This paper aims to analyze the industrial relocation, starting in the 1990s, in the footwear industry in the Northeast of Brazil, and the profile of the "new" numbers of workers resulting from this process. The virtual absence of a former formal labor market makes factory employment in these new territories attractive to workers with higher education. For businesses, the attraction lies in tax incentives, low cost of the workforce and low mobilization of these workers. The empirical section is Ceará, which became, with the industrial policy of internalization, the third largest producer of footwear in the country, with plants distributed in across the state. The survey consisted of: secondary data obtained from national employers' associations and trade unions and business and government agencies, interviews with union leaders from four cities, and a questionnaire applied to 197 workers from six factories - from the south and southeast - located in different regions of the state.
labor and restructuring of production; shoe industry; industrial relocation
