CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Historically, well-established labour institutions ensured that union membership in Argentina increased pari passu with employment; key institutions were: legal recognition of monopoly of representation in collective bargaining to the union with the largest membership (i.e. absence of inter-union competition); legal recognition of union workplace representation; an extensive scheme of union-managed health care for workers; legally-binding clauses in collective agreements stipulating agency shop; and a highly developed system of union service provision to members. From the 1950s and until the 1990s, the unionisation rate in Argentina was not only high in terms of international standards but also relatively stable, in spite of changes, sometimes drastic, in the economic and political regimes. In this context, and reinforced by factors that contribute to de-link trade union power from the number of members, trade union recruitment strategies tended to be passive, concentrating in core territories with high unionisation levels, and there was little innovation in practices and mechanisms. From the mid 1990s, among other relevant changes, unemployment rose dramatically as a result of economic liberalisation with enduring domestic currency appreciation, employment levels fell considerably in several major economic activities, and the structure of employment was transformed, with the notorious expansion of both temporary contracts and, particularly, precarious employment, not entitled to union membership. These processes reduced, much more significantly than ever before, the number of union members (but not necessarily the rate of unionisation). This period ended in the profound crisis of the beginning of the 2000s, with further employment declines. Following significant economic policy changes (devaluation in particular), the economy started to recover in 2003. During 2003-2007, a period of rapid economic and employment growth, trade unions faced renewed opportunities for recruitment. However, the context now was different from the pre-1990s, historically prevalent conditions, because i) precarious employment continued to account for a high employment share; and ii) certain processes taking place in the 1990s, e.g. changes in relevant labour institutions and a reduced union capacity to deliver, might have undermined the credibility of the unions and/or the recruitment efficacy of traditional institutions in the longer term. In this new setting, were trade unions driven to design and implement more active recruitment strategies directed at expanding their membership, incorporating innovative practices and extending recruitment territories to include non-core workers? To provide some answers to this question in this paper we analyse the recruitment practices of a relevant number of trade unions in the period 2003-2007. These unions correspond to a variety of economic activities (manufacturing, services, public utilities, government administration), have different sizes (from 5,000 to over 100,000 members) and legal structures (single national unions, federations of local unions, local unions), and are affiliated to alternative larger labour confederations. First, we discuss conceptual issues (section 1), the key historical institutions regulating trade union activity in Argentina and how they contributed to shape traditional union recruitment strategies (section 2), and the relevant contextual transformations that took place from the 1990s, that might have had an influence upon union recruitment (section 3). In section 4, recruitment practices in 2003-2007 are analysed, as well as union assessment of the main motives that induce workers to join unions, and of the main obstacles to unionization, both of which underlie the structure of incentives adopted by the labour organizations to promote unionisation. Conclusions are presented in section 5. We conclude that, in spite of labour market and other relevant transformations, in the 2003-2007 period there was little change in union recruitment strategies. We argue that this continuity may be explained by the resilience of those labour institutions that in the past had guaranteed high levels of union membership, and the consequent enduring efficacy of traditional recruitment practices. The very few innovations that could be identified in this 2003-2007 period, including some moves to non-traditional recruitment territories, were implemented by a minority of unions that, contrary to the typical pattern, faced some form of competition and/or had not yet obtained legal recognition of labour representation in collective bargaining.

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