O encontro da política com o trabalho: história e repercussões da experiência de autogestão das cooperadas da UNIVENS / The meeting of politics and work: history and repercussions of the self-management experience in the UNIVENS cooperatives

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2005

RESUMO

This study is closely tied to a social context which witnessed the reappearance of self-management as a characteristic of work relations. The objectives of the study are to comprehend the process of construction of the Porto Alegre-based seamstress Cooperative Unidas Venceremos (UNIVENS) and most importantly, to identify and discuss the principle socio-psychological repercussions of that experience in the lives of the worker members of the organization. In other words, this investigation strives to understand how the experiencing of self-management work relations affected, and affect, the social lives of the subjects considered, in the work environment as well as in the family, the neighborhood, and even the city. The investigation is a case-study in which the researcher opted for a methodology based on ethnographic observation and the realization of partially structured long-duration interviews. The results present and analyze the historical process of construction of the cooperative, as well as the "work histories" and the principle repercussions of the self-management experience on four members of the cooperative. The political experience which some of the members of the cooperative underwent, influenced by the local so-called Participatory Budget, surfaced as a kind of symbolic mainspring of the cooperative, having even inspired some of its principles such as the equalitarian nature of its work relations and the democratic and participatory tendencies of its management practices. Due to the above facts, the study reached the conclusion that it was the political experience that led to the economic experience, and not vice versa. The right to work, the fact of belonging to the group constituted by the cooperative, and the character of rootedness as subjects in the spaces of neighborhood and work represent the principle repercussions of these experiences – that is, of the Participatory Budget and the cooperative – and are referred to here as permanencies since they make up a dialectically-construed stable field of references for these workers, references which safeguard the maintenance of family life and the enabling power of intervention in daily life. In this way, these permanencies make possible the firm and perennial connectedness of these persons to their spaces through time, since they are able to know and construct the history of the cooperative and the community (the past), to circulate through these spaces with more of a sense of security and belongingness (the present), and to construct for themselves new ways of intervening in these particular spaces (the future). The permanencies also appeared as symbolic conditions for political action, permitting these workers, even though momentarily, to go beyond mere survival activities and to attain the necessary freedom for political practice within communal spaces. Finally, in conclusion, this study presents the possibility of dreaming, projecting and realizing political actions on a wider scale as a secondary repercussion of the above cited permanencies and, therefore, of the self-management experience itself.

ASSUNTO(S)

autogestão labour cooperativismo economia solidária trabalho works councils cooperativism democracia participativa psicologia social participatory democracy solidary economics social psychology

ACESSO AO ARTIGO

Documentos Relacionados