Waves of labor intensity and crises

Abstract

The process of intensification is a relevant fact of contemporary world regarding the forms to organize labor. Labor was transformed in such a way as to induce major problems of its realization. The forms to organize contemporary labor are hegemonically established by principles belonging to the toyotism system. This system gained strength with the Fordism crisis of the 1970s as the most efficient way to produce surplus value based in the increase of labor intensity to a degree never before reached. This intensification responded for explicit and implicit resistances by workers. There came to public knowledge, also, facts regarding deaths by excess of work, suicides related to working conditions and other problems that corrode the social legitimacy gained by Toyotism. Economic crises are also occasions for the emergence of criticisms regarding schools or systems of organizing labor in work. This article analyses questions related to the ongoing world economic crisis and its impacts on the labor process, taking into consideration the historical perspective of changes in the organization of labor systems as well as the interpretation of the production of value in the center and in the periphery of the capitalist whole.