Elbert 2010

Elbert, Rodolfo. 2010. "How Do Unions Respond to Nonstandard Work Arrangements? Relations between Core and Non-Core Workers in a Food Processing Factory (Argentina, 2005-2008)". Journal of Workplace Rights. 15 (3): 387-398.

•  Introduction
• Though the working class is increasingly fragmented, in Argentina  workers in formal labor movements are being a bit more militant now (387-388)
• This paper is about a successful case of non-standard and standard workers cooperating to improve the lives of non-standard wokers
• there are grassroots strategies that non-core workers developed in order to obtain the support of core workers (388)
• Nonstandard work arrangements and Union Strategies in the Global South
• labor protests can include both core and non-core workers, and these protests need to be analyzed in light of this fact (389)
• Context of the Factory Case Study:
• K-Foods
• Production
• two main sections, manufacturing and packaging (390)
• some gender division in labor
• Labor relations = conflictual
• workers say management is too demanding
• management says workers are ideologically set against them (391)
• there is more or less explicit competition between teh company and the union for workers' loyalty
• nonstandard work
• most nonstandard workers are not represented by the union
• union politics
• three main groups (392)
• core workers, aligned with national leaders
• core workers who are more militant
• non-core workers seeking solidarity and core jobs
• Core and Non-core workers during two Labor Conflicts
• Campaign against Labor Outsourcing
• there was labor outsourcing at one of the plants, but the union did not fight it until 2005 (393)
• before this the national union did not intitiate a fight, despite favorable conditions
• in 2005 some grassroots organization began with outsourced workers and activists (394)
• core workers showed solidarity, and eventually (2006) these nonstandard workers were hired as core workers
• Temporary workers win permanent contracts
• temp contracts or those hired through agencies (395), NOT outsourced labor
• some of these workers also joined the grassroots group
• these workers eventually blockaded a highway to get their demands (to be core workers, among others) to be met
• when temp workers were sent home, allegedly because their was no work to be done, WHOLE PLANT went on strike (395-396)
• shop floor union and activist group came together, finally, most temp workers got core contracts (396)
• Union Strategies that Confront Nonstandard work Arrangments
• non-croes workers campagins were grassroots
• involved rank and file, despite teh fact that the union rarely did so
• ruthless in the pursuit of the creation of solidarty across core/non-core
• ALL OF THIS CREATED SOLIDARITY, which won the day
• these actiosn reveresed trend of labor fragmentation
• ME: Where's the government in all this?  They blockaded a highway and nothing bad happened?