Relações de trabalho e novas formas de resistência: o caso das mulheres trabalhadoras da Bahia

Abstract

The relocation of the footwear industry to the southwest of Bahia is part of the changes of the current phase of capitalism. Women workers from this region had no experience of factory work; this new reality presented itself to them in an impacting manner in that values, emotions, habits and worldviews were strongly altered, reflecting the new composition of work at play. Women workers ‘disciplined’ in the assembly line learned to live as part of a network as a method of organizing production. Paralleling the development of the production network, another one was being built -, that of cooperation and communication – giving rise to the emergence of new subjectivities and forms of resistance in the production environment. From rural and domestic workers who had no communication and cooperation skills as part of their work, women workers in the assembly line gained news collaborative and communicative abilites, fundamental to the production process. But the development of cooperative and communication relations not only contributed to more productive work activities, but also promoted the emergence of new forms of resistance and strategies for "escape."