Employer protection unionism in Atento call centers in Mexico and El Salvador (2008-2014)

Abstract

This article analyzes the role of Mexican employer protection unionism in the contention of labor struggles in the call center industry. I reconstruct two contemporary union drives at the Atento corporation: one in Mexico City, Mexico, and the other in the city of San Salvador, El Salvador, which took place between the years 2008 and 2014. Through qualitative research with primary and secondary sources, including interviews with worker and organizer participants, I trace the deployment of employer protection unionism from its native Mexico to Salvadoran territory, where it was adopted and implemented in order to crush the first call center union in the country. Highlighting the relationship between the regime of labor control and the prevailing relations of accumulation and regulation, I propose that while the literature identifies regimes of labor control by geographic scale or economic sector, this case allows for an analysis at the transnational level, by firm.