Autor/es
Descripción
ver mas
Colaborador
Fernández, Arturo
Lenguita, Paula Andrea
Materias
Temporal Coverage
1991-2008
Idioma
spa
Extent
345 p.
Derechos
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
Atribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 2.0 Genérica (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Formato
application/pdf
Identificador
Cobertura
ARG
BRA
1991-2008
Abstract
The thesis deals with the automotive industry of MERCOSUR as a subject.
We hold throughout the work that this sector is a particularly suggestive phenomenon for thinking about what contents the regional integration process holds, what implications and limitations it may have and, above all, what prospects for political action it represents.
The various dimensions into which this complex subject is broken down allowed us to study and analyze: the course followed by labor disputes in the sector, as it expressed the changes in power relations between social classes that characterized this period of reforms and transformations. The reforms produced in labor relations (which found a "test case" of the flexibilization process in the automotive industry of the region); and the changes occurred in the field of automobile production (its organization, management and implementation), where the productive integration process between Argentina and Brazil put itself in the spotlight.
By studying the course followed by labor disputes we seek to show how, through a change of trend, the general decline of labor positions was developed. Which, beyond the oscillations that occurred during the period studied, implied the loss of labor rights and the weakening of trade unions, as well as the relativestrengthening of the positions of the direct representatives of capital. This trend was shaping as it developed, the process of labor over exploitation that the automotive workers were subjected to in the region. This over exploitation was expressed both in the fall of real wages and in the increased intensity in the working process, reducing, in this way, the price of labor below its value and subsequently producing extraordinary surplus value.
We studied various actions, of progress for capital and of resistance from workers, by which the new conditions of production were specifically implemented. And they were fulfilling the labor costs reduction that resulted from industrial relations´ reform perpetrated from the nation States.
So as to distinguish whether these changes correspond to the workforce´s "global" process of changes experienced in the different countries or whether, instead, contained a region-specific content, we focus on other aspects related to the industrial relations´ process of change such as the behavior followed by unemployment and unregistered employment. The magnitude and the speed in which they grew made us believe that a process of formation of a relative surplus population was being reflected in them. That was confirmed when our analysis incorporated the evolution of industrial wages in Argentina and Brazil, which yielded consistent results with the existence of a relative surplus population in the form of stagnant.
We then inquire about the specific way in which the transformation of labor relations occurred in the automotive sector of MERCOSUR. We examine how were implemented, through collective bargaining, the tools which allowed: more flexible working conditions, the increase in the intensity of labor and the reduce of labor costs-through precarious employment contracts and outsourcing of production processes .
All the changes experienced by industrial relations in the automotive industry in MERCOSUR, developed the necessary conditions for sustaining the process of over exploitation that allows capital to extract extraordinary surplus value of the workers to whom it purchases workforce.
Afterwards, we seek to clarify if this extraordinary social wealth was becoming the basis for the terminal industry in the region to get integrated to the global automotive brand, or if, on the contrary, it was being appropriated by the automotive capital that produced in and for the MERCOSUR.
So as to do what we have just explained, we examined the process of productive restructuring that took place since the beginning of the '90s, which was complemented by the regional integration process, since the companies started to act considering the regional market as one single field of activity. So we also discuss how the integration in the MERCOSUR was established both on stage and as a necessary condition for the restructuring process. We did it by studying the national automotive regimes that Argentina and Brazil established in the early and later years of the common MERCOSUR automotive regime.
The result of the study on productive restructuring process showed that it was very limited regarding to the objective of modernizing the production structure and improving the international competitiveness of the sector. However, it reached more depth in organizational changes and management of production processes aspects. The innovations in this field were concentrated on increasing the intensity of the work process, completing, in this way, the transformation of industrial relations.
We conclude that the final destination of extraordinary surplus value was to feed the automotive capital valorization. They managed, in this way, to accumulate themselves in a similar rate of profit to the average or normal, despite the fact that they did not apply the normal or average conditions of production.
These results reached over the general transformations occurred on one of the most relevant activities for the process of formation of MERCOSUR and that has a prominent role in all the national process of capital accumulation allow us to bring new arguments to the general discussion on regional integration, its relation with the reproduction of the particular way in which capital accumulation in Argentina and Brazil occurs, and on the relationship that the integration has with the changes in the unit global capitalist mode of production.
Arguments that were made in the frame of the current which parts from the critique of political economy and that allows to study the regional integration processes, seeking to understand the relationship that they keep both, with the global movement of that unit and with the various national forms in which capitalist mode of production is divided.
We hold throughout the work that this sector is a particularly suggestive phenomenon for thinking about what contents the regional integration process holds, what implications and limitations it may have and, above all, what prospects for political action it represents.
The various dimensions into which this complex subject is broken down allowed us to study and analyze: the course followed by labor disputes in the sector, as it expressed the changes in power relations between social classes that characterized this period of reforms and transformations. The reforms produced in labor relations (which found a "test case" of the flexibilization process in the automotive industry of the region); and the changes occurred in the field of automobile production (its organization, management and implementation), where the productive integration process between Argentina and Brazil put itself in the spotlight.
By studying the course followed by labor disputes we seek to show how, through a change of trend, the general decline of labor positions was developed. Which, beyond the oscillations that occurred during the period studied, implied the loss of labor rights and the weakening of trade unions, as well as the relativestrengthening of the positions of the direct representatives of capital. This trend was shaping as it developed, the process of labor over exploitation that the automotive workers were subjected to in the region. This over exploitation was expressed both in the fall of real wages and in the increased intensity in the working process, reducing, in this way, the price of labor below its value and subsequently producing extraordinary surplus value.
We studied various actions, of progress for capital and of resistance from workers, by which the new conditions of production were specifically implemented. And they were fulfilling the labor costs reduction that resulted from industrial relations´ reform perpetrated from the nation States.
So as to distinguish whether these changes correspond to the workforce´s "global" process of changes experienced in the different countries or whether, instead, contained a region-specific content, we focus on other aspects related to the industrial relations´ process of change such as the behavior followed by unemployment and unregistered employment. The magnitude and the speed in which they grew made us believe that a process of formation of a relative surplus population was being reflected in them. That was confirmed when our analysis incorporated the evolution of industrial wages in Argentina and Brazil, which yielded consistent results with the existence of a relative surplus population in the form of stagnant.
We then inquire about the specific way in which the transformation of labor relations occurred in the automotive sector of MERCOSUR. We examine how were implemented, through collective bargaining, the tools which allowed: more flexible working conditions, the increase in the intensity of labor and the reduce of labor costs-through precarious employment contracts and outsourcing of production processes .
All the changes experienced by industrial relations in the automotive industry in MERCOSUR, developed the necessary conditions for sustaining the process of over exploitation that allows capital to extract extraordinary surplus value of the workers to whom it purchases workforce.
Afterwards, we seek to clarify if this extraordinary social wealth was becoming the basis for the terminal industry in the region to get integrated to the global automotive brand, or if, on the contrary, it was being appropriated by the automotive capital that produced in and for the MERCOSUR.
So as to do what we have just explained, we examined the process of productive restructuring that took place since the beginning of the '90s, which was complemented by the regional integration process, since the companies started to act considering the regional market as one single field of activity. So we also discuss how the integration in the MERCOSUR was established both on stage and as a necessary condition for the restructuring process. We did it by studying the national automotive regimes that Argentina and Brazil established in the early and later years of the common MERCOSUR automotive regime.
The result of the study on productive restructuring process showed that it was very limited regarding to the objective of modernizing the production structure and improving the international competitiveness of the sector. However, it reached more depth in organizational changes and management of production processes aspects. The innovations in this field were concentrated on increasing the intensity of the work process, completing, in this way, the transformation of industrial relations.
We conclude that the final destination of extraordinary surplus value was to feed the automotive capital valorization. They managed, in this way, to accumulate themselves in a similar rate of profit to the average or normal, despite the fact that they did not apply the normal or average conditions of production.
These results reached over the general transformations occurred on one of the most relevant activities for the process of formation of MERCOSUR and that has a prominent role in all the national process of capital accumulation allow us to bring new arguments to the general discussion on regional integration, its relation with the reproduction of the particular way in which capital accumulation in Argentina and Brazil occurs, and on the relationship that the integration has with the changes in the unit global capitalist mode of production.
Arguments that were made in the frame of the current which parts from the critique of political economy and that allows to study the regional integration processes, seeking to understand the relationship that they keep both, with the global movement of that unit and with the various national forms in which capitalist mode of production is divided.
Título obtenido
Doctor de la Universidad de Buenos Aires en Ciencias Sociales
Institución otorgante
Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales