Author: Johanna Sittel
Co-Authors ⁄ Presenters: Stefan Schmalz, Natalia Berti, Luciana Buffalo
Workers and Households Facing Precariousness and Informality in the Argentinean Car Industry
After the Argentinean national car industry was dismantled during the military dictatorship (1976-1983) in times of the neoliberal Menem government (1989-1999) the sector was integrated into transnational production networks. Nowadays, some transnational companies (Volkswagen, Renault, Fiat, etc.) are dominating this industry, with high external dependency producing for both the Argentinian and the global market (Brazil, Europe, etc.). This restructuring has also affected labour relations. In highly flexibilised transnational production networks, OEMs and the supplier industry are using different forms of labour, with precarious and informal labour playing a crucial role, increasingly along the supplier structure. In our empirical study, we analyse these labour relations in the Argentinean car sector: Whereas in the OEMs and some first-tier suppliers apart from precarious jobs characterised by fix-termed contracts or agency work etc. there is a small core of rather secure and well paid jobs, in the second and third tier-suppliers precariousness, informality, underpay and low safety standards are omnipresent. We examine how (global) economic crises and (neoliberal) economic and social policy are impacting workers´ life, thus, leading to recurrent waves of dismissals and informal practices. Drawing on biographical interviews, we observe a permanent instability which affects worker´s employment biography and household´s income by causing discontinuity. But the flexible and unstable structure is creating different subjective perceptions and survival strategies: While some workers subjectively feel precarious and suffer from stable insecurity andstructural precariousness, others have arranged themselves with the permanent crisis situation and developed (household)strategies such as additional informal self-employed work in order to cope with economic uncertainties.
During an adequate conference session, we would like to present and discuss the phenomena and mechanisms mentioned above on the basis of empirical examples. Our data relies on extensive empirical fieldwork in Córdoba, Rosario and Buenos Aires, Argentina, between 2010 and 2016. The Argentinean-German research team conducted 106 interviews with workers, managers, trade unionists and experts in the framework of the joint project FlexTrans (Flexibility in Transnational Value Chains – Precariousness, Work and Territory in Germany and Argentina) and a Ph.D. dissertation on informal work in the Argentinean car industry. The research was funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
Contact:
PD Dr. Stefan Schmalz, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena (Germany) – Department for Work, Industrial and Economic Sociology, e-mail: s.schmalz@uni-jena.de
Dr. Natalia Berti, self-employed/independent sociologist, Bogotá (Colombia), e-mail: bertinatalia@gmail.com (user id: 62833)
Dr. Luciana Buffalo, National University of Córdoba (Argentina) – Department of Geography, e-mail: lubuffalo@gmail.com (user id: 62918)
Johanna Sittel, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena (Germany) – Department for Work, Industrial and Economic Sociology, e-mail: johanna.sittel@uni-jena.de