CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Since 2003, Argentina?s economic recovery has brought about significant changes in the labor market. The improvement of the job market was a key factor for the upsurge of the labor movement. In this context many studies argued that Argentina was a paradigmatic example of trade union revitalization strategies (Etchemendy & Collier, 2008) in a context in which there was consensus in the social sciences literature that labor movements were in a general and severe crisis (Silver, 2003). These studies also showed two problems for the upsurge of the labor movement: fragmentation of the labor market and precariousness. In this sense, during the last decade, there was a rich debate around the continuities and ruptures in union practices, and the possibilities of trade unions to represent a more heterogeneous working world.In this presentation we change the focus of the analysis: we do not explore how fragmentation makes the collective organization of workers more difficult. Instead, we focus the analysis on the positions and practices of trade unions against subcontracting. The article suggests that although outsourcing tends to fragment the working class, it does not necessarily imply a weakening of the power of the trade unions. In fact, it shows that there are certain union strategies that can reverse it. Taking the notion of ?strategic power? (Womarck, 2007) and the concepts of ?structural power? and ?associational power? (Silver, 2005), we present a qualitative study of three labor conflicts that involved different trade union strategies against outsourcing: the case of the Railway Union (Unión Ferroviaria); the conflict between the Union of Workers in Commerce (Sindicato de Empleados de Comercio) and the Truck Drivers Union (Sindicato de Choferes de Camiones); and the conflict in the Bahia Blanca Petrochemical Pole that involved the Petrochemical Union (Sindicato de Trabajadores Químicos y Petroquímicos).

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