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Globalization and its consequences on "stable" workers: Oil workers at Fafen/Petrobras

The article is aimed at contributing to the debate on so-called stable workers, their organizations, worker's subjectivity and the factory's environment in the state of Sergipe in the 1990s, in the particular case of the Fafen/Petrobras fertilizer maker. Tabulation and analysis of collected data points out to some conclusions: 1) Changes in the factory environment show impoverishment in work conditions, materialized as: less positions, more tasks, less safety, less stability, loss and flexibilization of rights. That process strikes workers seen as stable, which shows the inaccuracy of calling them "elite" or privileged.; 2) Their Union, in spite of their leaders' experience, who were ahead of the national movement since the 1980s, even though it has a high organizational level and inside-factory links, was not able to find alternative ways to face the Company's canceling several prior benefits and co-opting old leadership, generating a weakness feeling and directly damaging worker's subjectivity.

Globalization; unions; stable workers; impoverishment


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