Global Journal of Human Social Science, C: Sociology and Culture, Volume 23 Issue 6

Beyond Fragmentation: Challenges of the World of Work in the Face of Ongoing Productive Restructuring Iuri Tonelo Abstract- This article seeks to establish a debate about the contradiction in the current situation of the world of work: the objective force of working class, including the absolute and relative growth of the number of jobs around the world, in parallel with its fragmentation and the development of new mod alities and divisions in the world of work , such as the most recent case of uberization . In this sense, it resumes the debates of “end of work”, the fragmentation in the neoliberal period, the inflection promoted in 2008, during the financial crisis, in order to develop the analysis of what we call a new productive restructuring, which has been taking place in the current period and needs to be mainly analyzed if we want to understand the trends in the world of work and its challenges. Keywords: work, productive restructuring, uberization, economic crisis, productive work. I. I ntroduction he problem of the fragmentation of the working class is not new, but it has gained new proportions in the twenty-first century. Its importance lies not only in the analyses of the transformations in the working class in the last decades, but above all, it has enormous importance for the debate on the nature of the working class today. The unity of sectors of the working class is a great challenge, especially in the context of a new productive restructuring ongoing, with the emergence of new morphologies of work and the phenomenon of uberization. This article aims, therefore, to analyse the recent changes in the world of work, taking into account the impacts of the 2008 crisis, and the objective aspects of the fragmentation in the world of work. a) The “end of work” 4.0 As part of reflecting strategically on the issues that arise from the world of work, it is first necessary to reflect on the objective evolution of the working class in recent decades to understand its strength and extension in opposition to an intense propaganda that we would be, once again, entering an era of communicativeness that would eliminate human work, a new “end of work”. Theoretical speculations that technological changes would lead to a drastic reduction or even elimination of human work date decades ago. The Works of André Gorz, with his well-known Farewell to the working class , from 1980, or Jünger Habermas, with his classic Theory of communicative action , a work of 1981, coinciding with the emergence of Reagan in the United States and his confrontation with the flight controllers' strike, one of the hallmarks of the beginning of international neoliberalism. 1 Among authors who, already in the neoliberal years, offered counterpoints and antagonistic theoretical visions to those mentioned in this matter of work, we can highlight those who sought to oppose the neoliberal notion of the end of work by going to the roots of the new contradictions and thinking about the changes, which implied the study of the overproduction crisis of 1973 and 1970 (the so-called oil crisis) like Ernest Mande l It is worth mentioning that the discussion about the “end of work” developed a new format with the emergence of the internet, in which not only automation, but information and communication technologies gave the impression of a substitution of the necessities of work. Manuel Castells' 1996 book, The Rise of the Network Society, is perhaps the most developed expression in this theoretical sense. Indeed, several marxist authors opposed this vision of the end of work, which grew as the ideological influences of neoliberalism expanded, including the idea of the end of classes, the end of socialism, and even the end of history, in the famous expression of Frans Fukuyama. 2 or the idea of István Mészáros 3 that a structural crisis of capital emerged. In the sociology of work, some authors defended the centrality of the working class and the maintenance of its objective force but enriched the sociological analysis to understand that this class was in the process of transformation in its morphology. We can highlight in this context the work of Harry Braverma n 4 1 Harvey 2018, p. 42 2 Mandel 1982 3 Mészáros, 1995. 4 Braverman 2022 , who studied the work of office labourers or in sociology the outstanding study by Ricardo Antunes, starting from T © 2023 Global Journals Volume XXIII Issue VI Version I 1 ( ) Global Journal of Human Social Science - Year 2023 C Author: Researcher at the Sociology Department of the Federal University of Pernambuco (UFPE). Ph.D in Sociology from the State University of Campinas (2019). He is part of the research groups "The World of Work and Its Metamorphoses" (GEMT- UNICAMP) and Study Group in Sociology of Work and Crafts - GESTO (UFPE). e-mails: iutonelo@gmail.com , iuri.tonelo@ufpe.br