Working to Create Value Latin America 0526 Implementación ITIL en Región Cono Sur.
Development and the Working Class in Latin America
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Transcript of Development and the Working Class in Latin America
Development and the Working Class in Latin America
Overview
• What is Development?
• Bringing the Working Class (Back) In
• The Chilean Textile Industry 1930-1970
• The Cordones Industriales 1972
What is Development?
• Development necessitates a transformation of production, exchange, and in working practices
• It is those who directly face these changes in the workplaces that come to contest them
• Struggles at the point of production give meaning to political protests against policies and firms
• These place limits on particular policies and practices, but also provide opportunities
Bringing the Working Class (Back) In
• Research is on experiences of industrial development and workers in Latin America
• Trade unions form the conventional focus in analysing the role of labour
• Politicisation of struggles in work give meaning to the actions of these representative organisations
• Focus on the workplace and point of production struggles shifts focus on to the workers and the importance of their daily struggles experienced as active social subjects and contested as a class
“it is necessary to consider the wage-labourer insofar as she exists outside
capital…it is time to rise above the level of the political economy of capital, which constitutes only a
moment within an adequate totality”
(Lebowitz 1992: 49)
The Chilean Textile Industry: A Case Study
• Key economic sector and a key example of worker militancy throughout the period
• Highly fragmented and concentrated, low levels of productivity, advanced technology in large firms, and close relations with the state
• Textiles were the most dynamic sector in 1930s/1940s; stagnation and decline began during 1950s/1960s
• Unions were large in large firms, but a tension existed between ‘yellow’ and the Communists
Workers’ Newspapers: A Note on Methodology
• Problems include political bias and small numbers of these ‘specialist’ publications
• A vital part of the historical record on the popular history of workers in the context of ongoing processes of change
• The main role of the workers’ press is the linking of
specific grievances with the broader political demands of reforming/transforming society
• Workers’ press plays a role that is both representative and formative
Workers and Limits on Development
• From the 1930s textile workers experienced increasing levels of organisation and growth
• Industry growth under state and domestic capital saw tensions with paternalist discipline and failures to match wages to inflation
• Communist affiliations during the 1940s were key – persistent factory floor grievances were extended and given increasing political meaning
• 1950s and 1960s saw intensification of this process as stagnation and repression were interpreted through historical experiences
• State and capital sought to rationalise production and increase productivity
• Workers’ response saw increased strike activity and growing mobilisation
• The ‘anomaly’ of Chilean socialism
Cordones Industriales and Alternative Development
• Electoral victory socialist UP government in 1970 led to nationalisation of key economic sectors
• Nationalisation inspired the seizure of a wide range of factories in support of the government
• Mixed reaction by government, but movement gained increased momentum through 1972/3
• Rightist reaction led to the consolidation of worker occupations and formation of the cordones industriales and comandos comunales
Documentary by Chilean filmaker Patricio Guzmán
Part 3 ‘El Poder Popular’
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQPgBR8sO5A