Conflicts in Parana Metal, the auto parts manufacturer (2008-2010): The machines were silenced and the workers spoke

Abstract

This article pretends to find the numerous reasons that caused the crisis and definitive closure of Parana Metal, an auto parts manufacturer, between 2008 and 2010 in Villa Constitución, leaving 600 redundant workers. The protest that the workers held for 14 days in May-June 2010 and the last strike in which the workers cut for 33 days the motorway that joins Rosario and Buenos Aires at the intersection of Villa Constitución in September of the same year, were crucial to understand the final outcome. Through interviews, the action and the negotiating margin that the union had, were analysed with the workers and the particular characteristics of the two management departments that ruled the motorway in that period. The article also accounts for the influence of the implementation of the Neoliberal economic model in Argentina in the 1970s to observe the structural crisis of the automotive sector legitimized by a model of global capitalist accumulation that goes into crisis in 2008.