Precarization, Genderization and Neotaylorist Work: How Global Value Chain Restructuring Affects Banking Sector Workers in Brazil

Abstract

The transnationalization of financial markets impacted on the fragmentation and recomposition of value chains which induced comprehensive processes of outsourcing and the commodification of bank services. This paper explores how this translates into the sectoral and internal reorganization of Brazilian banks and how work organization and social relations are affected. The case of (bank-owned as well as outsourced) call center not only reflects changes in the importance and form of service relations but also shapes a neotayorist reorganization of the labor process and the respective modes of control. As a result, a complex process of precarization and segmentation of the work force can be observed which impacts on new lines of inequality related to categories like gender, class and race. The analysis is based on a theoretical approach which refers to Michael Burawoy’s concept of the “politics of production” and categories of Pierre Bourdieu’s social theory like symbolic violence. This allows an analysis of power relations which also includes the dimension of identities. Thus a more fine-grained insight can be gained on how transnational restructuring affects redistribution on a macro, meso and micro level.