Flexible production conditioners in automakers in south fluminense region

Abstract

 The south fluminense region took part in the fiscal war in the 1990s and assumes, in the following years, important share in the national automotive industry. Expectations for foreign investments and mass jobs generate optimism, while regional development has repercussions on national media. Since the early 2000s, researchers have devoted themselves to describe the historical background of the fiscal war and the conformation of work in this region. This article recovers the main theoretical-empirical discussions to problematize the constraints of flexible production after almost two decades of external investments in the automotive sector. The literature review initially approaches the automotive sector with the argument of dispersion to new productive regions; and subsequently organizes research focused on automakers installed in the south fluminense region. Data collection was accomplished through semi-structured interviews between july 2016 and september 2017 with researchers from the automotive industry and practitioners. In the results are presented the contradictions in the rhetoric of the automakers, which outline the fiscal war directed by the foreign private capital, and situate the regional union in a weak condition in the course of the transformations in the automotive processes.