Abstract
The systematic deregulation of labor relations was a cornerstone of the imposition of the neoliberal model in Chile. This process had a significant impact on both the strategies and the structure of unionism. A study of the perceptions and representations of precarious work of union leaders contributes to a discussion of the relationship between precarity and repertoires of collective action in workers’ pursuit of regulation, institutionalization, social improvement, and well-being in employment relations.
La desregulación sistemática de las relaciones laborales fue la piedra angular de la imposición del modelo neoliberal en Chile. Este proceso tuvo un impacto significativo tanto en las estrategias como en la estructura del sindicalismo. En este trabajo se presentará un estudio de las percepciones y representaciones del trabajo precario de los dirigentes sindicales. Los resultados contribuyen a una discusión de la relación entre la precariedad y los repertorios de acción colectiva en la búsqueda de la regulación, la institucionalización, la mejora social y el bienestar de los trabajadores en las relaciones laborales.
Neoliberalism can be understood as the updating of the strategies of the dominant classes in an effort to implant a regime of global plunder (Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013; Silver, 2005) incorporating the historical dynamics and features of precarization, racism, vulnerability, and violence normalized by previous regimes (Harvey, 2005). The central objective is the extension of the limits of capital accumulation (Altvater, 2011; Harvey, 2001) and the generation of societies, social relations, and subjectivities (in the health system, the education system, the pensions system, etc.) through strategies of monetarization. Chilean neoliberalism is presented as a successful icon of total market deregulation (Harvey, 2005; Salazar, 2015). Based on the totalitarian framework of a civic-military dictatorship (1973–1990) and state terror, it was made possible by the collaboration of a group of Chilean economists trained at the University of Chicago and inspired by the ideas of Milton Friedman to promote U.S. control of Latin America. The structure was consolidated by a democratic postdictatorship regime (1990–2010) that sought the refinement and legitimization of social commodification policies (Garretón, 2012; Gaudichaud, 2015) and their extension to new spheres such as highways, hospitals, higher education, construction, and social investment (Undurraga, 2015).
As a result of all of this, neoliberalism has become an inexhaustible source of questions about the past, present, and future of Chilean society. In light of its foundational significance, my research explores the consequences of neoliberal deregulation in the workplace. With the support of the extensive literature on the subject, it combines institutional (regulation, labor market, and occupational structure) and subjective approaches (unions, classes, political parties, etc.). In an effort to better understand the relationship between structures and subjects, it employs the concept of “precarity,” which allows the construction of a middle-range theory and its location historically and geographically in the context of a complex network of power, meanings, agencies, actors, and strategies for the politicization of labor relations. The research on labor precarity is placed in the context of the installation, production, reproduction, and updating of Chilean neoliberalism, taking into account the experiences, perceptions, and representations of various union leaders regarding the strategies and repertoires developed in relation to precarity.
This paper is divided into four sections. The first section is on the theoretical framework, focusing on the debates about precarious work in Latin America. The second section explains the methodology. The third section includes a substantive analysis of empirical data and information collected in the course of the research. The conclusion argues that the new repertoires being used by unions are part of a larger process of social politicization in Chile.
Theoretical Framework
Various studies on the sociology of work in Latin America in the past few decades have focused on labor precarity (Battistini, 2009; Guadamarra, Hualde, and López, 2015; Marshall, 1990; Mora Salas, 2010; Novick, 1987). The 2016 Latin American Congress of Labor Studies included a panel devoted to labor precarity and Latin American reality, implying a disciplinary recognition of the importance of precarity in workplaces throughout the region. Precarity is associated with uncertainty, insecurity, insufficiency, and vulnerability. These different dimensions of the precarity of work (Castel, 2002; 2003; 2010; Kalleberg, 2009; Lorey, 2015; Standing, 2011) are coupled with unemployment, underemployment, informality, underoccupation, reproductive work, and forced labor. Precarity has become a global trend in the reorganization of workplaces and the restructuring of production that began in the 1980s (Castel, 2002; Castel and Dörre, 2009; Lorey, 2015; Marín, 2013; Standing, 2014), especially since the implementation of neoliberal policies for the deregulation of employment (Davolos, 2012; Silver, 2005) and the supporting extraeconomic coercion of workers.
At the international level, beyond the acknowledgment of precarity as structural (Neilson and Rossiter, 2008) and geographically unequal (Lee and Kofman, 2012; Ross, 2008), studies of labor precarity have sought to describe the articulation between precarious work and collective action, the emergent forms of organization of precarious workers, and their relationship to changes in global capitalism (Alves, 2009; Frege and Kelly, 2004; Ross, 2008). The scientific work of those who study labor in social terms in Latin America has moved beyond referencing and differentiating on the global plane (Antunes, 2011; Piñeiro, 2011) to problematizing the typology of waged work (de la Garza, 2011a; Neffa, 2010). Studies of the way labor precarity is subjectively experienced in Latin America (Battistini, 2009; Stecher, 2013) demonstrate changes in the identities, repertoires of action, and dynamics of labor conflict (Abal et al., 2009; Barattini, 2009).
The incorporation of precarity into studies of labor as an area for the generation of subjects that can be organized has four major elements: changes and heterogeneity in Latin America’s socio-productive matrix (Mora Salas, 2010; Palomino, 2008), policies that institutionalize the flexibilization of employment relationships (Basualdo and Esponda, 2014; Cook, 2011), the expansion and transformation of the occupational field and labor relations (Guadamarra, Hualde, and López, 2015; Neffa, 2010), and resistance, diversification, and collective action in the workplace (Abal et al., 2009; de la Garza, 2011b). Considering these elements and drawing on an extensive literature review, I have constructed the following four research theses:
Precarity is unique in every spatial and temporal context. The complexity of the capitalist world system brings specific logics of structuring labor realities to the fore. The nature of precarity in a given case is shaped by the superimposition of global inequality, position in the world system, and the history of production processes (both capitalist and noncapitalist). The Global South has always been precarious (Munck, 2013), and precarious work in the North assumes a different pattern (Standing, 2011).
Labor precarity involves heterogeneous and situated subjectivization. Precarity is internalized differently by the various stakeholders in the world of labor. This subjectivization occurs in relation to a specific social configuration (de la Garza, 2012), forms of meaning and experiences that are beyond labor (Foster, 2012; Korcynski, Hodson, and Edwards, 2006). Thus labor precarity can be understood as an area of exploration in the constitution of identities and subjectivities that have produced and are producing new and diverse socio-historical processes.
The institutionalization of labor flexibilization and precarization has reconfigured work (Antunes, 2011). Institutionalization requires considering precarity a political phenomenon of government (Lorey, 2015), including the hierarchization of the population and the generation of poverty and social vulnerability. This political process is associated with a new matrix of social actors and movements with diverse fields, possibilities, means, and opportunities for collective action (Tarrow, 1994).
Labor precarity reorders union organizations and strategies. The union, linked to an institutionalized set of practices of labor relations, is interpolated in various ways into the labor scene (Abal et al., 2009). Workers excluded from the regulation of labor relations and workers with few possibilities of institutionalization may respond differently, impeding the homogenization of union repertoires (Barattini, 2009; Battistini, 2009).
Most of the literature has tended to focus on studies of precarious employment in which the dependent wage link is related to subcontracting and outsourcing, wage insufficiency, time-limited contractual connections, and the lack of social security and protection (Julián, 2014; Standing, 2011). This orientation reduces the complexity of the Latin American social configuration by obscuring types of work that are not connected to a wage such as informality, slave labor, and self-employment (de la Garza, 2011a; Munck, 2013).
The trend toward the precarization of labor in Chile in the past three decades endangers social integration and cohesion. This fact is reflected in wage insufficiency and the fragility of labor connections, the proliferation of precarious forms of work (underemployment, understaffing, etc.), health problems, and a weakening of union organizations (Ruiz and Boccardo, 2014). At the same time, it is clear that the quality of life “has improved along a number of axes: quality of housing, home equipment, access to education, and basic services. The expansion of markets and of popular credit has effectively ‘democratized’ consumption across new sectors, creating new citizen-consumers” (Undurraga, 2015: 23–24).
Labor precarity has been imposed on the labor market (Hoehn, 2006; Marin, 2013), but this imposition has not been deterministic or mechanical (Palomino, 2008). Rather, it has been the product of a complex network of relationships involving the state (terrorist and military), international agencies (the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and others), neoliberal reforms, the political system, parties and the political class, and competing social classes (Salazar, 2015). The elements at play in this field have been the (de)regulation of the sphere of work and the institutional and structural disciplining of workers and their organizations. This phenomenon is not unique to Chile. Many of these processes have been marked by the implementation of neoliberal reforms in Latin America, though they have presented various combinations of political regimes, labor policies, and union actions (Aravena and Nuñez, 2011; Cook, 2011). The institutionalization of precarity has had various expressions depending on its relationship to particular governments’ approaches to neoliberalism (Julián, 2014; Sader, 2008).
Labor precarity in Chile is expanding into professional occupations (through overqualification and overproduction of professionals in the higher education system) and into other areas (through underemployment, wage insufficiency, and the lack of contracts). The new production and accumulation patterns have redefined the organic limits of the labor force in terms of new processes: flexibilization, subcontracting, part-time work, tele-work, etc. Subcontracting is the most frequent form of outsourcing, linked to the replacement of standardized with flexible production by changing the economic organization of companies, deregulating labor relations, and attempting to disband unions.
The expansion of labor precarity has meant that employment no longer constitutes a guarantee of stability, protection, and social security. According to the data of the 2015 Socioeconomic Characterization Survey (CASEN, 2015) just 28.3 percent of the population have real protection and stability in their jobs, and 49.6 percent of workers earn less than the minimum wage. The health system is divided into public (76.1 percent) and private (18.3 percent), creating a segregation of access to health whereby wealthier households prefer the private system because the public system is inadequate. Social protection and pensions are based on incomes with an individual capitalization system, creating possibilities for the proliferation of private markets and the financialization of workers’ savings (Taylor, 2003). This system creates pensions for retired workers below the minimum wage, with old-age pensioners having an average pension of 191,972 pesos (US$305) per month. The pension system encourages the extension of working life. Precarious jobs are increasing nationwide (more than 70 percent of new jobs every trimester are precarious), and unemployment rates are persistently low (6.2 percent according to the National Institute of Statistics for November-January 2017). The lack of public insurance and the social monetarization of welfare, which are important strategies of power in neoliberalism, combine to increase vulnerability and dependence regarding income.
As I have said, the proliferation of precarious employment has affected union organization and composition, and this has resulted in the diversification of political orientations and repertoires of action. The image of unions has been transformed from “strong and vigorous . . . in confrontation and conflict with the State or its institutionalized form of negotiation and social consensus” to “weak” and “approaching extinction” (Góngora, Rodríguez, and Leyva, 2005: 162). 1 The “crisis of unionism” (Zapata, 2003) in Chile was mainly characterized by low membership rates (21.2 percent in 1991 and 17 percent in 2014), a tendency toward inactivity, limited collective bargaining (covering only 6.9 percent of wage workers in 2014), the fragmentation of the labor world, and the individualization of labor relations. This trend expanded along with changes in the labor world, new global chaining, and tendencies toward flexibilization (de la Garza, 2001; 2011a; 2011b).
In the face of neoliberal hegemony in Latin America, studies of unions have declined with “the emergence of new social movements that challenged the unions for hegemony in the constitution of society” such as social movement unionism (Moody, 2001). Meanwhile, there has been a broadening of “business and government concepts sustained by studies that argued that unions are an obstacle to productivity, quality, and competitiveness” (Góngora, Rodríguez, and Leyva, 2005: 163). Despite this situation, union studies have remained vital to understanding the demands presented by new social realities. My research relates unionism to labor precarity not only as part of a theoretical problem but also as offering insights into the practical adaptation, innovation, and action of Chilean unionism. Drawing on the practical experience of union leaders, it identifies and describes the strategies developed for coexisting with and rolling back labor precarity.
Methodology
My methodology had two parts. The first was an analysis of data on labor precarization drawing upon the literature in Latin America (Escoto, 2010; Fernández, 2012; Grau and Lexartza, 2010; Monteforte, 2012; Mora Salas, 2010; Rubio, 2010). Five main components of labor precarity were identified (Julián, 2017):
Instability—the absence of a contract or the existence of temporary, short-term and open-ended contracts and the ability of the employer to terminate employees with ease. Instability makes it difficult to build a career and generates mobility, informal entrepreneurship, rotation, self-employment, and adaptability as ways of coping with and resisting constant uncertainty by seeking autonomy of wage-dependence relations.
Insecurity—the absence of social coverage, unemployment protection, on-the-job accident protection, health insurance, and social benefits such as maternity leave, unemployment benefits, vacation time, etc. Insecurity is associated with the absence or violation of union rights.
Insufficiency—the underemployment, subcontracting, flexibilization, and underoccupancy that mask unemployment and constitute the new wage dynamics. Insufficiency also includes wages that barely cover the costs associated with the reproduction of the life of the nuclear family (water, health care, education, etc.).
Unsafe working conditions—discretion and deregulation with regard to safety, hygiene, harassment, bullying, etc., in the workplace. This includes risk of injury, death, and exposure based on the location, occupation, and productive sector in which work is performed.
Temporality—the number of hours of work performed daily, weekly, monthly, and annually, including overload and excessive work and the relationship between work time and lifetime. This component includes dependence on poorly paid jobs and flexibility in the use of time that allows for the coexistence of insecurity, instability, and high intensity. It also reflects the temporary nature of many seasonal jobs.
In the second part of the research, I complemented the data analysis with a study of trends in Chilean unionism based on a systematization of statistical data and literature on the topic analyzed in reference to the historical processes and political trajectories of unionism between 1975 and 2010 (Julián, 2016). To focus on the relation between precarity and collective action, I activated a network of contacts with union leaders in various cities that I had learned about through social militancy between 2006 and 2011. These union leaders were experienced in the diverse ways in which unionism had responded to this process—possessors of “expert knowledge” of a practical sort (Bourdieu, 1998) about the management of labor precarity as an everyday field of action.
I conducted 42 in-depth interviews between 2011 and 2013 with union leaders from different productive sectors (service, public, trade, port, mining, industrial, banking), age ranges (from 24 to 56), cities (Antofagasta, Santiago, Concepción, Temuco, and Puerto Montt), and genders (male and female). The focus on union leaders as informants and experts reflects the importance of unions in the valorization of work and the improvement of working conditions through collective demands for social welfare policies. 2 From the responses to the question regarding changes in union activity I identified the development of union strategies and repertoires of action (Turner, 2005: 390)—forms of collective action that unionism develops to defend its interests in the political, legal, cultural, social, and territorial spheres (Frege and Kelly, 2004: 36).
I operationalized unionism on four levels: the environment in which unionism is developed (structural, economic, cultural, social, political, and employer-action factors), the state of the unions (political and public positioning in the national context, nature of union membership, financial models, relationships among union organizations, solidarity and membership campaigns) and their collective bargaining power, levels of action (international, national, sectoral, and local), and interunion coordination within a single territorial or occupational dimension, and relations with other social actors (government, employers’ organizations, their own membership, nonmember employees, the community, social movements, and civil society). The question of union strategies in the context of labor precarization did not presuppose that these strategies would be coherent or unified or that their leadership would be political in nature. What I invite the reader to reflect on is the heterogeneity and plurality of possibilities, including the possibility that, under working conditions homogenized by labor precarization, repertoires of action will be diversified and the vitality of union actors in the field of labor relations will be diversified and preserved.
Results
On the basis of this research, I assessed the importance of the various dimensions of labor precarity for the development of union activity. The interviews focused on five issues that were problematic for the union leaders:
The conditions of precarious employment. When decentralized union structures and collective bargaining are subject to the company, workplace relations are the main elements in negotiations. With the exception of public sector employees, labor stability does not play an important role in negotiations because this would appeal to individual logics. Outsourcing and subcontracting are important only to contract workers; the workers of the main company do not have repertoires of collaboration or solidarity despite the increase in atypical work. Even so, given the rotation that exists in some sectors and occupations labor instability is seen as standing in the way of union action.
The heterogeneity of the concept of work. The relationship of workers to their salaried condition often does not involve them with other employees. Even in the public sector, where professional skills could generate these links, one cannot speak of a single repertoire of action beyond that of defending (through professional organizations) the status of occupations transversal to the structure of work. Furthermore, the outsourcing of work in the sector does not involve synergies between workers with commercial contracts and subcontractors for the provision of services.
Business behavior. Perceptions of business behavior are centered on its fostering precarity and disciplining union work. Only one respondent said that the company had provided assistance in union activity. In the majority of private companies, relationships and work regimes are concentrated hegemonically and unionism is subject to constant persecution, punishment, and conflict. In the public sector, relationships with directors and upper management tend to intersect with and be measured in terms of political relationships (party membership) that serve as symbolic capital in dialogue.
The legal and institutional framework. There is consensus regarding the disciplinary role of legislation and the weak oversight of the institutional structure. While in many instances the work in the protection of rights of agencies such as inspection entities and labor courts is noted, it is also characterized in terms of excessive bureaucracy that discourages union action through the “legalization of conflict,” ineffectiveness in the defense of workers’ grievances and demands, and lack of resources and personnel and in terms of “political wills” that contribute to punishment and weakening of unions and criticism of political parties.
The significance of collective action. There is agreement on the weakness of collective action despite recognition of its strategic necessity for union revitalization and the improvement of working conditions. This applies to all levels of intervention (local, business, national, and global), and there is consensus regarding the lack of unity, cohesion, and strength of collective action and criticism of the union centrals. This criticism is associated with the tactics for dialogue with the government and the presence of a pro-party attitude as a method of strengthening unions’ negotiating position. There is dissent in the assessment of the results of collective action (defeat and punishment vs. wages, benefits, and bonuses) that ultimately affects morale and the significance of mobilization.
In the perceptions of these union leaders, precarity is a political objective of mobilization and articulation and, paradoxically, an obstacle to the emergence of solidarity. Their discourses and practices with regard to labor precarity can be organized in terms of the following themes:
Government actors. A political and critical view of labor’s institutional structure and the lack of social well-being is associated with the idea of a convergence of business interests and political class interests. This view tends to highlight political personalisms— individuals over institutions (parties) as figures of trust (particularly in reference to the labor inspection directorate)—and to reject institutional channels of lobbying and negotiation.
Business actors. The business class is constituted as an enemy standing in the way of union action and the dignity of labor. Business actors are perceived as having negative attitudes toward collective bargaining and/or dialogue and any proactive approach to the union. Unions generally respond with public action when they discover that negotiation with the company reduces the visibility of their claims, sometimes going beyond legal measures to factory shutdowns, hunger strikes, marches, etc.
Managerial actors. These individuals are seen as the complement to business actors. They are the bureaucratic apparatus and the strategy makers about work organization. Most of the cases are producing despotic logics in the workplace against workers organization. Their multiple ways of blocking negotiation and violating rights are described as hindering the exercise of collective rights, with a focus on legally informed practices and the relationship to the labor inspection directorate.
Other unionists. In the majority of the interviews, other unionists were subjects of criticism, linked to the existence of a union bureaucracy characterized by the lack of collective, democratic, and participatory meaning (especially in national structures) and subordination to political parties. They are also identity referents in that they allow the affirmation of the respondents’ own positions and the construction of an assessment of the causes of union fragmentation (Julián, 2016). Even so, there are cases of coexistence and alliances with these other union leaders, and statements of party affiliation do not strengthen union action.
Nonunion workers. Individuals who have the right to membership and do not participate in the union constitute a framework and a challenge for union leaders but are often seen as enemies segmenting relationships among workers.
The most precarious workers. Workers without the right to unionize are perceived as the most precarious, with fragile ties of discontinuous solidarity and union relations focused on assistance, presenting difficulties when it comes to generating shared actions.
Social movements and civil society. References to public strategy for union action are woven together with a view to coordinating actors outside the union sphere and strengthening the legitimacy and valorization of public opinion.
These aspects of the structuring of union repertoires reveal the complexity and directionality of the development of unionism today.
Discussion and Conclusions
From these results it is possible to recognize the duality of precarity as an element that generates segments of workers connected by shared or similar employment and working conditions and as a phenomenon that has a profound impact on the generation of stable relationships that nurture affiliation and collective recognition. It is also apparent that the characterization of labor in the discourse of union leaders in Chile is beginning to articulate categories (or symbolic goods) such as “dignity” and “justice,” exhibiting the reconstitution of a union culture associated with the revalorization of work (Julián, 2016). Unions are key actors in the revival of this discussion. Given that unionism is situated in a field of disputes characterized by the crisis of the institutional political structure and the increased dynamism of the social field, it is subject to a problematization of the lines of action between the continuity and the breakdown of its own tradition.
The relations between precarious work and unions in Chile can be summarized as follows:
Productive heterogeneity. The complexity of unionism is related to the outsourcing of production, the diversification of forms of employment and contracts, and the emergence of large groups of workers experiencing precarious working conditions. To this we can add the presence in the private sector of transnational capital and global production chains. All these factors mobilize discourses related to the lack of unity (of action) and of organizational confluence.
Segmentation. Corporative logics not only at the company level but also at the occupational and contractual levels promote the fragmentation of union organizations. Potential outsourcing makes the action agreed on by the workers fragile because corporations have many options for by-passing union pressures.
Atomization. Behavior on the part of workers that disregards the generation of collective bargaining logics and action results in the weakening of the union’s defense of workers’ interests. This condition is associated with the temporary nature of employment and its frailty as a factor in union membership. Atomization focuses on insufficiency (mainly of wages) and on the difficulties of solving this problem for union members.
Vertical organizational logics. Union organization and membership are hampered by vertical logics at two levels: bureaucratic relationships between the national and the regional and local levels, which weaken the links of unions with larger organizations with intersectorial ties, and union organization at the national level that is pyramidal and lacks representation in local union activity, which promotes atomization and the discrediting of union activity. It is possible to envision an opposite logic in which national organization facilitates rapid and efficient responses to problems such as the atomization and segmentation of precarious work.
Disciplinary institutionalism. The creation of institutions that regulate and co-opt labor conflict and legislation permitting the covert persecution of union activity (Julián, 2016) are reinforced by the insufficiency of employment and the risk of being dismissed that is associated with belonging to a union.
Predominance of a defensive and reactive logic. The dominant response of unionism to labor precarity has been a logic that limits the possibility of extending its field of action beyond the workplace and generating proposals for strengthening its activity. Many union leaders perceive a need to move away from political subordination and corporative logic and to escape the disciplinary coercion that decentralizes union action at the company level and more effectively oppose precarization.
The discussion of labor precarity as a driver of new identifications involves the generation of new research approaches focused on the analysis and study of collective action experiences (Tarrow, 1994: 173–212). In the present case it has been possible to identify an articulation between social politicization, precarity as political discourse, and union action as social praxis (Abal, 2014; de la Garza, 2011b; Ross, 2007). The emergent process is part of a “growing discontent with structural inequalities and a frustrated sense that the political class is out of touch with popular needs and demands, which has produced social unrest unseen since the Pinochet years” (Undurraga, 2015: 12). Unions are involved in this process as part of a demand for regulation, quality, and equality in labor and social relations. Precarity is a dynamo that mobilizes new discursive repertoires and new forms of struggle against capital in Chilean neoliberalism.
Footnotes
Notes
Dasten Julián is a researcher in the Department of Sociology and Political Science and an assistant researcher in the Regional Observatory of the Universidad Católica de Temuco. The research for this article was funded by the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología through the Becas Chile program, and its publication was made possible by Fondo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología Project Regular 11611347, “Mapping Precarious Work(s) and Labor Relations in the Macro-Southern Area of Chile,” of which the author is principal investigator. He thanks Klaus Dörre of the Universidad Friedrich Schiller for his research supervision and the editors of this collection for their indispensable help in preparing this article for publication.