ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the context of return-to-work (RTW), the discourse of abuse is constituted and operates, and how it creates suffering for injured workers by adding social injury to existing physical injury. Although the analysis was spawned by and constructed upon findings from a study of a particular occupational health issue in a particular place, it attempts to make evident the generic aspects of the phenomenon. The chapter provides the possibility that the case of RTW is a proxy for a hidden epidemic of suffering that extends far beyond the field of occupational health. Although most workers injured at work recover and get back to their original jobs successfully, others take a long time to get back to work, or make repeated unsuccessful attempts, or are unhappy in the jobs they return to, or never return to the labor market at all.
