Abstract

PERELMAN, Laura  and  VARGAS, Patricia. Moral accusations and labor precariousness among youth workers at a steel factory in Argentina. Trab. soc. [online]. 2013, n.21, pp.403-413. ISSN 1514-6871.

In this article we present our contribution to the debate on how big companies deploy highly complex devices in order to guarantee the reproduction of the capital through the management of forms of flexible employment. In particular, we analyze how management, linked to the employment policies of a steel company, justifies the widespread use of outsourcing and temporary contracts through moral imputations against young people. Based on an extensive fieldwork carried out in two years (2010-2012) with youths and adults that maintain different ties with the factory, we show how the management's statements invoke to a social imaginary widely shared by adult workers in justifying the labor flexibilization of the youths. Young people are forced to wander about for several years in unstable jobs before they are considered as candidates for entering the protected core of the factory. Thus outsourcing is constituted as a key mechanism in the consolidation of job insecurity.

Keywords : Youth; Precariousness; Outsourcing; Steel industry.