Arranjo Produtivo Local do vestuário de Espinosa: fatores tipificadores do trabalho ofertado e seus desafios futuros

Abstract

The Local Productive Arrangements, or clusters, in Brazil are seen as capable of leveraging local, social and economic development. In the specific case of industrial clusters of apparel and clothing, linked to the National Textile and Apparel Chain (CTC), dispersed throughout the territory, their emergence is almost always motivated by the use of favorable conditions: acquirement of inputs; logistical aspects; government incentives and also, the ease of hiring low-cost labor, generally associated with factors of the social fabric immersed locally. Inspecting the industrial clothing cluster of Espinosa, which also covers the municipalities of Mamonas and Monte Azul, North of the State of Minas Gerais, holders of low social indicators typical of the Brazilian Northeast region, it was noticed that since 2006 until its evolution to a cluster in 2018, it has been contributing to increase local economic and social indicators, revealing itself as the fourth largest provider of job opportunities and nominal wages among the economic sectors, only behind the Public Administration, Commerce and Services. Despite these advances, doubts resided as to the elements that typified the job offers, on the one hand by the Groups of Contracting Companies (GEC) manufacturers of own brands and on the other hand by the Group of subcontracted/outsourced companies (GEF ), since in this last grouping there was the assumption that typifying factors such as low average wage in multiples of minimum wage (MSSM) and average duration of employment contract (TMCT), constituted precarious conditions, resulting from their usual practices indicating, among others, one of the challenges posed for this cluster to overcome, aiming at its sustainability. In this case, the general objective was to analyze how the contractual practices of workers in the clothing cluster of Espinosa have been impacting the socioeconomic development of the municipalities of Espinosa, Monte Azul and Mamonas, revealing a possible scenario of challenges to its sustainability. The specific intention was: (i) on the one hand to distinguish which elements characterize and typify the job offers by the industrial companies grouped as subcontractors/outsourced and on the other hand, by those grouped as contractors, producers of brands own; (ii) Discuss the challenges posed for the future of the cluster. From data extracted from RAIS between 2010 and 2016, processed by the Phyton programming language, assisted by the Pandas framework, first were calculated the odds of each typifying factor in the respective groups, and then to verify the indication of prevalence of precarious contractual practices among these by the Odds Ratio. It was found, in general, that both groups employed staff between 18 and 39 years old, high school graduates (64%) and predominantly female 78%, with both of the latter indicators above the national average 45% and 73%, respectively. It was also verified that the typifying elements, defined as the most precarious: Average duration of employment below 02 years and average wage below 2 multiples of minimum wage, were exclusively linked to the outsourcing group, making it difficult, given its coverage in the cluster, more than 25% of the job positions, making the material and social reproduction of workers hard, constituting therefore a challenge to be solved by the cluster to raise its local and sectoral sustainability.