions, Inequalities, and Social Determinants of Health in Contemporary Work
Objective. To analyze the relationship between employment conditions, work organization, emerging occupational risks, and health inequalities from a public health perspective, while maintaining Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) as the disciplinary field of analysis. Method. An integrative literature review was conducted using thematic synthesis and critical-argumentative analysis of recent publications addressing working conditions, informality, psychosocial risks, digital work, work organization, and health. The analysis focused on identifying the mechanisms through which social and organizational conditions influence the distribution of occupational exposures and workers’ access to prevention and protection resources. Results. The reviewed evidence suggests that occupational risks are not distributed uniformly, but are closely associated with inequalities in access to protection resources, job stability, autonomy, and institutional prevention capacity. Psychosocial and digital risks become particularly relevant when specific forms of work organization transfer the consequences of decisions regarding workload, working time, performance assessment, surveillance, and permanent availability to workers. Informality, employment instability, and work intensification may further increase these exposures and contribute to wider health inequalities. Conclusion. OSH can contribute more effectively to public health when its unit of analysis expands from isolated workplace hazards to the social and organizational conditions that produce, distribute, and modify exposure. This perspective positions OSH not only as a risk-control system, but also as a strategic component of policies aimed at preventing occupational harm and reducing health inequalities.
