Testing practices of collective networking: The Coordination of Precarious Workers in Buenos Aires

Abstract

The capitalist organization of society presents different configurations at every historical moment. The forms of domination of capital over labor adopt historical and spatial specifi cities. In this respect, a consequence of the instauration of the Post-Fordist Way of Regulation in the ’1970s, the economic and financial globalization and the implementation of neoliberal policies is the fact that the overwhelming majority of workers live in precarious labor conditions. The article initially discusses the various theoretical ways of conceiving this precarization process. They can be divided in three major groups: the perspective that thinks that any wage-earning form of labor in capitalism is inherently precarious, another one that associates precarization with the hiring conditions, i.e. with employment, even using that concept as a synonym of flexibilization, and a third perspective that analyzes precarization focusing on its implications for labor, i.e. for all aspects of life. After describing these theoretical positions, the article discusses one particular case, the Coordination of Workers in Precarious Working Conditions in the city of Buenos Aires, in order to reflect about the process of labor precarization in Argentina and to present the ways in which these workers get organized, usually outside of the traditional structures, as well as their potential and limitations.

Key words: precarization, resistence, coordination.