Del Bono and Henry 2008

• Introduction
• this article looks at the circumstances that accompanies the development of companies that outsource call center/service jobs to Argentina (8)
• the call centers are unionize but these unions pose little threat to the use of subcontracting by employers
• by refraining from trying to get better conditions for workers, a place becomes more likely to have flexible work relationships, whcih in turn weakens the unions
• argument: the unions contribute, either by action or omission, to the consilidation of the call center sector in Argentina
• and then businesses can threaten to move their operations if workers become strong or if they lose flexibility
• argument: it is the labor/EMPLOYMENT relations that strongly affect the general charactersistics of union action in the call center sector (9)
• looks at two companies, one from US one from France
• unions involved: FAECyS, FOEESITRA, FOETRA in Buenos Aires
• Call centers and services for export in Argentina
•  call center jobs are growing a lot (10)
• since the devaluation, the call center industry has been segmented, with local companies who cal to Argentina and multinationals who call outside Argentina (11-12)
• BA, Cordoba, and Rosario are the big centers for call centers (12)
• call centers looking mostly for cheap labor costs (13)
• Strategies and Responses from unions
• call center businesses leave places with expensive workers and look for places with low cost worekrs with few legal rights
• this challenges unions, as it can be hard to keep employment and make it a decent job
• call centers, tertiarization, and delocalization of work fragment unions and leaders (14)
• responses:
• FAECyS
• the collective agreements that exist leave many workplace issues untouched, including length of day, work conditions, etc (15)
• FAECyS hasn't changed their contract with employers since 1975
• this union was important, even through the 1990s, and negotiated with the government in the 1990s about the conditions of structural change, not oppose them (16)
• call centers hire young workers, and they meet a union that is unwilling to organize and doesn't have a strong enough identity to strengthen their position against employers
• there is NO connection communication between workers in call centers and unions, unions have no presence at work
• BUT unions note that the minute they demand anything, the company can just move somewhere else, like Peru or chile (17)
• contracts are very short term, sometimes use mentoring/internships to get young workers to work (18)
• but this means that there is a lot of turnover, which can be a problem for employers
• businesses think employees move on because the want experience in other businesses, less because there is no career path, no worklife balance, and low wages
• workers are hired to work 30 hours a week, and collective contracts in other telephone work limits work horus to 6 or 7 horus aday, but call center workers usually work more like 8 or 9 in a day, signalling a loss of rights only because the contracts for other telephone work are written too specifically (19)
•  wages also vary a great deal
• THE COLLECTIVE CONTRACT IN THIS CASE acts more as a way for teh business to develop, a "legal cover", rather than true collective representation (20)
• FOETRA
• they seem more willing to demand changes, want tercerization to end (20-21)
• proposed a law that would define telephoe employees as the same as long as they used telephone for three hours a day, this is a way to stop division among different groups of worekrs in telecom (21)
• this would allow FOETRA to expand the good conditions found in other places to call centers and other workplaces that have gotten through with loopholes (22)
• but, of course, this law had little chance of passing
• thsi seems mostly to be an attempt to get the workers who were spun off from ENTEL back into FOETRA (23)
• FOETRA did some strieks, protests, etc against a group called Atento between 2004 and 2006 (24)
• but there was little fixed capital, so the strikes were broken pretty easily, work was moved quickly to other places
• other workers didn't join in with this, as workforce is fragemented (25)
• same story with another company, an internet company, from 2005-2007 (25)
• thus it is becoming increasingly clear that classic, local responses to issue in call centers won't work, and they need much more unity across the sector (26)
• Conclusions
• government may be prolabor now, but unions still dealing with leftover burdens of neoliberalism (26)
• though unions have regained power, they still face a big challenge of the demand by employers for flexible work (27)
• in this case, fleixiblization of work has allowed businesses to push back some labor rights, and unions at the national level haven't been able to effectively push back
• local institutions do affect call centers, and unions have a chance to improve things (just seem to want to end on a high note) (27-28)

Tokman 2007

Tokman, Víctor E. 2007. "The informal economy, insecurity and social cohesion in Latin America". International Labour Review. 146 (1-2): 81-107.

•  Social cohesion comes when a country has achieved economic progress and redistributed the fruits of that growth to the whole of society (81)
• social cohesion helps ensure fairer development and involve all the population in efforts to achieve that growth
• social protection is still limited in LA
• social cohesion provides the causal link between mechanisms of integration and well-being and individuals feeling of belonging to society (82)
• this articles measures this by looking at labor marker participation, social protection and public perception of the effectiveness of instruments about these two issues
• Open markets and their effect
• open markets have meant employment is more closely linked to external demand
• this means the possibilities for increasing wages above productivity or expanding internal demand is limited
• instability is high and particularly affects smaller countries with more open economies, which in turn usually have inadequate instruments to deal with this instability
• informality and precariousness grew. even when poverty retreated, high-income groups shifted some of the adjustment costs to the middle-income groups. Thus, inequality did not diminish and wide income disparities grew (83)
• Employment tenure
• decline in employment tenure and high labor turnover
• but the time spent unemployed tended to be shorter
• but people worried about being unemployed: 75% worried about it, while only 59% of households experienced some unemployment  during the previsous year (citing Latinobarometer from 2005)
• only 18% felt protected by labor legislation
• the informal economy
• insecurity affects the whole population, but it tends to affect the socially excluded even more (84)
• informal sector became the informal economy
• precarious work was mostly concentrated in the informal sector, but was increasingly seen in formal-sector enterprises (85)
• only Chile, Argentina, Brazil and El Salvador have seen a decrease in informal-sector activities in the past 15 years (no citation for this, seems to get it from ECLAC) (86)
• the larger the informal sector, the larger public perception of insecurity...more unequal countries also have a larger informal sector (87)
• labor market participation determines eligibility for social security which determines cohesion, and obviously informal sector workers don't participate in labor market (89)
• Strategies favoring social cohesion
• workers in informal sector are often workers and entrepreneurs (92)
• they are socially excluded by low incomes, lack of social protections, and employment isntability
• they are integrated into the labor market but on a precarious basis
• need to extend social protections in order to make people feel like they belong (92-93)
• entry into the formal sector opens the door to social and economic citizenship which, in turn, is a prerequisite for belonging and integration (93)
• issues of micro-enterprises being able to absorb the costs associated with formal employment (95)
• perhaps create a dual system, one for small biz and one for big ones
• "fundamental rights are inalienable even if the necessary compliance involves some job losses" (96)
• Three strategies to address social tension (105)
• incorporate the informal sector into the modern sector
• fix problems with "disguised" employment and/or emloyment not initially included under labor legislation (105-106)
• do flexicurity (106)

my take: this dude is from Europe, and wants the rest of the world to look like Europe

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?

Stronk 2013

Webber, Jeffery R., and Barry Carr, eds. 2013. The new Latin American left: cracks in the empire.

"Neoliberal Class Formation(s): The Informal Porletariat and "new" Workers' Organizations in Latin America" Susan Spronk 75-94

• Applies EP Thomspons "class struggle without class" ideas
• notes other authors (murillo 2001) saying that unions just tried to surivive, not fight enoliberalism
• But during the neoliberal period the locus of class struggle has moved out of the factory and into the streets/communities (82)
  partially because many people are employed informally/self-employed
• the focus of class strgugle has shifted from demands over wages to demands for basic subsistence
• piqueteros born of those who weren't represented by traditional unions
• at first hey were very radical, non-hierarchical, etc. etc.
• but then they were coopted by employment plans from Kirchner (except for more radical splinter) (83-84)
• Oscar Olivera and gas war people: start with everyday struggle, get imporved conditions, and then work towards socialism (85)
• but actual gains in both cases have been minimal
• CRITIQUE OF BOTH these organizations arises from an argument about "treating the symptoms versus treating the cause"
• (86-88) plant takeovers in Argentina and Venezuela face issues with government and with (previous) business owners
• but even outside of these issues, cooperativism doesn't undo the bad social relations, it just makes the workers their own bosses
•