Working youth in traditional retail trade: managment, control and resistances

Abstract

Flexible working conditions together with new emerging forms of control and management of work process have contributed to the creation of new forms of employment, being service , particularly, retail trade one of the most diversified in recent years. In San Juan, Argentina, a high percentage of young workers are employed in retail trade. Besides the difficulties to entering and keeping in the labour market, this population group have to deal with precarious jobs. The strategies and actions adopted by the workers to change these situations seem to be insufficient, especially when attributing a position of passivity, inactivity and submission to youth. Based on a case study, this article analyses the dynamics of work in the traditional retail trade, characterizing its ways of management and work control, the expressions of labour conflict and the resistance undertaken by young workers from Gran San Juan (Argentina), on the assumption that they are constantly struggling to improve their working conditions and that new forms of resistance are taking shape in their expressions. Among the findings, it is highlighted that working youths deploy various strategies and actions of resistance, reconfiguring the expression of conflict at work, although they are unable to improve their employment conditions.