Autor/es
Descripción
ver mas
Colaborador
Cortés, Rosalía
Materias
Idioma
spa
Extent
221 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
1990-2010
Abstract
This thesis aims to investigate the determiners, evolution and characteristics of outsourcing in Argentina through a case study, the case of Telecommunications. What is the novelty that these processes introduce? What is its relation to the determiners of inequality in labor markets? How does the change in the economic cycle influence its development and what are its persistent
effects beyond the changes in circumstances?
The first chapters of this thesis examine the debates on the characteristics of labor subcontracting and its relationship with the determiners of inequality in labor markets. The introduction of a third party in the relationship between workers and employers, characteristic of these processes, opens gray areas for regulation and allows the progress of fraudulent forms of employment that conceal the responsibility of the controlling company of the entire process throughout outsourcing. These intermediation processes allow companies to evade standards of labor protection and labor conquests embodied in collective labor agreements, in order to reduce costs and maximize the reduction of risks.
These forms that subcontracting assume, called precarious outsourcing or subcontracting based on costs, imply the emergence of inequalities in various aspects among workers along the levels, rings or chains of subcontracting: salary differences, employment stability, professional career, working hours and social recognition, among others.
Also, the outsourcing processes tend to weaken the organizational power of the workers who previously constituted a labor collective, fissuring previous identities and avoiding the formation of joint trade union strategies. In countries with significant trade union structures, as is the case of Argentina, outsourcing can be used as a strategy to weaken the power of union pressure.
The second part of the work reconstructs the genesis and development of labor outsourcing processes in the area of Telecommunications in Argentina, identifying changes and continuities in their functioning in the longer term.
Based on the questions and issues expressed above, this work compared the determiners of business strategies and union actions in two historical stages: the convertibility stage and the post-convertibility stage. The change in the economic cycle, the characteristics of the external labor market and its institutions have effects on the union negotiation capability and had an impact on the tendency of the process and its determiners.
The assumption is that in periods of crisis, drop in employment and flexibilization of regulations – such as the decade of convertibility - it is necessary to negotiate "defensively" so as not to affect employment and safeguard the workers' organizations. On the other hand, in more prosperous times -such as post-convertibility- it is possible to obtain advantages for the workers with the possibility of advancing or radicalizing the type of claims and demands. Additionally, variables such as the union negotiating power derived from the more or less strategic position of the union in the economy, its history and the singularity of its organizational strength, the level of representation and the type of predominant ideological matrix, result to be relevant to understand the differences in strategies within the union spectrum.
In this way, the thesis poses the following questions: What were the reforms in labor subcontracting in the telecommunications sector brought about by the change of context? What was the range of collective action in bringing together the divisions and in reducing inequalities between the company´s staff and subcontracted workers? How reversible is the precarity produced by these mechanisms in the new situation? The paper analyzes the extent to which the main union in the Telecommunications sector harmonized the defense of the interests of its own workers -which constitute its traditional representation base-, with the defense of the outsourced workers who were left out of the union´s representation, after the process of privatization that replaced regular workers by subcontracted workers. In other words, it is analyzed if the trade union action indicates a "closing of ranks" of the workers already affiliated, or if it is possible to notice that the advantages gained are transferred to those sectors that are more precarious and with fewer resources and possibilities of successfully carrying out union actions.
effects beyond the changes in circumstances?
The first chapters of this thesis examine the debates on the characteristics of labor subcontracting and its relationship with the determiners of inequality in labor markets. The introduction of a third party in the relationship between workers and employers, characteristic of these processes, opens gray areas for regulation and allows the progress of fraudulent forms of employment that conceal the responsibility of the controlling company of the entire process throughout outsourcing. These intermediation processes allow companies to evade standards of labor protection and labor conquests embodied in collective labor agreements, in order to reduce costs and maximize the reduction of risks.
These forms that subcontracting assume, called precarious outsourcing or subcontracting based on costs, imply the emergence of inequalities in various aspects among workers along the levels, rings or chains of subcontracting: salary differences, employment stability, professional career, working hours and social recognition, among others.
Also, the outsourcing processes tend to weaken the organizational power of the workers who previously constituted a labor collective, fissuring previous identities and avoiding the formation of joint trade union strategies. In countries with significant trade union structures, as is the case of Argentina, outsourcing can be used as a strategy to weaken the power of union pressure.
The second part of the work reconstructs the genesis and development of labor outsourcing processes in the area of Telecommunications in Argentina, identifying changes and continuities in their functioning in the longer term.
Based on the questions and issues expressed above, this work compared the determiners of business strategies and union actions in two historical stages: the convertibility stage and the post-convertibility stage. The change in the economic cycle, the characteristics of the external labor market and its institutions have effects on the union negotiation capability and had an impact on the tendency of the process and its determiners.
The assumption is that in periods of crisis, drop in employment and flexibilization of regulations – such as the decade of convertibility - it is necessary to negotiate "defensively" so as not to affect employment and safeguard the workers' organizations. On the other hand, in more prosperous times -such as post-convertibility- it is possible to obtain advantages for the workers with the possibility of advancing or radicalizing the type of claims and demands. Additionally, variables such as the union negotiating power derived from the more or less strategic position of the union in the economy, its history and the singularity of its organizational strength, the level of representation and the type of predominant ideological matrix, result to be relevant to understand the differences in strategies within the union spectrum.
In this way, the thesis poses the following questions: What were the reforms in labor subcontracting in the telecommunications sector brought about by the change of context? What was the range of collective action in bringing together the divisions and in reducing inequalities between the company´s staff and subcontracted workers? How reversible is the precarity produced by these mechanisms in the new situation? The paper analyzes the extent to which the main union in the Telecommunications sector harmonized the defense of the interests of its own workers -which constitute its traditional representation base-, with the defense of the outsourced workers who were left out of the union´s representation, after the process of privatization that replaced regular workers by subcontracted workers. In other words, it is analyzed if the trade union action indicates a "closing of ranks" of the workers already affiliated, or if it is possible to notice that the advantages gained are transferred to those sectors that are more precarious and with fewer resources and possibilities of successfully carrying out union actions.
Título obtenido
Doctora de la Universidad de Buenos Aires en Ciencias Sociales
Institución otorgante
Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Sociales