How Do Unions Respond to Nonstandard Work Arrangements? Relations between Core and Non-Core Workers in a Food Processing Factory (Argentina, 2005-2008)
Rodolfo Elbert
DOI: 10.2190/WR.15.3-4.j
Abstract
The fragmentation of the working class in Latin America over the past three decades has coincided with the decline of labor organizing among workers employed in the formal economy. Research has suggested that the economic segmentation of the working class explains this declining relevance of unions. However, recent Argentine history (2003-2010) suggests that the labor movement has become increasingly relevant again, due to protests organized by workers employed in firms of the formal economy. Drawing on 14 months of fieldwork in the city of Pacheco (Argentina), the present study analyzes how non-core workers hired by a formal economy firm successfully gained core labor contracts in the framework of this labor revitalization. The results suggest that collective action in a context of labor fragmentation is possible, but that it depends on the emergence of a grassroots democratic strategy of solidarity that brings together core and non-core workers.
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