The politics of precarity in post-crisis Argentina: Precarious work, informality and union strategies in the Northern Gran Buenos Aires

ELBERT, RODOLFO

The Political Economy of Work in the Global South: Reflections on Labour Process Theory

Palgrave Macmillan

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2020; p. 48 - 68

In order to understand the dynamics of labor revitalization in post-crisis Argentina I analyzed the strategies of unions in three formal sector factories located in one city of the Northern Gran Buenos Aires between 2005 and 2011. In particular, I studied union strategies to confront precarious work within the formal sector firms as well as union?s relations with informal workers who lived in the neighborhood of Los Tilos . Evidence showed that labor revitalization in two of the three firms included new strategies of organized labor to establish relations of solidarity with precarious and informal workers. The emergence of grassroots democratic unions in the shop floor appeared as a necessary condition for the existence of inclusive union strategies both within and beyond the industrial workplace.