Work,Workers and Social Change in Latin America

Abstract

This paper raises the question of whether work still plays an important role in the social, economic and political changes that have taken place in Latin America since the 1980s. First, we analyze working conditions and employment profiles with emphasis on so-called `truncated tertiarization' and on the growth of nonwage and women's work. Second, we examine the process of diversification of industrial work resulting from the globalization of world markets. Third, we look at the changes that have taken place in the labor movement itself as a function of the new neoliberal orientation of the state, changes in the labor market and industrial restructuring. Finally, we discuss the impact of these changes on the sociological study of labor, noting the emergence in Latin America since the 1980s of a new sociology of work which is alien to the heroic vision of the labor movement, yet also shuns the end of the work society view.