Transnationalization and Digitalization of Mining in the Amazon

Vale's S11D Project

Abstract

The article intends to relate recent transformations in production and work at Vale to the dynamics of the integration of the Brazilian economy into global capitalism and the use of automation and digitalization in mineral extraction in the Amazon. Through fieldwork and interviews with workers, unionists and company managers, the article focuses on the "S11D Eliezer Batista Complex", located in the city of Canaã dos Carajás (Pará), the largest mining project in human history, inaugurated in 2016, which introduced a series of innovations in iron ore mining.  In recent years, since the end of the commodities boom, Vale has been disinvesting and seeking to focus on its core business, that is, iron ore extraction. For this reason, the company has expanded its investments in the automation of ore extraction and transportation in order to reduce the number of workers and expand outsourcing by replacing the use of mining trucks, tractors and drills with a complex system of digitally operated extraction and transportation belts, obtaining lower production costs and reducing the demand for labor. Thus, the analysis of the S11D Project provides elements for the description of the "new morphology of labor" (Antunes 2018) in mining in Brazil, revealing the consequences of the restructuring of productive operations for labor relations and unions.