Workers’ Responses to Corporate Restructuring: Working Class Disorganization/Reorganization Processes in Argentina’s Steel Industry

Journal title SOCIOLOGIA DEL LAVORO
Author/s Julia Soul
Publishing Year 2017 Issue 2017/146 Language English
Pages 17 P. 122-138 File size 113 KB
DOI 10.3280/SL2017-146008
DOI is like a bar code for intellectual property: to have more infomation click here

Below, you can see the article first page

If you want to buy this article in PDF format, you can do it, following the instructions to buy download credits

Article preview

FrancoAngeli is member of Publishers International Linking Association, Inc (PILA), a not-for-profit association which run the CrossRef service enabling links to and from online scholarly content.

This article aims to analyze subcontracted workers’ organization processes in Argentina’s steel industry through an ethnographical approach. Steel industry has been largely affected by the globalization process: production has been reorganized on a new territorial basis, new productive chains have been set up and a new collective laborer has emerged. The article assumes that a global capitalist accumulation process underlies the making and remaking of labor forces and working classes, which assume particular features in diverse contexts. It analyzes those processes, pointing out to subcontracting processes in a two-fold perspective: as processes of class differentiation in working conditions, wage level, benefits and careers; and as an expression of processes of working class reorganization through collective action. The main conclusion is that in the Argentine steel industry, subcontracted workers’ demands have been at the core of these rankand-file organization processes, and union leaders have been able to organize and include them in a relatively traditional unionist perspective.

Keywords: Working class, steel industry, labor relations, unionism

  1. Alberti G. (2016). Mobilizing and bargaining at the edge of informality: the “3 cosas campaign” by outsourced migrant workers at the University of London. Working USA. The Journal of Labor & Society, 19: 81-103. DOI: 10.1177/0950017014528403
  2. Atzeni M., Ghigliani P. (2007). The resilience of traditional trade union practices in the revitalisation of the Argentine labour initiative. In: Phelan C., ed., Trade Union Revitalisation: Trends and Prospects in 34 Nations. Düsseldorf: Peter Lang.
  3. Basualdo V., Morales D., coordinators (2015). La Tercerización Laboral. Orígenes Impactos y Claves para su Análisis en América Latina. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI Editores.
  4. Battistini O. (2010). La Subcontratación en Argentina. Buenos Aires: FETIA - LASOS - CTA.
  5. Birelma A. (2017). Subcontracted Employment and Labor Movement’s Response in Turkey. In: Durrenberger, ed., Uncertain times: anthropological approaches to labor in a neoliberal world. Colorado: University of Colorado Press (in press).
  6. Burawoy M. (1985). The politics of production. Factory Regimes under Capitalism and Socialism. New York: Verso Books.
  7. Campling L., Miyamura S., Pattenden J., Selwyn B. (2016). Class dynamics of development: a methodological note. Third World Quarterly, 10: 1745-1767. DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2016.1200440
  8. Carbonella A., Kasmir S. (2014). Toward a Global Anthropology of Labor. In: Kasmir S., Carbonella A., eds., Blood and Fire: Toward a Global Anthropology of Labor. New York: Berghahn.
  9. Coriat B. (1991). Penser a l’enverse. Travail et organisation dans l’entreprise japanaise. Paris: Christian Burgois Ed.
  10. De la O.E. (2015). The Struggle for Labor Rights on Mexican Maquiladoras. In: Durrenberger, ed., Uncertain times: anthropological approaches to labor in a neoliberal world. Colorado: University of Colorado Press (in press).
  11. del Bono A. (2015). La subcontratación laboral. Contraofensiva Sindical y Negociación Colectiva. Reflexiones a partir de la Experiencia Reciente. In: Basualdo V., Morales D., eds., La Tercerización Laboral. Buenos Aires: Siglo XXI.
  12. DIEESE-CUT (2014). Tercerizaçao e desenvolvimento. Una conta que no fecha. Sao Paulo: DIEESE.
  13. Druck M.G. (1999). Terceirização: (des) fordizando a fabrica, um estudo de complexo petroquimico da Bahia. Sao Paulo: Ed. Boitempo.
  14. Ermida Uriarte O., Colotuzzo N. (2009). Descentralización, Tercerización y Subcontratación. Lima: ILO.
  15. Esponda M.A. (2012). Tercerización en la Industria. El caso de la formación de empresas de extrabajadores en la ex-Propulsora Siderúrgica (Siderar-Ensenada). PPGAS - UNAM. Misiones (unpublished).
  16. Fevre R. (1987). Subcontracting in Steel. Work, Employment and Society, 4: 509-527. DOI: 10.1177/095001708700100400
  17. Gall G., ed. (2013). New forms and expressions of conflict at work. London: Palgrave-Macmillan.
  18. Harvey D. (1990). The condition of posmodernity. An iquiry into the origins of cultural change. Cambridge: Blackwell Eds.
  19. Hughes F. (2013). Re-estructuración capitalista: precariedad laboral y resistencia. La protesta de los mineros del cobre en Chile. Horizontes Antropológicos, 39: 99-124. DOI: 10.1590/S0104-71832013000100005
  20. Marcus G. (1995). Ethnography in/of the world System. The emergence of multisited ethnography. Annual Review of Anthropology, 24: 95-117.
  21. Mollona M. (2009). Made in Sheffield. An Ethnography of Industrial Work and Politics. New York: Berghahn Books.
  22. Montero J., Arcos A. (2016). How do Migrant Workers Respond to Labor Abuses in “Loacl Sweatshops”? Antipode (in press).
  23. Moura Dias S. (2015). De Precarizados a Precarizados? Estudo do caso sobre as mudanças na condiçao de terceirizados da manutençao de SAN (2000-2010) in 38º Encontro Anual da Anpocs october 27th - 31st.
  24. Palermo H., Soul J. (2015). Dos caras de la misma moneda: cooperación y competencia Un análisis crítico en búsqueda de continuidades y discontinuidades en las estrategias empresarias. Trabajo y Sociedad n. 25. --www.scielo.org.ar/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1514-68712015000200014.
  25. Sariego Rodríguez J.L. (1999). La formación de la clase obrera en los enclaves mineros. In: Novelo V., ed., Historia y Cultura Obreras, Mexico: CIESAS.
  26. Soul J., Martinez O. (2011). La lucha del movimiento obrero contra las estrategias empresarias de división y precarización de los trabajadores (unpublished). --Avaliable at www.tel.org.ar/spip/descarga/precarizacionjsom.pdf.
  27. Soul J. (2012). Las relaciones capital trabajo en el sector siderúrgico. Expresiones de una nueva legalidad industrial? Revista Estudios del Trabajo, 43/44: 81-112.
  28. Soul J. (2014). SOMISEROS: configuración y devenir de un grupo obrero desde una perspectiva antropológica. Rosario Editorial Prohistoria.
  29. Soul J. (2017). Union Power and Transnational Companies in Argentine Steel Industry. In: Durrenberger, ed., Uncertain times: anthropological approaches to labor in a neoliberal world. Colorado: University of Colorado Press (in press).
  30. Spyridakis E. (2006). The Political Economy of Labor Relations in the Context of Greek Shipbuilding: An Ethnographic Account. History and Anthropology, 2: 153-170. DOI: 10.1080/0275720060066604
  31. Stirling J. (2010). Global unions: chasing the dream or building the reality? Capital and Class, 34:1: 107-114. DOI: 10.1177/0309816809353495
  32. Thompson E.P. (1978). The Poverty of Theory and other Essays. London: Merlin Press.
  33. Toulan O. (1997). Internationalization Reconsidered. The case of Siderar. MIT Sloan WP 3938 --https://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/2639/SWP-3938-37692845.pdf. Accessed: July 2010.
  34. Vargas P., Perelman L. (2013). Los propios y los de las compañías: efectos de la tercerización entre los trabajadores siderúrgicos. Papeles de Trabajo, 12: 84-101.

  • “The union is like a family father, the chief”. Working-class making and (re) making and union membership experiences in two generations of Argentinian metalworkers Julia Soul, in Dialectical Anthropology /2020 pp.137
    DOI: 10.1007/s10624-019-09576-z

Julia Soul, Workers’ Responses to Corporate Restructuring: Working Class Disorganization/Reorganization Processes in Argentina’s Steel Industry in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL LAVORO " 146/2017, pp 122-138, DOI: 10.3280/SL2017-146008