Senén Gonzlez, Medwid, Trajtemberg 2011

• Introduction
• Bargaining has become more centralized since the decentralization of the 1990s (155)
• describes three levels: local, sector, and national (with government)
• looking at two time periods, 1990-2002 and 2003-2010 (156)
• checking three types of determinants: economic, legal institutions, and political ideologies that help determine where bargaining will happen
• THESIS: 90s dectralized but in 00s became "cnetralizacion intermedia"
• Determinants in the lit
• economic
• opening to global trade (labor cotsts become important) ( 156-157)
•  geographic dispersement of industries plays a role (157)
• structure of employment plays a role (157-158)
• legal institutions (158-159)
• political/ideological (159-160)
• Structure of Collective bargaining
• collective agreements went WAY up after 2002 (161)
• before 2002, average per year was 177, most was 219.
• after 2002 LEAST was 348 and most, in 2010, 2038
• careful when citing this data, words dont' match grafic
• coverage went from 1 mil in 2004 to 4 mil in 2009
• this contrast with 1990s, when high unemployment led to lots of off-the-books workers (161-162)
• coverage in was roughly 84.5% in 2008
• in 1991 negotiations between union adn employer were only 19% of contracts, all the rest were sector-level (163)
• by 1998 this had risen to 80%
• after 2003 a jump to sector-level being about 30% of contracts, hovered there through 2010 (163-164)
• between 2004 and 2008, sector negotiations rose by 291%, but decentralized, enterprise level also rose 236% (164)
• sector-level contracts are important, because they set the minimum wage levels and day length
• Content of Contracts and salary
• in teh 1990s, all contracts tended to focus on felixbilization
• entre 2003 and 2010, bigger deal was pay issues
• almost all included pay increases, but many of these were thanks to increase in legal minimum wage
• also, government stepped in to get employers and unions at the table to try and iron out issues before neogitiations (165)
• data on salary increases (165)
• salaries paid began to match those in sector agreements, meaning local employers had less flexibility in what they paid workers (165)
• this means that workers pay is being determined on a collective basis, not and individual basis (166)
• Legal Institutions
• state has two major interventions:
• personaria gremial: uniosn have the right to bargain (167)
• inscripcion gremial: union exists, can represent its workers, but only its workers, and cannot take precedent over a union with personaria gremial
• approving collective contracts
• these are very strong (168)
• unions
• generally pyramidal and vertical
• have a double game: national level/political and local level through comisiones internas o delegados
•  three levels: local, federation (sector, state), national (CGT)
• 1st two levels do all the bargaining
• CGT at third level is a political entity, doesn't do any direct bargaining for wages
• changes in the 1990s
• all three things changed, laws, economics, and political ideologies (169)
• each of these led to decentralization of bargaining, sometimes down to individual level (168-172)
• but since 2003 all three things have changed to slow the decentralization
• laws
• Néstor increased freedom of unions to strike, though he did keep the government's right to regulate strikes of "servicios esenciales" (173)
• but the new law included that strikers could not be replaced or face retribution from employers
• economic
• debt default and growing economy in the 00s
• ...and all of this came because Kirchner had a new political ideology
• and his drive to create alliances with unions (174)
• conclusions
• in Argentina the law is the major variable in explaining the differences between the 1990s and 2000s, but the other determinants also played a role (174)
• personaria gremial helps prevent fragmentation of the labor movement (175)
• now the government is acting like a coordinador of the disparate demands of workers and employers