Privatization and coping with it: integrating and disintegrating elements of collective resistance

• Autor(a) principal: Palassi, Marcia Prezotti
• Data de Publicação: 2002
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Revista de Administração Pública
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.fgv.br/rap/article/view/6446
• topic: privatization; human “resources” management; coping strategies; resistance; social mobility and social change; psychosocial aspects of labor.; privatização; gestão de “recursos” humanos; estratégias de enfrentamento; resistência; mobilidade e mudança social; aspectos psicossociais do trabalho.

This paper discusses the strategies adopted by sanitation workers who had to cope with the news that their company would undergo privatized municipalization and lay off 80% of its labor force. The answers of 310 workers — 24.6% of the employees in August 1997 — to an anonymous questionnaire revealed that the situation was considered stressful, with opinions for and against the social-relations network. The union¿s performance was considered unfavorable to the workers, with 24.5% of disaffiliations. The employees would first choose planning to solve the conflict and the unemployment problem, as well as pouring out their feelings. Then they would choose reevaluation, self-control, denial, and self-blame. They considered the proposal illegitimate, but the difficulties they had in coping with it indicated two trends: to accept privatization as an alternative to end with the conflict; to accommodate to it, in a fatalistic behavior, which, associated with the Union's crisis and individualism, undermines collective and organized resistance.