Mining and health in Portugal in the first half of the 20th century: mutual aid associations and industrial paternalism

Abstract

Mining work has been characterized by its physical violence, the risks of accidents involved, the injuries and the permanent invalidity due to the diseases acquired over the years under to the conditions of the different mining environments. The development of this activity has generated new environments and new human communities throughout their life cycle. The action of mining companies regarding labourer's health was broader than of the immediate medical assistance to injured workers. In Portugal, the evolution of the health care and social assistance provided to the mining populations in illness and to the workers due to its occupations, and in death during the 19th and 20th century is still poorly known. During this period, workers also constituted mutual aid associations. The republican state, in turn, created the Institute of Social Compulsory Insurance and Social Security after the Great War in 1919. The companies had to create compulsory insurances for fatal accidents and ways to deal with sickness, accidents at work, disability, old age and to establish pensions for survival. With the institutionalization of the corporate nationalist state in 1933, the Institute came under the authority of the new Sub-Secretariado das Corporações. This communication presents the results of an archival survey of these mining institutions, describing their action and outlines the historic path towards the nationalization of care in sickness and death from the end of the nineteenth century until the third quarter of the twentieth century.