Modelos produtivos, mudança institucional e mercado de trabalho na Amazônia maranhense: estratégias empresariais e trajetórias de trabalhadores na indústria siderúrgica

Abstract

This work analyzes the conformation and gradual transformation of the steel production and labor market in the Amazon region of Maranhão, in the last three decades. Emerging in the institutional environment generated by the great development projects of the 1980s, the steel industry, together with the logistical system installed during mineral exploration in Serra dos Carajás (PA), represented a new phase in the industrialization of Maranhão. The articulation between this infrastructure and tax incentives characterized the macroeconomic context that allowed the emergence of industrial centers in the Amazon, aimed at exporting production goods. In the case studied here, an intermediary steelmaking activity was established, the production of pig iron, aimed at supplying the North American market, which, however, from the economic crisis of 2008, will give rise to the emergence of a new production model, integrated steel production, with important changes in management and profitability strategies. The implantation of an integrated steel mill producing long rolled steels brought changes to these strategies, operating the transposition of an intermediate production model (producing pig iron) to an integrated production model (producing steel and derivatives), with important repercussions for the workforce used in both models. To account for these transformations, the research mobilized primary data – interviews with company workers and managers – and secondary data, and sought to dialogue with institutionalist theoretical approaches (Boyer; Freyssenet, 2003; Boyer, 2009; Fligstein; McAdam, 2012). From the analysis of these data, it was possible to perceive the differences established in the labor market, with the constitution of two generations of metal workers, as well as the strategies and difficulties faced by companies in the effort to establish this new productive model in the Amazon.