Material Working Conditions as Assessed by Workers

Material working conditions, understood as a set of external factors determining health and security of workers, constitute an important element of more widely understood working conditions. They are connected with the qualify of the environment of the worker and with his class consciousness. Already Marx and Engels drew attention to significance of physical working conditions for the situation of the working class. These problems are equally important today which is confirmed by the number of accidents at work, number of people exposed to professional diseases, size of absenteeism, percentage of workers exposed to physical and chemical hazards. Data form this sphere quoted by the author can hardly illustrate the scope of the phenomenon and they do not describe it fully. Numerous researches conducted in Poland and abroad testify that in the hierarchy of values connected with work the physical working conditions hold a distant position with a negative assessment of these conditions exerting but an insignificant influence on dissatisfaction with work and the place of work. The author warns here that one should not draw a conclusion that physical working conditions ceased to represent an important criterion of assessment of work and attitude to work as their role is undergoing changes with time. In a „normal” period they are generally treated as unchangeable, and independent of an individual, aspects of work to which one should get adjusted. On the other hand, in periods of tensions and eventual conflicts they are often considered to be unbearable and as such they become an object of workers’ revindication. Finally the author puts forward a thesis that in conditions of the socialist society improvement of the physical work environment should be prompted not only by economic advantages, which may result from it, but primarily bу a humane consideration represented by the benefit of a working man.Zadanie pt. „Digitalizacja i udostępnienie w Cyfrowym Repozytorium Uniwersytetu Łódzkiego kolekcji czasopism naukowych wydawanych przez Uniwersytet Łódzki” nr 885/P-DUN/2014 dofinansowane zostało ze środków MNiSW w ramach działalności upowszechniającej naukę