CRISIS, EMPLOYMENT AND INCOME IN THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY: THE CASES OF SUL FLUMINENSE, CAMAÇARI AND ABC PAULISTA IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Considering the recent foreign investment waves in the Brazilian automotive industry, since the 1990’s, this paper analyses the employment and income trajectory in the automotive sector, in face of the economic crisis of 2008 and the policies of the last years. It observes the behaviour in three cases, in a compared perspective − the Grande ABC Paulista, the traditional region; the vale do Paraíba fluminense and Camaçari (BA), the new regions −, taking the productive chain as scopes and the clusters as analytical units. The tested hypothesis is that the first critical impacts strike the less qualified sectors and the “shop-floor” jobs. What can be understood is that each region behaves in a distinguished way, in which the traditional region is the one that behaves the closer according to the hypothesis. The new regions present more discrepant behaviours.

Keywords:
Automotive industry; economic crisis; unemployment; regional development; winning regions