Labor conditions in current Brazil: formalization, job insecurity, outsourcing and regulation

• Grant number: 12/20408-1
• Support Opportunities: Research Projects - Thematic Grants
• Duration: April 01, 2013 - March 31, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Sociology - Other specific Sociologies
• Principal Investigator: Marcia de Paula Leite
• Grantee: Marcia de Paula Leite
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Educação (FE). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Pesquisadores principais: Angela Maria Carneiro Araújo ; Carlos Salas Paéz ; Jacob Carlos Lima ; Jose Dari Krein
• Associated researchers: Alexandre Gori Maia ; Alisson Droppa ; Angelo Martins Junior ; Ariella Silva Araujo ; Bruno José Rodrigues Durães ; Carlos Salas Paéz ; Daniela Ribeiro de Oliveira ; Hugo Miguel Oliveira Rodrigues Dias ; Joannes Paulus Silva Forte ; Magda Barros Biavaschi ; Marcelo Prado Ferrari Manzano ; Maria Rosa Lombardi ; Marilane Oliveira Teixeira ; Vitor Araújo Filgueiras
• Associated grant(s): 18/04222-1 - XXXVI International Congress of the Latin American Studies Association, AR.EXT; 14/50756-7 - Labor reconfigurations and multiple faces of job isecurity: a comparative analisys between Argentina and Brazil, AP.R SPRINT
• Associated scholarship(s): 15/12742-7 - From the informal street vendor to the micro entrepreneur: the disenchantment of the wage condition?, BP.DR; 14/24615-7 - Union Network International: the World Committee of Workers of Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz, BP.DR; 14/19423-1 - The labour in the PT's government: a balance of union action about the labor regulation in the years 2003-2014, BP.DR; + associated scholarships 14/09925-0 - The sociopolitical process of regulating the Solidary Economy in Brazil, BP.DR; 14/15354-5 - Public policies and feminisms: strategies for the construction of women’s autonomy, BP.DR; 14/04548-3 - Indicators of labor regulation in Brazil, BP.PD; 14/10577-6 - New forms of work organization and gender relations in the electro-electronic sector, BP.IC; 13/24178-3 - The "Y Generation" and the Information Technology Work: the generational flexibility discourse on the flexible work, BP.PD - associated scholarships

Abstract

This project seeks to study labor in Brazil in its current manifestation, looking to elucidate the quality of its current transformations, based on the analysis of several aspects, such as gender inequality; informality; outsourcing trends; trade unionism and labor regulation; new forms of labor organization and utilization in high-tech productive chains; self-employment and public policies on the labor market. These issues will be analyzed from an interdisciplinary perspective, derived from the understanding that the complexities of the reality of labor cannot be explained through a single field of knowledge. The changes that have been affecting labor in our current times are inscribed in a set of broad transformations pertaining capitalism, among which it is noteworthy to highlight the predominance of financial capital, the increase in competition between companies, the de-verticalization of the organizational structures and the deregulation of labor. The effects of these transformations on labor are many. They have been generating new forms of enterprise organization - widely based on outsourcing - which fragment labor. In the midst of trends of labor deregulation, trade unions are facing new difficulties, such as the loss of affiliates and the capacity to intervene politically. Notwithstanding, these transformations have been reproducing old labor inequalities, as made evident by new modes of segregating female labor. These tendencies have affected several national contexts in different manners, from which a set of issues gain relevance in the understanding of the Brazilian reality: the impact of these general characteristics that labor has been adopting at a global scale under Brazilian reality; the implications of these relaxing tendencies on the utilization of traditionally flexible labor (as has been the national case); the impact of these changes on the traditional gender inequality in the Brazilian labor market and what to say about the high rates of informality. On the other hand, it is known that the Brazilian labor market has presented proof of improving its indicators since the latter half of the last decade. This may be attributed not only to a steady rate of economic growth but as well to specific initiatives, such as increase in minimum wage, incentive towards formalization, improvement in inspection, among others. This scenario leads us to another set of questions: the combination of job insecurity, provoked primarily by outsourcing, with improvements in labor market indicators; the relationship between this data and the regulations in force and the role that the unions have played in this process. There are also concerns related to new forms of organization that have been modifying the internal workings of companies. Therefore, the study of labor in leading companies acquires relevance as these have been fueling the market with new technologies, new organizational schemes and new standards for labor, so as to comprehend a series of other issues as: the impact of these new labor process organization on traditional practices of labor management on Brazilian companies, such as control over labor force; the implications of these processes of outsourcing on labor process organization and the affect on gender inequality in the labor market .As such, the project aims to analyze some of the main characteristics that labor has been adopting recently, looking to create an ample depiction of recent trends so as to answer a question that unifies that which is the origin of several perspectives: To what kind of society is the set of transformations that labor has been suffering directing us? (AU)