Worker's health: a (absent) regard on the public sector worker

This article presents a discussion on the discourses and practices concerning the health care workers' field in relation to the public sector's workers. Initially we define the social construction of the worker's health field in Brazil as a public policy by identifying how the National Workers' Health Conferences treated the subject of the civil servants' health. Following, we analyzed interviews conducted with the staff responsible for the workers' health department of a Brazilian state. We concluded that the programs directed to the health care of civil servants do not integrate a public policy, and change at the will of each presidential administration; the central principles of the worker's health movement have a fragile penetration in the occupational medicine hegemonic field. The civil servant, as a worker, has not received the deserved attention, but only control, and this fact is coherent with a long history of discredit of the public sector.