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Labor Contestation at Walmart Brazil

Limits of Global Diffusion in Latin America

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Authors:
  1. Scott B. Martin

    1. School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, New York, USA

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  2. João Paulo Cândia Veiga

    1. Univerisidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

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  3. Katiuscia Moreno Galhera

    1. Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados, Dourados, Brazil

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  • Analyzes over twenty years of retail businesses in Latin America, specifically, Walmart in Brazil
  • Uses comparative methods to explain why Walmart has followed different paths in other Latin American countries: Mexico, Chile, and Argentina
  • Examines labor-management relations and state regulatory actions in Latin America

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Table of contents (7 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxvii
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  2. Introduction: Labor Contestation at Walmart in Latin America as Test Case of Global Diffusion by Multinationals

    • Scott B. Martin, João Paulo Cândia Veiga, Katiuscia Moreno Galhera
    Pages 1-10

  3. Mediations of Global Diffusion: Walmart Meets National Institutions and Nested Agents

    • Scott B. Martin, João Paulo Cândia Veiga, Katiuscia Moreno Galhera
    Pages 11-37

  4. Testing Distant Waters: Walmart’s Early Years in Brazil, 1995–2002

    • Scott B. Martin, João Paulo Cândia Veiga, Katiuscia Moreno Galhera
    Pages 39-79

  5. Expansion, Conflictual Cooperation, and Rising Legal Scrutiny: 2003–2014

    • Scott B. Martin, João Paulo Cândia Veiga, Katiuscia Moreno Galhera
    Pages 81-149

  6. Divergent National Patterns of Labor Contestation Surrounding Walmart: Comparisons with Argentina, Chile, and Mexico

    • Scott B. Martin, João Paulo Cândia Veiga, Katiuscia Moreno Galhera
    Pages 151-203

  7. Labor Contestation Amidst Restructuring, Flexible Labor Reforms, and Walmart’s Exit from Brazil, 2015–2018

    • Scott B. Martin, João Paulo Cândia Veiga, Katiuscia Moreno Galhera
    Pages 205-261

  8. Conclusion: Failed Global Diffusion, Walmart’s Exit, and National Institutions

    • Scott B. Martin, João Paulo Cândia Veiga, Katiuscia Moreno Galhera
    Pages 263-288

  9. Back Matter

    Pages 289-309
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Keywords

About this book

This book explores how and why the labor practices of the world’s largest employer, supermarket giant Walmart, were contested by unions and government regulators as it expanded to Latin America starting in the 1990s. With an in-depth case study of Brazil, and a comparative chapter examining Argentina, Chile, and Mexico, this book analyzes the problematic encounter between diffusion of home-office anti-labor practices and evolving national institutional contexts that are quite varied and in some cases enable considerable resistance by unions and/or regulators. Walmart’s “repressive familial” and “anti-union” model is found to generate costs and conflicts that contributed to its unprofitability and ultimate exit from Brazil in 2018. This experience, contrasted with country situations where Walmart’s overall competitive and labor and human resource practices “fit” better with national markets and institutions, underlines the brittle, problematic nature of diffusionist corporate models lacking adaptive capacity to significant cross-national variations across host countries.

Reviews

“Martin, Veiga and Galhera provide an eloquent and insightful analysis of how one of the world’s most powerful corporations attempted to impose its model of ‘repressive, anti-union familialism’ on the largest economy in Latin America, and how it was met with resistance from workers, unions and the state. Their ‘nested agency within institutions’ perspective provides powerful insights on regional variations. It is a must-read for practitioners and scholars of employment relations and human resource management.”

—Mark Anner, Professor, Labor and Employment Relations, and Director, Center for Global Workers’ Rights, Penn State University, USA, and author of Solidarity Transformed: Labor Responses to Globalization and Crisis in Latin America (2011)

“Why did Walmart fail in Brazil? Thoroughly researched and convincingly argued, this is the compelling story of how one of the world’s most powerful companies struggled to impose its model in Brazil, and of why national institutions and labor unions matter. It’s a cautionary tale of global expansion and corporate parochialism.

—Maria Lorena Cook, Professor Emeritus, ILR School, Cornell University, and author of The Politics of Labor Reform in Latin America: Between Flexibility and Rights (2007)

Authors and Affiliations

  • School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, New York, USA

    Scott B. Martin

  • Univerisidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    João Paulo Cândia Veiga

  • Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados, Dourados, Brazil

    Katiuscia Moreno Galhera

About the authors

Scott B. Martin is a Regular Lecturer in International Affairs at Columbia University, USA, and The New School, New York, and has also taught at Yale, Princeton, and Sarah Lawrence College. Among his publications on employment relations and social and industrial development in the Americas, he co-authored El Estado de Bienestar ante la Globalización: El Caso de Norteamérica ( 2012) and was co-editor and contributor to Competitividade e Desenvolvimento:  Atores e Instituições Locais (2001) and The New Politics of Inequality:  Rethinking Participation and Representation (1997).

João Paulo Cândia Veiga is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science of the Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, which he chairs, and a Researcher at the University’s Center for International Negotiations (CAENI). He has (co)authored or (co)edited four books on labor rights, corporate social responsibility, and regional economic integration in Brazil and the Mercosur region, among them The Question of Child Labor (1998), and published articles in such international journals as Labor Studies Journal. 

Katiuscia Moreno Galhera is Visiting Faculty at Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados, Brazil. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Universidade de Campinas, Brazil, was a Visiting Scholar at Penn State University, USA, and a postdoctoral researcher in Sociology at Universidade Estadual de Londrina, Brazil. Among her works on gender, labor, and global value chains is "Transnational Corporations," Routledge Handbook to the Political Economy and Governance of the Americas (2020, with S.B. Martin and J.P. Veiga).




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