Workplace Conflict: Mobilization and Solidarity in Argentina

✍ Scribed by Maurizio Atzeni

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 189
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

What drives workers to periodically contest their surrounding reality and how do they structure their protests? Maurizio Atzeni provides an in-depth analysis of the dynamics of workers' collective action using the cases of two car manufacturing plants located in Argentina. Criticizing the use of injustice as the basis of mobilization, it argues that workers' collective resistance should be seen as a function of the development of solidarity, which is alternatively created and destroyed by the contradictions between exploitation and cooperation continuously reproduced by the capitalist labor process.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Half Title......Page 2
Title......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Contents......Page 8
List of Tables and Figures......Page 10
List of Abbreviations......Page 11
Preface and Acknowledgements......Page 13
The historical and theoretical importance of workers’ struggles......Page 18
Forms of collective actions: spontaneous or organized?......Page 22
The function of trade unionism and collective action......Page 24
The approach of the research and the plan of the book......Page 28
Introduction......Page 32
Mobilization theory: a critique......Page 33
A return to the labour process......Page 37
Cooperation, solidarity and workers’ collective action......Page 44
Conclusions and implications for empirical analysis......Page 48
Introduction......Page 51
Military repression and workers’ mobilization......Page 54
The relationship between workers and trade unions: political/bureaucratic leadership versus grassroots movements......Page 64
From 1943 to 1955......Page 66
From 1955 to 1976......Page 67
From 1976 to 2000......Page 69
General considerations......Page 71
Workers and the opposition to bureaucracy......Page 74
The political economy and social conditions at the time of the conflict: workers’ responses to neo-liberalism......Page 77
Conclusions......Page 83
Introduction......Page 87
The chronology of conflict......Page 89
The unions......Page 91
The companies......Page 97
Searching for injustice......Page 102
Developing solidarity......Page 112
Conclusions......Page 120
Introduction......Page 123
The emergence of leaders......Page 124
The resilience of activism and worker radicalization......Page 130
Repression and counter-mobilization......Page 139
Conclusions: a cycle of conflict through workers’ and company perspectives......Page 143
Collective action as a process......Page 147
A radical approach to workers’ collective action......Page 150
Lessons from Argentina?......Page 153
Final considerations......Page 156
Notes on Methodology and the Fieldwork......Page 158
Appendix: Extract from an Interview with the FIAT Workers’ Elected Representative......Page 162
Notes......Page 169
Bibliography......Page 179
Index......Page 186