Workplace Conflict

This book contributes to the debate over the nature of collective action and the dynamics of workplace conflict by presenting the history of a cycle of workers’ resistance, set in Argentina. The forms, time, sequence and outcomes of cases of conflict are highly influenced by different factors, related to the socio-political context and to the organizational power of the actors involved. Notwithstanding these contingencies, studies of workplace resistance can go beyond the detailed description of the specific case once it is placed within a broader framework.

What drives workers periodically to contest their surrounding reality and how do they structure their protests? Providing answers to these crucial questions has always been at the centre of Marxist thinking and workplace research. Within this tradition there are key debates around structure and agency, and between subjective and objective conditions in the mobilizations of workers. This chapter aims to add to the theoretical debate and to militant action by proposing the reconstruction of a theory of workers’ collective action rooted around four main pillars: the need to avoid subjective and individually based explanations, the centrality of the capitalist labour process’ contradictions, the need to constantly demystify capital and the rediscovery of solidarity.

This chapter presents an historical background for the analysis of mobilization. Consequently, attention is drawn to those aspects of Argentine social history and trade unionism that could help to explain the cases of mobilization in this research. Can we identify recurring trends and how do these influence our interpretation of events? The analysis, starting from the data collected during the fieldwork, looks, in particular, at those historical or contextual factors that the workers interviewed have indicated in the interviews as being main obstacles in the process of mobilization and/or in the radicalization of it. Three thematic and recurrent issues have been identified: military repression and its effects on worker mobilization, the workers’ attitude toward trade unionism and the socio-political context at the time of mobilization. In line with this the chapter has been organized into three main sections. The first reconsiders how the use of repressive practices, adopted systematically by military governments in Argentina until 1983, affected workers’ potential for mobilization. Although these practices have clearly produced a loss in terms of organizational structure, increased by the large-scale assassination of delegates and activists as under the last military dictatorship, workers have nonetheless mobilized, often in spontaneous, unorganized ways.

In the theoretical chapter we identified in the contradictions of the capitalist labour process and the solidarity built into workplace cooperation the necessary conditions for collective action. This was important theoretically for two main reasons. First, it was a measure to go beyond contingent reconstructions that, while valid for enriching our understanding of the role of specific factors in the support of workers’ collective action, were not able to offer generally applicable explanations. Second, it was a way to avoid theorization based on subjective concepts, such as injustice, that while relevant in a trade union, organizational perspective, are not consistent with a general theory of collective action and thus fundamentally contributed to capital mystification of social reality. But it was also important methodologically. On the one hand, assuming that the conditions necessary for worker mobilization are set within the totality of the tendencies and counter-tendencies produced by the capitalist system of production was a guarantee against methodological individualism. On the other, starting from this structural basis, we could have shown the logic behind the interconnectedness of different factors and how these are shaped by conflicting forces within the system, producing different outcomes in terms of collective action.

This chapter follows the evolution and radicalization of conflict at FIAT in the year following the first factory occupation, with three aims in mind: first, to show how leaders emerged from within the context of mobilization and the role they had in catalysing workers’ grievances; second, to consider how workers changed themselves while collectively contesting the social reality surrounding them and third, to show how effective the company’s counter-mobilization strategies of eliminating leaders, dividing workers and breaking solidarity were.

We can see a logic in the responses of similar occupational groups undergoing similar experiences, but we cannot predicate any law. Consciousness of class arises in the same way in different times and places, but never in exactly the same way (Thompson 1980, p. 9). Thompson’s methodological and epistemological observation about the historical unfolding of class and class-consciousness, with his emphasis on processes and dynamics, has informed the way in which collective action has been framed both theoretically and empirically in this book.

The research on which this book is based started in October 2000 as a comparison of labour relations in two factories owned by the same multinational, FIAT, in Brazil and Argentina. The original idea was to look at the forms and methods of adaptation to new working practices used by trade unions and workers of the same company but within different industrial relations environments. The research seemed initially feasible as access to the plants for interviews and data collection was guaranteed by previously established relations with executives of the same enterprise. But as often happens to those who investigate sensitive business areas, the economic crisis of the company produced, together with worker redundancies and plant closures, a management decision to suspend any cooperation with researchers and, in my case, made it impossible to enter into the factories and develop the empirical part of the research.