This articles analyzes the influences of the occupational trajectories in the formation of membership groups and on the management of cooperative labor, based on three experiences with productive cooperatives located in industrialized cities of Santa Catarina. The analysis used the category of self-managed participation and a Marxian reading of the category of relative surplus-population, collective labor and real subsumption of labor. The longitudinal analysis showed that in occupational trajectories, the event of unemployment is present, as well as non-insertion in the labor market, and that, motivated by outside events, workers change their condition from members of the relative surplus-population to members of productive cooperatives. Concerning the organization of labor, there is a trend toward the reproduction of the experience in the employing company.
trajectory; real subsumption; division of labor; self-managed participation