Abstract
This paper addresses the reconfiguration of labor struggles prompted by the challenges posed by outsourcing. This reconfiguration was identified through the analysis of labor representatives’ pronouncements in a public hearing promoted by the Brazilian Superior Labor Court in 2011. This analysis showed that beyond traditional claims for social rights and fairer distribution of goods and opportunities in capitalist societies, labor struggles also face the challenge of articulating claims for respect for human dignity of outsourced workers. They complain that outsourcing creates a subclass of workers who are systematically prevented from accessing their rights, endemically subject to higher risks of work-related accidents and death, discriminated against in the workplace and placed as merchandise in the processes of labor subcontracting. The analysis showed that the need for arguing that, irrespective of being in-house or outsourced, all workers share equal human dignity makes labor struggles to become closer to the logic of minority struggles. This approach means that the meaning of justice enclosed in labor struggles is widened, exceeding their traditional representative and distributive claims, and bringing class issues to the domain of morals.
Keywords:
Labor; Social justice; Outsourcing; Dignity; Participatory parity