Part-Time Miners: Labor Segmentation and Collective Action in the Peruvian Mining Industry

• Author: Omar Manky
• Published date: 01 September 2018
• Date: 01 September 2018
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X17709541
• Subject Matter: Articles

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 222, Vol. 45 No. 5, September 2018, 120–135

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X17709541

© 2017 Latin American Perspectives

120

Part-Time Miners

Labor Segmentation and Collective Action in the

Peruvian Mining Industry

by

Omar Manky

Translated by

Margot Olavarria

Over the past two decades, besides the transformation of the organizational structure

of the mining industry, there has been a shift in the spatial organization of production,

expressed by the replacement of mining towns with mining hotels. Two case studies in

Peru show that these changes have produced new forms of labor segmentation affecting

workers’ capacity to mobilize by turning those who are directly employed by the company

into a minority. While subcontracted miners have managed to overcome organizational

segmentation by organizing across companies, the spatial segmentation of the mining

hotel model has made local coordination difficult. Workers are not, however, necessarily

defeated, as greater spatial mobility may offer possibilities of networking with new actors.

En las últimas dos décadas, a la transformación de la estructura organizacional de las

empresas mineras, cuya manifestación es la subcontratación laboral, se agrega el cambio

en la organización espacial de la producción, expresada en el reemplazo del modelo de

ciudad por hoteles mineros. Dos estudios de caso en Perú revelan que la segmentación

organizacional reduce la capacidad de movilización porque vuelve a los trabajadores

directamente empleados una minoría. Mientras la segmentación organizacional puede ser

parcialmente superada a partir de la capacidad de los contratistas para coordinar acciones,

un segundo tipo de segmentación, la espacial, dificulta coordinaciones a nivel local. Sin

embargo, los obreros mineros no están necesariamente derrotados, pues su alta movilidad

espacial podría traer la posibilidad de tender redes con actores transnacionales.

Keywords: Labor, Labor Unions, Mining, Peru, Subcontracting

Mineworkers and their organizations have been absent from most studies on

the current cycle of extractivism. Although studies about peasant communities

(Gil, 2009), the environment (Szablowski, 2002), and local development

(Bebbington, 2011; de Echave, 2005) have detailed the industry’s dynamics,

labor and its transformation have not been their major focus. The goal of this

article is to fill this void. I focus on two transformations: the decentralization of

production, resulting in the increasing subcontracting of labor, and the trans-

Omar Manky holds a Ph.D. in industrial and labor relations from Cornell University and is an

assistant professor at ESAN University in Lima, Peru. He thanks the editors of this issue and all

the reviewers for their valuable comments. Margot Olavarria is a translator living in New York

City.

709541LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X17709541Latin American PerspectivesManky / LABOR SEGMENTATION IN PERUVIAN MINING

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Manky / LABOR SEGMENTATION IN PERUVIAN MINING 121

formation of the production space, expressed by the abandonment of the min-

ing town model. In addition to mapping the context in which these changes

took place, I analyze the way they have affected union dynamics. The link

between studies of labor market segmentation (Gordon, Edwards, and Reich,

1982; Hudson, 2007) and those that analyze space as the product and producer

of labor relations (McGrath-Champ, Herod, and Rainnie, 2010; Peck, 1996)

illustrates why miners have seen their union dynamics affected. To examine

this double segmentation, I draw upon two case studies in Peru, including

archival research, interviews of miners and their families, and participant

observation in union halls.

The article is divided into four sections. The first presents the framework

used to analyze the labor transformations in the mining industry, and the sec-

ond describes the methodology used. The third presents the results of the study,

and the last details its conclusions and the research paths it opens.

LABOR SEGMENTATION IN THE MINING INDUSTRY

Labor market studies have shown that labor relations are not the mere result

of rational economic transactions but the product of the intersection between

institutions and actors competing over material and symbolic resources

(Kalleberg and Sorensen, 1979). Specifically, economic and labor sociology

have revealed the importance of labor segmentation in the lives of workers

(Wilkinson, 1981). The labor market is divided in a stylized way into “good”

jobs (high wages, appropriate working conditions, job stability, possibilities of

advancement within a firm), and “bad” jobs (low wages, high labor turnover,

few possibilities for advancement)—a division whereby companies seek to

achieve better control over the workforce (Braverman, 1998) and increase their

capacity for accumulation through selective precariousness (Hudson, 2007).

Labor segmentation in the contemporary world has been radicalized in the

context of the flexibilization of labor markets (Cook, 2007). For example, the

subcontracting of labor is a form of segmentation that consists of the external-

ization of administrative control and responsibility over the workforce to a

third party (Kalleberg, 2000). In the case of Latin America, Celis’s (2012) edited

volume shows how this way of organizing the capitalist company changed the

relations between workers and bosses in almost every branch of production. In

mining, this shift results in companies’ sending their workers to provide exter-

nal services to companies that contract for them (Leiva, 2009). The phenome-

non has long existed in countries such as Peru and Chile, where mining

companies used a recruitment system to pressure poor farmers through labor

intermediaries at the end of the nineteenth century (Flores, 1974; Klubock,

1998). This system, however, was replaced in the mid-twentieth century with a

more inclusive form of employment through which companies placed most of

their workforce on the payroll, improving their living conditions (Dore, 2011).

With the structural reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, labor intermediaries began

to be used again, and today more workers are being subcontracted than are

directly employed.