ILPC 2026

This paper presents partial results of a case study about control mechanisms that are deployed within a large dynamic company of the agro-industrial sector in Chile (2017-2018). In addition, it includes a description of the worker reactions of resistance, consent or commitment in the workplace of such company. The objective of this exploratory study is to provide empirical evidence to understand the organizational obstacles that exist for the development of critical trade unionism in Chile.
 
The analytical framework incorporates various critical approaches of the labor process discussion, taking up the notions of "control", "resistance" and "consent" problematized by the neo-marxist “Labor Process Theory” and the “Critical Management Studies”, with the aim of approaching the ways in which the exploitation relations in the company are concealed. On the other hand, it also incorporates the discussions on social justice developed by the “Pragmatic Sociology of critical capacities” and the studies of “Organizational Justice”. The objective is to approach the repertoires of normative evaluation that the workers perform with respect to the control mechanisms existing in the company.
 
It is important to consider that "worker reactions" involve practices, experiences and discourses. In order to determine if there are provisions of resistance, passive consent or commitment with respect to management directives, it is necessary to understand not only their concrete experiences in certain conflict situations, but also to analyze the discourses that connote such experiences. In this sense, this analytical framework proposes to study the evaluations that workers perform on distributive, procedural and interactional justice with respect to managerial control guidelines expressed in various instances, such as, for example, the selection of personnel, performance appraisal, conflict resolution and laid offs.
 
To carry out this case study, a total of twenty five interviews were conducted with various actors of the company: human resources managers, union leaders, and unionized and non-unionized workers. Additionally, it was organized a discussion group of workers belonging to the main union of the company. The data was analyzed through various techniques. First, a general qualitative content analysis was carried out in order to organize all the information. Then, a critical discourse analysis was made in the case of the interviews of managers and, finally, a structural analysis was made of the interviews and the discussion group provided by the workers.
 
For the moment, the results allow to identify simple (traditional), technical, bureaucratic and normative control mechanisms. In general, administrative employees consent to such control modalities. Only critical discourses and experiences of resistance of some plant operators involved in the main union of the company are identified.