Strategies to coping with suffering at subway's drivers work

The objective of this study is to verify which strategies subway motormen from Distrito Federal used to deal with suffering from automated work. The Psychodynamics of Work are used as the main theory to achieve the objective. Pleasure-suffering is defined as experiences of anguish, fear, danger, recognition and free speech. Mediation strategies are responses to the contradictions of the organization of the work, avoiding or transforming the situations leading to suffering. The research data was collected through: a) meetings with the directors of Subway's Workers Trade Union from DF, in order to delineate the research and explain how it would be used; b) a visit to a subway station in Sao Paulo; c) analysis of documents and texts referring to the company from DF; d) a group interview; e) four individual interviews, analyzed by ANS with results described in the present document. The results indicate rigid prescriptions in the organization of work, with low recognition of the worker's capacity to deal with the gap between the perceptions and reality of work; difficulty in socio-professional relations; experiences of indignity, uselessness, disqualification and indignation; construction of collective rules and individual defensive strategies used to deal with the described difficulties. The results recall research from the 1980's with little qualified workmanship, and contradict the modern transport with a model of management based on the automatism and with traces of Taylor's Scientific Organization of Work.