Automation, Labour Process Transformation and Composition of the Working Force in the Argentine Manufacturing industry 1980-2010: The Case of ARCOR

Aarhus

Conferencia; AIAS CONFERENCE: Cyborg Workers The Past, Present and Future of Automated Labour; 2023

Aarhus Institute for Advance Studies, Aarhus University

The aim of this paper is to analyze the impact of new technologies in the labour process and in the composition of the working force in an industrial factory of the multinational ARCOR, the largest producer of confectionery worldwide and the main exporter of candies in Argentina and MERCOSUR. The chosen period was 1980-2010 because of the neoliberal structural reforms that Argentina witnessed in those years, which was also manifested in ARCOR through the restructuring of the holding, the construction of new plants, the massive introduction of technology and organizational innovations, etc. The paper will seek to analyze how the restructuring process of the company - framed in a neoliberal restructuring process at the national level - implied profound transformations in the organization of the labour process. In the plant chosen to carry out the case study, two main transformations will be analyzed: first, the transfer of production lines to a new industrial warehouse which implied the automation of production processes, the use of Programmable Logic Controllers and robots, layout rearrangements, etc.; second, the certification of quality standards (ISO, BRC, among others) and the introduction of the Japanese management system ?Total Productive Maintenance? that allowed the company to compete internationally and guarantee the placement of production abroad. It will be shown how the above transformations modified the content of work (intensification of work rhythms, addition of new tasks and responsibilities, etc.) and implied a change in the factory work force (qualitative changes in qualification, segmentation of the labor force by gender, etc.). The contribution of the research will be to show how these transformations were mediated by changes in social relations in the factory. That is, changes in control and consent mechanisms, negotiation processes between the company and the union, tensions between different areas of the plant and episodes of conflict and resistance on the part of the workers. For this, 35 semi-structured interviews were conducted with workers, managers, supervisors, trade unionists, retirees, etc., which will allow for a comprehensive view that takes into account both the perspective of capital and the perspective of work. In this sense, this research will contribute to the lines of inquiry 2 and 4, through the analyze of both the impact of technologies in the workplace and the response of the workers.