Industrial production of postal services and the conflictual dimension of labor management in the brazilian post office

Abstract

In this paper, the result of a study in the Empresa Brasileira de Correios e Telégrafos (ECT), aimed to understand how ECT is used in industrial techniques and principles to organize their work process and how these methods of management from an industrial model influences the setting of labor relations. To reach this objective, we sought to answer the following questions: How does management practices of the working process of a service company have been organized on an industrial logic and how are its characteristics? How social relations among employees of an operating unit have their relationships influenced by these management practices? How these social relations are articulated with the management of labor relations? The survey was conducted in a Post Office Domiciliary Distribution Center and included interviews with postal workers and managers, document analysis and direct observation of work activities. There is a hybrid of management practices, control over workers and authoritarian relations at work, besides constant pressure, work intensification, individualization and fragmentation of activities and a notion of “limited time” very accentuated. Aspects of management that provide a conflictual dimension of social relations among workers.