Labor precarity, social exploitation, and trade union engagement: critical approaches to work from Spain and Portugal

Abstract

While for a time, labor appeared to have lost its centrality within critical theory and social philosophy, recent years have disproved this. The evolution of advanced neoliberal societies has shown the extent to which labor is crucial for understanding a wide array of concepts such as domination and exploitation, modes of subjectivity, health and diseases, gender relations, and the organization of democracy. Labor is a privileged space for understanding the profoundly active and constructive nature of neoliberalism. In contrast with characterizations emphasizing its laissez-faire policies of deregulation, labor is one area in which the interventionist activism of neoliberalism has been most intense, provoking changes in work processes, legislation, production models, and individualization. Moreover, many of today's social conflicts unfold in relation to work and its conditions: new forms of trade unionism, associationism and activism renew the language and practices of resistance in a situation demonstrating a new relationship between business corporations, trade unions and the State.