Over the last 10 years occupational health professionals became a part of a new larger and ‘de-medicalized’ system directed at the reduction and control of the (costs of) sickness and disability and the promotion of employability. In many companies the occupational physicians lost their function as case manager of absenteeism and disability and became second-line officers for the assessment of workability. The attempt of the Association of Occupational Health Physicians to preserve their primary position in the management of absenteeism by looking for closer cooperation with the family doctors turned out not to be very successfu