Um ano de greve no Canadá: conflitos e resistência na transnacionalização da Vale S.A.

Abstract

This article presents some results of a research on Vale S.A. conducted in Brazil and Canada. Particularly, through  interviews and field research carried out in the latter country, the  article analyzes aspects such as 1) Vale’s ongoing transnationalization and its movement for international expansion in recent years; 2) the company’s strategy for labor relations and trade unions, which seeks to weaken and isolate unions, avoiding threats to corporate power; 3) the restructuring of Vale’s operations in Canada and the changes promoted in the relationship with the union and local workers, based on the labor relations strategy historically developed by the company in Brazil, which led to the largest strike (2009-2010) in the Canadian private sector in the last 30 years. The research was based on an ethnographic and comparative approach inspired by the «extended case method» (Burawoy, 2009).