THE WORK WITHOUT UTOPIA: NEW PRODUCTIVE CONFIGURATIONS AND THE WORKERS

Abstract

The authors analyze the cooperatives as an option of income generation and autonomy of work. The article has as empirical reference to the politics in which is based the Ceará government's program for organization of industrial production cooperatives in the 1990s. In this context, the increasing number of cooperatives reflects different aspects. On one hand, within a marketing logic, the use of outsourced cooperatives becomes an option of degradation of production costs for he companies thought elimination of management cost. Thus, it makes possible, for the workers, the maintenance of jobs thought the recuperation of bankrupted companies or creation of new cooperatives to act in certain markets. On the other hand, for the State, they still function as development and income generation policy. Since these cooperatives are not linked to specific social movements, little remains of the ideas of cooperative enterprises. Self management, democracy in the work, collective ownership of property, loose sense in overexploitation of labor and a lack of security and stability that follows. The cooperatives use unqualified workers without many options in the job market, mainly in the sectors of intensive work. In this kind of cooperatives, voluntary work is absent, reflecting more the lack of option than a conscious option for the collective work.