Down but not out: Union resurgence and segmented neocorporatism in Argentina (2003-2007)

Politics and Society

Volumn 35, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 363-401

  Etchemendy, Sebastin ^a   Collier, Ruth Berins ^b  

^a UNIVERSIDAD TORCUATO DI TELLA   (Argentina)

^b UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

Argentina; Labor unions; Neocorporatism

Indexed keywords

EID: 34548331967     PISSN: 00323292     EISSN: 15527514     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0032329207304318     Document Type: Article

References (83)

1. See Pgina 12 (February 11, 2005).
2. See El Cronista Comercial (May 11, 2006).
3. Interview with a high-ranking official at the Ministry of Labor, Argentina, May 2006.
4. The literature on (neo)corporatism is vast, and definitions are not always uniform. However, most approaches converge on a concept of neocorporatism as a mode of interest group structuration and policy formulation in which (1) union and business associations tend to be monopolistic and quite centralized and (2) wage and other policies are formulated in peak-level tripartite concertation between the state and social actors, largely bypassing legislative institutions and territorial representation. The presence of prolabor or labor-based parties in government was often seen as increasing the likelihood of neocorporatist arrangements since labor would get state rewards for its cooperation. State corporatism was distinguished from the Northern European type of societal corporatism or neocorporatism. Whereas in Northern Europe, societal corporatism developed from unions and their affiliated parties and was more compatible with labor autonomy and democracy, in Latin America and Southern Europe, state corporatism was the product of state initiative and resulted in substantial regulation and control of unions if occasionally in their empowerment. Seminal works are Philippe Schmitter, "Interest Intermediation and Regime Governability in Contemporary Western Europe and North America," in S. Berger, ed., Organizing Interests in Western Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982);
5. Peter Lange and Geoffrey Garrett, "The Politics of Growth," The Journal of Politics 47, no. 3 (1986): 792-827
6. Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier, "Inducements Versus Constraints: Disaggregating 'Corporatism,'" American Political Science Review 73, no. 4 (1979): 967-86;
7. David Collier, "Trajectory of a Concept: 'Corporatism' in the Study of Latin American Politics," in P. Smith, ed., Latin America in Comparative Perspective (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994).
8. Necoporatism, in particular confederate-level wage bargaining, has been increasingly challenged by economic internationalization; yet an abundant literature, including the current debate on "varieties of capitalism" points out the resilience (and even the resurgence) of sectorally coordinated wage-bargaining and social pacts in various parts of Europe since the late 1990s; see, for example, Mario Regini, "Between Deregulation and Social Pacts: The Responses of European Economies to Globalization," Politics and Society 28, no. 1 (2000): 5-33;
9. Martin Rhodes and Oscar Molina, "Corporatism: Past, Present and Future of a Concept," Annual Review of Political Science 5, (2002): 305-31.
10. For a more recent revision of the trajectory of the concept and practice, see "The Study of Organized Interests: Before 'The Century' and After" in C. Crouch and W. Streeck, eds. The Diversity of Democracy (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2006).
11. According to data from the EPH (Permanent Household Survey), which covers the urban population, by 2006, Argentina had an economically active population (EAP) of 15.9 million. Of those, 14.3 million are employed. Among the employed, 11.6 million are private-sector workers (3.5 million nonwage earners, i.e., self-employed/family workers/owners; 4.03 million registered workers; 4.1 million nonregistered workers), 2.3 million are public sector workers, and 0.4 million are workers under state-funded employment programs. Institutional forms of collective bargaining broadly cover private registered workers and most state workers, that is, 6.3 million workers or 40 percent of the EAP and 60 percent of wage earners (including state workers). Data from EPH survey in Boletn de Estadsticas Laborales, Ministry of Employment, Labor and Social Security (MTESS), http://www.trabajo.gov.ar/left/estadisticas/bel/index.asp (accessed on April 14, 2007).
12. Of course, this social policy component was not homogeneous across the neocorporatist political economies, being more universalistic in the Scandinavian countries than in the rest of Continental Europe.
13. Eric Olin Wright, " Working-Class Power, Capitalist-Class Interests and Class Compromise, " American Journal of Sociology 4, no. 4 (2000). 957 - 1002.
14. Beverly Silver, Forces of Labor (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
15. Nitra Rudra, " Are Workers in the Developing World Winners or Losers in the Current Era of Globalization ?" Studies in Comparative International Development 40, no. 3 (2005). 29 - 64.
16. Chris Howell and Anthony Daley, " The Transformation of the Political Exchange, " International Journal of Political Economy 22, no. 4 (1992). 3 - 16.
17. For a more recent view in this "pessimistic" vein, see Michael Wallerstein and Bruce Western, " Unions in Decline? What Has Changed and Why ?" Annual Review of Political Science 3 (2000). 355 - 77.
18. Stephen Frenkel and David Peetz, " Globalization and Industrial Relations in East Asia: A Three Country Comparison, " Industrial Relations 37, no. 3 (1998). 282 - 310.
19. Christopher Candland and Rudra Sil, eds., The Politics of Labor in a Global Age: Continuity and Change in Late Industrializing and Post Socialist Economies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). Graciela Bensusn and Maria Cook, " Political Transition and Labor Revitalization in Mexico, " Research in the Sociology of Work 11 (2003). 229-67 ; Teri Caraway, " Legacy Unions in New Democracies, " paper presented at the American Political Science Association (APSA) meeting, Philadelphia, PA, August 31-September 3, 2006.
20. Paul Krugman and Anthony Venables, " Globalization and the Inequality of Nations, " Quarterly Journal of Economics 110, no. 4 (1995). 857 - 80.
21. Gay Seidman, Manufacturing Militance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
22. Kim Moody, " Towards an International Social Movement Unionism, " New Left Review 27, 225 (1997). 52 - 72 ;
23. Jay Mazur, " Labor's New Internationalism, " Foreign Affairs, January-February (2000). 79 - 93 ;
24. Peter Evans, " Counter-Hegemonic Globalization: Transnational Social Movements in the Contemporary Global Political Economy " in T. Janoski, A. Hicks, and Mildred Schwartz, eds., Handbook of Political Sociology ( Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005 ).
25. Moody, "Towards an International Social Movement Unionism," 19.
26. Hctor Palomino, " Los Efectos de la Apertura Comercial sobre las Relaciones Laborales en las Empresas " in E. De la Garza and Carlos Salas, eds., Nafta y Mercosur: Procesos de Apertura Econmica y Trabajo ( Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2003 ).
27. In fact, recent research shows that the relation of Congress of Argentine Workers (CTA) and its associated unions of teachers and state workers to popular sector and neighborhood organizations remains important. See Candelaria Garay, "Popular Associations, Labor Unions, and Political Parties in Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Venezuela," prepared for delivery at the 2006 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, PA, August 31-September 3.
28. Maristella Svampa, " Profunda Ruptura de las Lealtades, " Le Monde Diplomatique, Argentine Edition, January 2007, 6 - 7.
29. Steven Levitsky, Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America ( Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003 ).
30. Juan Carlos Torre, " Prlogo " in El Gigante Invertebrado: Los Sindicatos en el Gobierno, 1973-76 ( Buenos Aires: SXXI, 2004 ).
31. Independent Social Research Consulting (CISI) is an independent organization that has been measuring strike activity and other forms of social contention in Argentina since 1991. Its database is built based on six national newspapers, Clarn, El Cronista Comercial, Crnica, La Nacin, Pgina 12, and El Diario Gremial (a journal devoted to union-related news). Although obviously not perfect (many conflicts might not reach national media), newspaper-based measuring of labor conflict is increasingly common in labor studies; see, for example, Silver, Forces of Labor.
32. For different accounts of the surge of the unemployed movement in Argentina, see Candelaria Garay, " Social Policy and Collective Action: Unemployed Workers, Community Associations and Protest in Argentina, " Politics and Society, forthcoming;
33. Maristella Svampa and Sebastin Pereyra, Entre la Ruta y el Barrio. La Experiencia de las Organizaciones Piqueteros (Buenos Aires: Biblos, 2003).
34. Gabriela Delamata, Los Barrios Desbordados ( Buenos Aires: Libros del Rojas, 2004 ).
35. The source is the newspaper-based CISI database cited in note 21. In the database, episodes of union-led conflict or labor conflict involve (1) strikes, (2) union street demonstrations, (3) union formal "alert" declarations, (4) workplace seizures, (5) union-led road or street blocking or workplace assembly, and (6) other forms of protest such as factory access blocking or workers chaining themselves to facilities. Nonunion social conflict involves every street demonstration or disruption by any group, be it an organization of the unemployed, a neighborhood association, political party or group, a student organization, and so on.
36. Data from the National Institute for Statistics, Ministry of the Economy, Argentina, www.indec.mecon.ar (accessed on April 10, 2007).
37. A recent survey by the Ministry of Labor of Argentina still yields more labor conflict in the state sector in 2006. This is due to the fact that the CISI database covers only national newspapers whereas the Ministry of Labor database, which starts in 2006, considers a number of local and municipal newspapers. In any case, the increase of private sector-led labor conflict relative to state-led conflict since 2002 is clear. See Ministry of Employment, Labor and Social Security (MTESS) "Estadsticas de Conflictos Laborales 2006" manuscript, 2006.
38. In April 2007, the CTA called a national strike, which was joined by a General Confederation of Workers (CGT) one-hour national stoppage in response to the police killing of a demonstrator in the context of a teacher's strike in the province of Neuqun. However, the strike was aimed at the right-wing provincial governor of Neuqun rather than at the government.
39. Marta Novick, " Reconversin Segmentada en la Argentina: Empresas, Mercado de trabajo y Relaciones Laborales a fines de los 90, " in E. De la Garza, ed., Reestructuracin Productiva, Mercado de Trabajo y Sindicatos en Amrica Latina (Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2000).
40. Adriana Marshall and Laura Perelman, " Estructura de la negociacin colectiva en la Argentina: ¿Avanz la descentralizacin en los aos noventa ?" Estudios del Trabajo, no. 23 (2002). 3 - 30.
41. Wallerstein and Western, "Unions in Decline?"
42. The contracts by "economic activity" are essentially those signed between business chambers (rather than firms) and unions. Their relatively high number (e.g., 203 in 1995) in spite of being sectoral contracts is because of the fact that according to the classification of the Ministry of Labor in Argentina, economic activity includes not only the "general sectors" (commerce, construction, metals, etc.) but also subsectors with state-recognized unions that negotiate on their own (e.g., plastics within chemicals, beverages within food, etc.), and regional agreements, (e.g., a contract signed between the chemical workers and business chamber of the province of Buenos Aires), though this type is less common. In addition, the data of Figures 3, 4, and 5 and Table 4 include nonwage contracts (i.e., on work conditions, bonuses, etc.). In other words, the collective contracts by economic activity include the general wage/sectoral agreements that we analyze in the next section as evidence of the neocorporatist trend but also other types of agreements.
43. To our knowledge, this is the first time that decentralization on the labor side has been measured in Argentina.
44. Ministry of Labor Social Security and Employment, Argentina (MTSEE), " Las Relaciones Laborales en las Empresas, " Trabajo, Ocupacin y Empleo, no 3, 2006: 51 - 75.
45. The data refer to the "base wage" or salario conformado of each contract, as constructed by the technical staff of the Ministry of Labor, Argentina. It consists of the average fixed "wage base" of each work category (i.e., a contract wage not affected by variations in hours worked or productivity); see Ministry of Employment, Labor and Social Security of Argentina (MTESS), "Evolucin y Estado de los Salarios de Convenio" unpublished report, Undersecretary of Technical Programming and Labor Studies, 2006
46. Hctor Palomino and David Trajtemberg, "El Auge Contemporneo de la Negociacin Colectiva en Argentina" unpublished manuscript, Ministry of Employment, Labor and Social Security (METSS), Argentina, 2007.
47. In practice, through special bonuses and fixed sums, the wage increase in many sectors (often those associated to the export economy) exceeded the 19 percent cap.
48. While virtually all the contracts respected the patterned bargain of the 16 percent guideline in 2007 (and the 19 percent in 2006), in a few sectors, supplementary benefits were included, especially in those where the unions were more powerful but also where productivity was higher and the firms may have more leeway to absorb these payments without passing them on to costs.
49. The case of the Teamsters' union is telling. In March 2007, at the same time the Teamsters and CGT leader, Hugo Moyano, was meeting with government officials to jointly announce an increase in family allowances, the union was actively supporting a transport business lockout against the grain traders in demand for higher transport tariffs, which threatened the supply of flour and grain to the main Argentine cities.
50. Robert Kaufman, " Stabilization and Adjustment in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico " in J. Nelson, ed., Economic Crises and Policy Choice (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990). 102 - 3.
51. Some negotiations are paradigmatic of these dynamics. For example, in the sectoral agreement reached in 2006 by two of the largest unions, the Commerce Federation, representing about 700,000 workers and the metal workers union, representing 200,000 workers, initially asked for a 29 percent and 32 percent increase, respectively, while the business associations offered 11 percent. An agreement to a 19 percent increase was finally reached. In the peak negotiations for state workers and for the minimum wage, the CTA demanded wage increases significantly higher than what the government concluded with the CGT, evincing the role played by the traditional Peronist unions in moderating wages and its alignment with the government.
52. Juan Carlos Torre, " El Movimiento Obrero y el Ultimo Gobierno Peronista (1973-1976), " Crtica y Utopa, no 6 (1982).
53. Marcelo Cavarozzi, Liliana de Riz, and Jorge Feldman, " Concertacin, Estado y Sindicatos en la Argentina Contempornea, " working paper, CEDES (Buenos Aires: CEDES, 1987). and
54. Andrs Thompson, Sindicatos y Concertacin Social en la Argentina, 1983-1990 ( Santiago: CLACSO, 1990 ).
55. Daniel Funes de Rioja, lawyer in charge of labor affairs in the peak-level industrial business association (UIA), considered by many to be a hardliner in the business world, somewhat praised the wage agreements of April 2007: "It was crucial to anchor wage expectations, because since January many projected wage increases with few real basis, which could contribute to fuel deep conflicts." See La Nacin (April 21, 2007).
56. Funes de Rioja also praised the negotiations in the context of the Minimun Wage Council of 2006 and argued that "it was a very difficult negotiation, the most complex that took place in the Wage Council." See Clarn (July 29, 2006).
57. David Cameron, " The Expansion of the Public Economy: A Comparative Analysis " American Political Science Review 72, no. 4 (1978). 1243 - 61;
58. Peter Katzenstein, Small States in World Markets ( Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985 ).
59. In 2006, the Committee, headed by a CGT lawyer, pushed forward a series of favorable bills that were opposed by the most important business associations (La Nacin, May 18, 2006). One bill that was passed severely restricts the ability of employers to change working conditions without employees' consent. A second bill, passed in March, enhances workers' rights in firms undergoing bankruptcy trials. Other initiatives raise once again severance payments, extend from two to ten years the maximum litigation period in labor trials, enhance litigation power of workers that suffer work-related accidents, and ban wage earners from working on Sundays.
60. According to recent research conducted by the Social Law Observatory of the CTA union confederation, 21 percent of the collective agreements closed between 2002 and 2006 include monetary contributions to the unions on the part of business and/or workers (mandatory for union members and nonmembers alike). The CTA denounces the fact that, through this mechanism, many workers not aligned with the dominant CGT unions are forced to contribute to their finances. See "Modelo Sindical y Aportes Obligatorios," Social Law Observatory, CTA, 2007.
61. Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier, " Inducements Versus Constraints: Disaggregating 'Corporatism, '" American Political Science Review 73, no. 4 (1979). 967 - 86.
62. Sebastin Etchemendy, " Repression, Exclusion and Inclusion: GovernmentUnion Relations and Patterns of Labor Reform in Liberalizing Economies, " Comparative Politics 36, no. 3 (2004). 273 - 90.
63. M. Victoria Murillo, " Union Politics, Market-Oriented Reforms and the Re-Shaping of Argentine Corporatism, " in Douglas A. Chalmers, Carlos M. Vilas, Katherine Hite, Scott B. Martin, Kerianne Piester, and Monique Segarra, eds., The New Politics of Inequality in Latin America: Rethinking Participation and Representation (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1997). Sebastin Etchemendy, " Models of Economic Liberalization: Compensating the Losers in Argentina, Spain and Chile, " doctoral dissertation, Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, 2004 ; see also M. Victoria Murillo and Andrew Schrank, " With a little Help from My Friends. Partisan Politics, Transnational Alliances and Labor Rights in Latin America, " Comparative Political Studies 38, no. 8 (2005). 971 - 99.
64. In Argentina, sectoral and subsectoral unions control the administration of the health system for all the workers (union members and nonmembers alike) through a mandatory payroll tax by which revenue is granted to organized labor by law. The quality of the service varies, but in general, unions have used those resources to enhance their organizational and political goals.
65. Gabriel Yoguel, " El Trnsito de la Sustitucin de Importaciones a la Economa Abierta: Los Principales Cambios en la Estructura Industrial Argentina entre los 70 y los 90, " in B. Kosacoff, ed., El Desempeo Industrial Argentino (Buenos Aires: CEPAL, 2000).
66. Nicols Gadano, " Determinantes de la Inversin en el Sector Petrleo y Gas en la Argentina, " in Daniel Heyman and Bernardo Kosacoff, eds., La Argentina de los Noventa ( Buenos Aires: CEPAL-EUDEBA, 2000 ).
67. The new militancy of the fishing sector in Argentina underlines the importance of institutional preservation and its interaction with sectoral shifts: even a sector that is difficult to organize may build on established labor inducements (labor law, state-granted resources) to promote industrial action. Yet the fact that the shift to cheap labor sectors in Argentina was not as massive as in Chile or Mexico arguably made labor resurgence easier.
68. The Argentine manufacturing industry was and is less dependent on natural resources exploitation than its Chilean counterpart. In addition, the Argentine neoliberal experiment, developed unlike in Chile under a democracy, granted important political protections to traditional import-substitution industrialization (ISI) sectors such as petrochemicals, autos, oil, and steel, which helped them preserve their role in the postreform economy; see Etchemendy, "Models of Economic Liberalization."
69. Luis Beccaria, Valeria Esquivel, and Roxana Mauricio, " Empleo, Salarios y Equidad Durante la Recuperacin Reciente en la Argentina, " Desarrollo Econmico 45, no. 178 (2005). 235 - 62.
70. Poverty reached its peak in Argentina in the aftermath of the financial crises in 2002, when 57 percent of the population fell below the line of poverty and 24 percent below the line of indigence. In 2005, the numbers were 33.8 percent and 12.2 percent, respectively. Data from the National Institute of Statistics and Census (INDEC), www.indec.gov.ar (accessed on April 10, 2007).
71. Data from the Permanent Household Survey (EPH), National Institute of Statistics and Census (INDEC), www.indec.gov.ar (accessed on April 10, 2007).
72. Furthermore, stories about bottlenecks caused by the scarcity of trained workers in the fields of metals and welders, electronic systems, and autos in the context of high growth are common in the media; see, for example, Clarin, April 15, 2007.
73. Rosala Corts, Fernando Groisman, and Augusto Hosowszki, " Transiciones Ocupacionales: El Plan Jefas y Jefes, " Realidad Econmica, no. 202 (2002). 11 - 28.
74. The government established a 130-, 150-, and 200-peso increase during 2003 and passed two additional increases of 50 and 100 pesos in 2004 and 2005, respectively. It also sponsored minimum wage increases, through both unilateral decrees in 2003 and through tripartite bargains in the context of the Minimum Wage Council between 2004 and 2006.
75. This basic wage (bsico de convenio) is the minimum wage for each sectoral agreement and should not be confused with the base wage (salario conformado) for sectoral agreements constructed by the staff of the Ministry of Labor and presented in Figure 6. 56. Daniel Funes de Rioja, main advisor on labor issues for the industrial peak-level business association (UIA) reported, "When Kirchner ordered that the administrative wage increases of a fixed sum had to be passed to the collective agreements, he drove us mad." Interview with Daniel Funes de Rioja, UIA, Buenos Aires, June 2007.
76. Adriana Marshall and Laura Perelman, " Cambios en los Patrones de Negociacin Colectiva en Argentina y sus Factores Explicativos, " Estudios Sociolgicos 65 (2004). 409 - 34.
77. Silver, Forces of Labor.
78. Louise Haagh, " The Emperor's New Clothes: Labor Reform and Social Democratization in Chile, " Studies in International and Comparative Development 37, no. 1 (2002). 86 - 115 ;
79. Volker Frank, " Politics without Policy: The Failure of Social Concertation in Democratic Chile, " in P. Winn, ed., Victims of the Chilean Miracle ( Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004 ).
80. Bensusn and Cook, "Political Transition."
81. Wendy Hunter and Timothy Power, " Rewarding Lula: Executive Power, Social Policy and the Brazilian Elections of 2006, " Latin American Politics and Society 49, no. 1 (2007). 1 - 30.
82. Levitsky, Transforming Labor-Based Parties.
83. For a comparative assessment of the different logics of interest representation in the unionized formal sector and the newly expanded informal sector in Latin America, see Ruth Berins Collier and Samuel P. Handlin, " Shifting Interest Regimes of the Working Classes in Latin America, " Institute of Industrial Relations Working Paper Series, paper iirwps-122-05 ( University of California, Berkeley, 2005 ).