This study examines the effects of the productive restructuring process on industrial workers' relation to labor in the chemical sector. Such object has guided two empirical studies: the first one was conducted in the same company in France and Brazil, and the second one at the Petrochemical Complex located in Triunfo, Brazil. Its guiding thread is the concept of labor autonomy, which can be understood in two senses. Firstly, in its positive sense - the real autonomy of labor that is recognized by peers and is able to protect itself since it preserves the group as well as an identitarian basis and allows a return on itself, which is able to confer sense to work. In its instrumental sense, in turn, autonomy is granted as an instrument for coordination of social relations and aimed at an economic goal in production management, in the attempt to include elements that cannot be prescribed into the labor process, such as concertedness and subjective mobilization. Such autonomy allows the emergence of individual strategies within the work group; professional relations strengthen relationships with the company and weaken those with peers. The study of relation to labor concludes by proposing a typology of labor relation.
relation to labor; granted autonomy; freedom; resistance; social links
