Varela 2013

Varela, P. (2013). Los sindicatos en la Argentina kirchnerista. Entre la herencia de los’ 90 y la emergencia de un nuevo sindicalismo de base. Revista Archivos de Historia del movimiento obrero y la izquierda, (2), 77-100.

• Introduction
• lots of scholars are suggesting growth of unions in the 2000s is the result of state-driven change in industrial relations (77)
• one problem with this is it overemphasizes the large, national, institutional scale, and ignores the very important role of conflicts and unions at the firm leve: internal commissions and bodies of delegados (77)
• secodn proble, it overemphasizes the polarization between the "new" unionism and the "old" unionism, when in fact these groups lots of similarities and have some ruptures
• the article has three hypotheses for debate:
• the strong recomposition of working class as a social and union thing after 2003 are thanks to the continuing of the exploitation begun in the 1990s (78)
• it is on this contradiction, strong unionism without change in exploitation, that has been teh foundation for strong unionism from the base
• the presents of younger workers and strong Trotskyite influences are altering unionism of the base in important ways
• Contradictions of a return
• the relegitimation of colecltive bargaining and negotiation at the high level has made workers realize how bad their conditions still are, and helped explain why Cristina had an anti-union turn after 2011 (78-9)
• between 2002 and 2004 there were a number of increases in minimum wages, negotiated directly between labor leaders and capital, though started by and arbitrated by the Néstor, these were mainly attempts to soothe people and get them money they lost during devaluations (79)
• 2004 was the real start of re-legit of unions, esp CGT and Hugo Moyano
• this happened due to economic growth, combined with growing union conflict due to the emergence of unionism of the base (80)
• this was new because there were lots of surprise conflicts started and led by delegados and leaders within the base openly against the higher up leadership of the union
• this article suggests that Moyano was helped, becamea  strategic ally of the Ks because unions of the base were already getting strong, and government wanted a way to channel that momentum, not the other way around (81-2)
• until 2011 the formula was crate peer groups and set wage ceilings (82-3)
• this sort of got disrupted in 2007 when the government started messing with statistics to cover up inflation (83)
• AND when unions outside of Moyano's circle started being repressed
• 2009 brought Cristina needing help of Moyano against Ag strike, financial crisis which made inflation go down, and strong conflict of the base at Kraft foods (84)
• this resulted in government not setting a limit on salary negotiations
• Kraft workers continued to fight, and a union thug from the Union Ferrovaria killed a militant from teh Partido Orbrero, whcih revealed the violence used by traditional unions (85)
• After 2011 Cristina began pushing back on unions, undoing some of the thigns that had made unions adn important political representation post-2003
• number of collective contracts went down in 2011
• suggests this happens because of inflation issues, and...
• break between CK and Moyano
• whie there was GDP growth in 2011, it shrank in 2012 (86)
• 2011 elections didn't have a lot of union candidates, but did have a lot of territorial candidates, which was teh start of the rupture between CK and Moyano
• in 2012 this caused a rupture among the major union confederations, ended up with 3 opositoras and 2 oficialistas
• in 2013, docentes demanded a 30% wage increase, and the Ministry of Trabajo arbitrarily closed discussions and just said they woudl get 22%
• since 2003 the growth of union strngth has run into the fact that labor precarity and fragmentation, both begun in 1990s, continues to happen (87)
• Ks made unions stronger at the top, but didn't roll back the gains won by capital during the 1990s
• all fo this came to a head when the economy started having trouble...before then wages could just be increased and keep people relatively happy without rolling back management power
• this is felt most often at the workplace, so conflicts happen at the workplaces more often (88)
• informality and work precarity continues during the 200s (88-89) with DATA
• because collective contracts DON'T talk about flexibilization liek they did in teh 1990s, it is fair to assuem that flexibilization continues (ie CCT shudl have rolled it back!) (90)
• lower unionization rate has more to do with the fact that unions are really engaging with their base (90-1)
• Younger workers aren't necessarily leftist, don't really have a lot of political connections
• but they grew up during the time of the resurgence of lefty groups into social and class struggles (92-3)
• but CTA has statsistics that note thigns like, in 2007, 14% of labor conflicts were undertaken without the presence of unions (93)
• leftist people, members of PTS and others, began winning elections to be delegados (94)
• conclusions
• the basic contradiction of the Ks is the increased power of uniosn whiels working conditions and exploitation remained exactly the same/unchanged (95)
• possible to see some sindicalismo de base as a possibility of unionism outside of Peronism (96)
• the question for the new generation is how to expand unions to include other groups, precariosu workers, desocupados, and how to inegrate lefties into the movement/create a new movement? (96)