Digitalization and labour precariousness: new challenges to trade unionism and social movements in the portuguese context
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5902/2236672536155Keywords:
Trade unions, Precariousness, Social movements, Struggles and alliances, New technologiesAbstract
The financial crisis that brook out in the American context one decade ago, which occurred in parallel with economy and labour digitalization, intensified labour precariousness, presented further challenges to the political and collective representation of the working class. In Europe, namely in Portugal, those transformations and austerity policies produced significant changes on the industrial relations level, fostering several protest actions. Simultaneously to trade unions action, several collective actors that can be placed within the network social movements’ spectrum have emerged, underlining the relevance of collective responses in the precarious workers’ case. Relying on empirical researches that fell back upon participant observation and in-depth interviews technics, in this article two case studies are presented, one confederal and other sectorial, that put in evidence the existence of cooperation and tension elements between trade unions and precarious workers’ emerging organizations in the context of the struggle against labour precariousness imposed by austerity. Our goal is to identify, based on those cleavages and approximations, possible roads for the invigoration of workers’ collective identity paying special attention to precarious segments, given their importance as part of the work force, while emphasizing the role of power resources and new technologies in the emergence of innovative responses.
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