Pragmatism, ideology or politics? Unions? and workers? responses to the imposition of neo-liberalism in Argentina

ATZENI, M.; GHIGLIANI, P.

International Handbook on Labour Unions: responses to neo-liberalism

Edward Elgar.

Lugar: Cheltenham; Año: 2011; p. 44 - 61

Neoliberalism has imposed itself as paradigm of the world economy through geographically and historically uneven processes, producing changes in the social milieu and institutional frameworks of nations in different forms and at different times. These variations in national contexts, important as they are to explain differences for instance in terms of trade unions opposition or accommodation to the system, cannot be grasped however without considering both the economic and political aspects associated to neoliberalism. The generalized implementation of market oriented economic policies, the liberalization of labour markets, the commodification of the former public sector through privatization, the financialization of the economy, should not be seen then just as changes in the economic sphere but as parts of a more general political project. As David Harvey has argued, this project, starting as reaction to the 1970s economic and social turmoil, aimed at re-establishing conditions for capital accumulation and restoration of class power and involved both the creative destruction of institutions, social relations, work organizations and welfare systems and an hegemonic discourse, which legitimized market reforms as natural and common-sense. Harvey?s analysis of neoliberalism as a worldwide project aimed at rebalancing class relationship and thus comprehending an economic, political and ideological dimensions, seems particularly relevant in the case of Argentina, where since 1976 a combination of all these dimensions have appeared, responding to macroeconomic international variables, local political struggles and social conflicts. Three main neo-liberal phases can be identified. The liberalization of the economy introduced by the military dictatorship of the period 1976-1983, the structural and fiscal adjustment policies, which characterized the return to democracy in 1983-1989, and the massive program of privatizations, public sector reform and labour flexibility implemented during the 1990s but opened by the economic terror of the hyperinflation of 1989-1990. Since the 2001 economic and political crisis, a neo-developmental and agricultural commodities export oriented scheme has moved away from crude neo-liberalism, though not reversing the structural changes brought about by the previous decades. These phases have, in turn, differently affected workers and trade unions, which have alternated between full or partial rejection, forced or pragmatic acceptance, complicit or explicit consensus, reflecting not just, within each of these phases, a variety of political and ideological approaches, but occasionally important differences between institutional and grass root based responses. However, as the chapter will show, this diversity does not allow for a clear cut distinction between different trade unions? ideological stances toward neoliberalism. These tactical oscillations and more in general trade unions? politics in Argentina cannot, however, be fully comprehended without considering some distinctive institutional, political and organizational features, around which the activity of trade unions has been structured. In this respect a crucial aspect is represented by the history of Peronism, a union based political movement, which has marked the political landscape of the country since mid?1940s.