How do unions respond to labor informality? A study of the relations between formal and informal workers in the Northern Gran Buenos Aires

RODOLFO ELBERT

Los Angeles

Congreso; Labor in the Global South: A Search for Solutions; 2011

Institute for Research on Labor and Employment - University of California at Los Angeles

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 became increasingly relevant again, due to protests organized by workers employed in firms of the formal economy. Drawing on 14 months fieldwork in the city of Pacheco (Argentina), this study analyzes how non-core workers hired in a firm of the formal economy 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 depends on the emergence of a grassroots democratic strategy of solidarity that brings together core and non-core workers.