Abstract

VALERO, Edgar Augusto. New work relationships in the Colombian automobile construction industry. Innovar [online]. 2004, vol.14, n.23, pp.98-112. ISSN 0121-5051.

The auto-assembly and auto-part fabrication sectors in Colombia reflect the pressures exercised by the international competitive setting on efficiency and quality. These pressures have affected adopting new ways of organising work and the almost generalised change of personnel policy during the last fifteen years. This article analyses and illustrates a set of significant transformations in labour relations in this branch of industry, based on qualitative information from Colombia’s three most important terminal plants and from two notable component-making companies. Even though the dynamics are not homogeneous, it can be said that the most generalised process has been the weakening of collective negotiation and industrial relations as bases for interaction and agreement between capital and work. Personnel policies and ways of organising production have led (in almost all spaces) to companies imposing an authoritarian and unilateral definition of labour relations and working conditions. New labour relations’ models have been shaped by organisational and personnel management practices combining traditional coaction and flexibility mechanisms (anti-union and temporary work policies) with elaborate and subtle strategies for generating a sense of belonging amongst workers and commitment to a company’s ends (indoctrination in company discussion of competitiveness, being called on to participate and achieve self-control in reaching better standards of quality, neopaternalist practices, etc.).

Keywords : Globalisation; automobile industry; labour relationships; competitiveness; personnel policy; industrial workers; labour flexibility.

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