>>(b) labor-capital relations mediated by patriarchal/clientilistic/etc.
>>relations. In the small shops, family run is the order of the day.
>>Intra-familial networks and fictive kin/god-parentage (compadrazgo) are the
>>mechanisms by which highly effective labor control is exercised. How do you
>>strike against your uncle? Or the godmother of your baptism? Especially
>>when s/he is (often) labor and capital (as owner and labor in his own shop)?
>
>What's the proportion of workers in such family-run shops out of the
>totality of industrial employment in Bolivia?
Good question, but a bit hard to answer precisely because data is scarce and/or not reliable and/or old; and definitions in sources vary.
First, manufacturing workers union leaders all report "the majority -- and they're not in the union." But they don't have numbers.
Many researchers talk about medium and large businesses (15 emplyees and up), small (5-15), and micro enterprises (1-4), and usually assume micro means family business. This way of counting things, however, says nothing about the relations of production.
Still, just to give you a sense, in the 1992 Survey of Economic Establishments, 45% of all employed in manufacturing were in units with 9 workers or less (small or micro), while just over 72% of all manufacturing units had 4 workers or less (micro).
The same Census counted 17% of manufacturing workers as "family workers -- non-remunerated" or "independent -- non-remunerated".
Assuming that some family businesses might be "legal", we looked at some files that an angel from the local "social security" agency dropped on my desk show that in 1996, of all those businesses paying "soc. sec." taxes:
Mfgr. Units 932 Workers 11,281 Math Avg. 12.10 Max. 950 Min. 1 Most Common 4
Same picture, more or less, as the 1992 Census.
The analysts at CEDLA, La Paz, tried to look at relations of produciton, and sorted things out into three categories:
1. Public and private enterprises (where they assumes wage labor predominates) 2. Semi-enterprises and family enterprises (where they assume there is a mix of wage labor and other non-remunerated work or labor barter, etc.), and 3. Domestic service (which is another problem altogether).
Their data for all of Bolivia, 1993, employment in public and private enterprises dropped from 45 to 40%, while employment in semi-enterprises and family enterprises grew from 46 to 55%. They didn't break it down by region or sector of the economy.
That's about it for the data, at least what we can find.
The social sec. data completely misses the "illegals"; the Census too, as lots of units avoid all forms authrorities, slam the door on all info. gatherers. What can one assume about that mass of productio units of the state's registries? We're working on it, but this for starters: small, kin and fictive kin based organizations predominate. Where contracts are non-existent or non enforcible, these are the mechanisms of acountability/discipline.
Even the existence of wage relation does not mean the relation is free of the bite of intimate coercion we're discussing. Your uncle may pay you a salary, not by the piece; accordingly, you tell the census taker "salaried" -- and if uncle is in the room, you say "with a contract" too. But the relation is still powerfully mediated by these "intimate" forms of coercion/cooperation.
Tom
Tom Kruse / Casilla 5812 / Cochabamba, Bolivia Tel/Fax: (591-42) 48242 Email: tkruse at albatros.cnb.net