Trabalhar, Verbo Transitivo: Trajetórias Ocupacionais de Trabalhadores da Indústria Automobilística

Abstract

The Brazilian transports industry includes car, aircraft, boat, and train assemblers, as well as their suppliers. The process of industrial restructuring now underway in Brazil, in conjunction with rising open unemployment, leads us to question whether workers who leave (or are removed from) this economic sector will be able to find alternative jobs commensurate not only with their acquired skill levels but also with their life and social status expectations. Based on an excerpt from the Relação Anual de Informações Sociais and on advanced methods in longitudinal data analysis, the study endeavors to explain the differences in job market mobility experienced by workers who had some formal link with the transports industry in the state of São Paulo between 1989 and 1995. One of the various surprising conclusions is the discovery that in this technologically advanced sector of the economy, the São Paulo state labor market is a structural predator of qualifications and skills - by 1995, it had dismissed 70% of workers employed in 1989.