Trade Unions and the remaking of Working Class(es). Questions and Answers from an Anthropological Approach

JULIA SOUL

San Jose California

Congreso; AAA Anual Meeting; 2018

American Anthropology Association

The paper aims to understand the role played by unions in the making and remaking of working class(es). Recent research has considered Unions mainly from an institutional perspective - stressing the role they play in the industrial relation systems and the changing strategies to address political action in them. A common assumption underlies 80?s and 90?s studies about unions: their critical situation as a consequence of working class ?extinction?, burst into pieces of precarious workers, unemployed and other heterogeneous fragments. However, unions have played a key role in the unfolding of neoliberal hegemony in countries like Argentina, Brazil or Mexico. Furthermore, unions were key social actors in the consolidation of the so called ?pos neoliberal governments? in countries like Argentina, Brazil or Uruguay. During that period, unions and labor conflicts recovered social visibility as much as membership rates and workers involvement in unions increased. Recent labor conflicts were developed by ?classic? waged workers as much as by subcontracted, migrant, women or informal workers, who have carried out organization processes putting ahead their demands for wages, contracts and working conditions. These processes unfold in the context of a broader ? I shall say global - process of reorganization of the working classes around the world. In sum, although Latin American industrial relations systems haven?t drastically changed since their consolidation (Cardoso, Gindin: 2010), the workers and the organizations they include have done so.The anthropological question to this process is about the relationship between unions? institutional practices and policies and the contemporary processes of working class (re)making. I will argue, through an historically informed ethnography of Argentinian Steel Workers that unions policies are the outcome of a multiplicity of social practices unfolded at different realms, and that they can be considered as a dimension of working class ?social being?. In this sense, unions can be considered as the vehicle of incorporation of workers collectives to hegemony processes (Williams: 1980) at the same time that as the symbol and expression of the persistence of labor-capital contradiction as the cornerstone of different productive regimes (Anderson: 1973). The anthropological approach to labor unions (Durrenberger and Reihart: 2010) may produce further insights about the concrete developments of that contradiction at the level of the workers? social experience.First of all, I will present the ethnographic information through a brief description of the steelworkers collective and their ?unionist? expressions. Secondly, I will discuss the duality institutions/practices as a useful analytical device for a broader explanation of union?s dynamic. Third, I will propose some theoretical insights to discuss the role that unions (practices and institutions) play in current working class (re) making.