La descualificación del trabajo en tiendas por departamento

Abstract

This article presents the results of a study about the reorganization of the sales-work process recently implemented in department stores in the Chilean retail industry. It was used the theoretical framework of the Labor Process Theory and a qualitative methodological design. We conducted 31 semi-structured interviews with front-line workers and 6 interviews with experts in the field, which were analysed through the codification procedures of the grounded theory. The results describe the reorganization of the sales-work process and the customer service in stores, and analyses their consequences in terms of the tasks' level complexity and the autonomy of the workers, evidencing a tendency towards the deskilling. It is concluded that this trend has entailed a degradation of sales personnel working and employment conditions, in coincidence with the international evidence regarding recent organizational and labor worldwide transformations in the service sector and the retail industry.