The Destruction of the "House": Changing Social Relations in a Restructured Factory

Abstract

This article explores the social changes within a dairy-products factory in Montevideo, Uruguay. Applying sociological research tools from ethnography and grounded theory, the data was collected through employment at the factory. My position as a temporary worker allowed me to interact with the many different individuals and social actors that made up the factory’s social universe. I observed major organizational shifts within the human resources department, such as the hiring of younger and more educated prospects for supervisory roles, as opposed to filling those positions with the older and more experienced workers. This shift towards “productive re-arrangement” was a consequence of the regional and commercial challenges which encouraged strategic changes to keep the company competitive. The most obvious and significant changes were found in the hiring process, when the factory began increasingly targeting temporary workers for employment. In this article, I argue that these changes were largely responsible for a new spirit and emotionality that began to emerge amongst the current working pool; one of uncertainty and mistrust. When the dairy factory altered its operating philosophy, so did its labourers. This study looks to capture the relations that developed between them.