Building bonds in Flexible Work in Chile: Common Expectations and Dissimilar Experiences of Young Retail Workers

Abstract

The results of a study of the bonds that young workers build with others in the retail industry in Chile are presented, considering both the process of change in cultural orientations that have installed new ideals for horizontality and dignity, as well as the new demands and productive logics of flexible management models. Thirty narrative interviews were conducted with low occupational level workers from supermarkets and department stores, and professionals from corporate retail management. The results show  the  strong and transversal presence of these ideals in the relationship with others, as well as their tensions resulting from the characteristics of the work processes, the survival of authoritarian logics and the strong asymmetry of power between companies and workers. It also reveals how these common ideals regarding their bonds are the daily tensions they face acquire specific characteristics in each of the two groups of workers analyzed.