Dinerstein, AC (2013) ‘From Corporatist to Autonomous: Unemployed Workers Organisations and the remaking of labour subjectivity in Argentina’ In Howell, J (2013) Non Governmental Public Action and Social Justice, Vol. 2, Palgrave Macmillan 36-59 From Corporatist to Autonomous: Unemployed Workers Organisations and the remaking of labour subjectivity in Argentina Ana Cecilia Dinerstein

Introduction This chapter is about the transformation of the subjectivity of labour during the

second half of the 1990s in Argentina, and in particular, the role of unemployed

workers in the politicisation of labour issues and the emergence of new forms of non-

governmental public action. The subjectivity of labour refers to the historical forms of

identity, organisation, mobilisation and political contestation through with labour

subjects articulate collective action within a particular context. The chapter focuses on

the contentious political dynamics around neo-liberal reforms between what is called

here ‘labour subjects’ and the state. These dynamics include the relationship between

the labour movement and new labour subjects in search of adequate forms of

resistance to new forms of subordination that emerged out of the process of

transformation.

During the past decade a significant amount of research has documented the

worldwide transformation of labour produced by neo-liberal globalisation. The

growth of the service sector, the increase in casual and flexible labour on the one

hand, and unemployment, the growth of female participation in the labour market and

the crisis of trade unions on the other hand, have been seen as the most important

aspects of neo-liberal transformation (Munck, 2000, also Rifkin, 1995; Aronowitz and

DiFazio, 1995). The effects of these transformations on trade union strategies have

also been addressed. Notions such as ‘new internationalism’ (Munck, 2000; Munck

and Waterman, 1999; Costa, 2006; Lambert and Webster, 2006; Hyman, 2005) and

‘social movement unionism’ (Moody, 1997), together with analysis of new patterns of

labour resistance (Waddington, 1999) and organisation (Pollert, 1996; Taylor and

Mathers, 2002; Mathers, 1999) have been mobilised to account for the innovation of

2

working class organisations after the ‘neo-liberal dismantling of the world of work’

(Boltanski and Chiapello, 2006).

Studies of labour in Latin America have also taken trade union crisis as the

focus of their analysis. For example, Zapata (2004) argues that such crisis can be

explained by considering how structural reforms have affected the two main sources

of union power (i.e. control over the labour process and over the labour market, and

access to political power and the state) within a context marked by both the transition

from the import substitution model of industrialisation to the trans-nationalisation of

the domestic market, and from authoritarian political regimes to new democracies.

While changes in trade unions, have been the main focus for those concerned with the

paralysing effects of neo-liberal globalisation on labour collective action, less

attention has been given to the processes through which new labour subjects emerge

and influence labour resistance. This is important in those cases where the

mobilisation of new labour subjects has overwhelmed trade union actions (de la Garza

Toledo, 2005) and become paramount to the politics of the country.

The theoretical premise in this study of the transformation of labour

subjectivity in Argentina is that capital cannot exorcise labour since ‘labour is the

presupposition of social existence as a whole, a presupposition from which capital

cannot autonomise itself’ (Bonefeld, 1996: 181). Thus, the forms of identity,

organisation, mobilisation and politics through which the subjects of labour articulate

collective action within a particular context (which I call the subjectivity of labour),

change permanently as an intrinsic aspect of the production of the social relation of

capital, process which subordinates, transforms and utilises human productive

activities for the purpose of profit making. This does not mean that the latter

‘determines’ the former, but rather that the former is permanently being

(re)constituted through the different forms of subordination of labour that emerge out

of changes in the process of capital accumulation , such as unemployment. In short,

the forms of identity, organisation and so through which labour subjects engage in

collective action are temporary and historical. A focus on the temporality and

historical specificity of the subjectivity of labour helps us to both move away from

disempowering interpretations of the ‘crisis’ of trade unions and the ‘defeat’ of labour

and to craft a better picture of the processes underpinning the transformation of the

subjectivity of labour.

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By exploring this case, I show that neo-liberal policies did not obliterate the

power of labour resistance by emasculating the trade unions, but rather that they

triggered, instead, a process of re-defining the nature and institutional boundaries of

trade unions in particular, and of the subjectivity of labour in general. Whilst the

traditional union bureaucracy remained financially powerful as it simultaneously

became increasingly detached from the rank-and-file, the mobilisation of the latter

within the workplace combined with grassroots mobilisation outside the workplace to

nourisha trade union renewal and the emergence of new labour subjects, such as

unemployed workers. As a result these new labour subjects, either jointly with or

separately from the trade unions, politicised society in new ways, constructing an anti-

neo-liberal discourse and introducing new values and practices to reinvent the world

of work.

Autonomous forms of organisation and collective action gradually emerged

and overwhelmed the corporatist tendencies of the labour movement. They redefined

the nature of union power in that they participated in the mobilisation of wider sectors

of civil society. They were able to articulate the demands of different labour subjects

on the one hand, and also enabled new labour subjects to develop alternative ways of

conceptualising ‘unemployment’ and ‘work’, and translate these into innovative

practices that challenged mainstream conceptions of social justice. Paradoxically, they

militated against the bureaucratisation and collapse of unions, thus democratising

rather than disempowering the Argentinean labour movement.

The chapter begins with a critical review of neo-liberalism, labour and

subjectivity in Latin America. It provides a general overview of neo-liberal structural

adjustment in Argentina and the rise of resistance to it. The next two sections explore

three developments that have reshaped the labour movement, including the birth of

the movement of the unemployed, and their role during the protests against the IMF

(1999-2002) leading to the crisis of 2001. The final section discusses the contribution

of unemployed workers’ organisations to reshaping the subjectivity of labour.

I. Labour on the road to (in)stability

During the second half of the 1970s, the supply of international loans in Latin

American countries created an enormous external debt, which reached a critical point

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in 1982. In the Southern cone countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile), military regimes

had created the conditions for financial speculation that was supported by state

subsidies to business, which became a means of making quick and substantial profit.

The eventual crisis of the external debt fostered the subsequent democratisation

processes with the new governments being squeezed between civil society’s demands

for a solution to poverty and human rights violations, and international creditors’

pressures for economic stability to service the external debt. Inspired by the

Washington Consensus (WC), stabilisation policies in the region were seen as a

precondition for economic growth. The WC diagnosis claimed that ‘the roots of Latin

American instability and lack of growth lie in the import-substitution strategy of

industrialisation (ISI) adopted in the post-war period’ (Fanelli et al, 1994, p. 102).

According to this discourse, the ISI had led to both the ‘hypertrophy’ of state

apparatuses and functions and to ‘economic populism’, i.e. the infirmity of the

governments which tolerated pressures for wage increases in the public and private

sectors, leading to deficit and inflation’ (Boron, 1993, pp. 62-63).

During the transition to democracy (1982-1999), the General Confederation of

Labour (Confederación General del Trabajo, CGT) strongly rejected the WC

diagnosis, which blamed unions for being the prime cause of instability. The

Confederation organised 13 general strikes to demand both wage increases and a

moratorium on paying the external debt created during the dictatorship of the three

consecutive Military Juntas led by General Jorge Rafael Videla (1976-1982), without

which no social justice could be achieved.

In 1989, a run against the dollar by those financial institutions involved in the

earlier ‘creation’ of the external debt, produced what is called a ‘market cup’ (as

opposed to a ‘cup d’etat’), which brought about unmanageable hyper-inflation in a

political context where pressure from trade unions, human rights activists, the military

and business was mounting. President Alfonsín was forced to hand in his resignation

before completing his term of office. The recently elected candidate from the

Justicialista (Peronist) party, Carlos Menem, was prepared to take power. In April

1991, a stabilisation programme based on the devaluation of the national currency and

the pegging of the Argentine peso to the US dollar at a rate of one to one reduced

inflation and set the country on the course to ‘stability’. The taming of hyper-inflation

by Minister Cavallo’s Convertibility Plan was considered to be an economic miracle,

given the chronic economic and political instability of the country. Unlawful methods

5

of administration such as ‘emergency legislation’ and ‘Need and Urgency Decrees’,

gave the executive ‘sweeping powers’ (Adelman, 1994, p. 82) to implement a drastic

reform which changed the ‘very organizational principles of the welfare state’

(Barbeito and Goldberg, 2007, p.187).

In the general elections of May 1989 the majority of trade union leaders and

workers voted for the Peronist candidate, Carlos Menem. But, Menem came to power

‘as a populist hope to both stabilise the economy and provide a renewed emphasis on

social justice … what workers actually received, however, was something quite

different.’ (Richards, 1995, p. 60). Menem’s political conversion to neo-liberalism

initially shocked the trade union bureaucracy. When it became clear that the objective

of the government’s stabilisation policies was to pacify the labour movement and

obliterate its financial and political power, disagreements over strategy emerged

within the CGT. This led to a three-way split in the CGT. Two new poles of trade

union opposition were created outside of the CGT. The first was the Argentine

Workers Central (Central de Trabajadores Argentinos, CTA) that was established in

1992. This soughtto organise the fragmented struggles against unemployment and for

welfare reform, and involved trade unions in the public sector, in ex-state-owned

companies, mining and ports, some metallurgical, maritime and rubber industries, The

second new pole of trade union organisation was the Argentine Workers Movement

(Movimiento de Trabajadores Argentinos, MTA), founded in 1994. This brought

together more than twenty transport unions that had previously been part of the CGT

but that were now opposed to the labour reforms implemented by Menem. . These two

new trade union federations mobilised workers against the reforms and confronted

head on the Menemist sectors of the CGT about their strategic orientations towards

the transformation of labour under Menem. Yet, at the same time, a heterogeneous

movement of unemployed workers was emerging and becoming ever more critical to

the politics of the country.

II. The neo-liberal reforms: An overview

A detailed analysis of the neo-liberal reforms in Argentina is beyond the scope of this

chapter. Instead, it focuses on the key areas of reform, which are paramount for an

understanding of the transformation of labour and the labour movement. The Law of

6

Reform of the State (23,696/89) established the legal framework for the privatisation

of state-owned companies and gave the executive the power to eliminate ‘unprofitable

sectors’ in the public sector. Privatisation was a welcome ‘option’ for external

creditors, for local and foreign investors, and for the Argentine government, which

was under pressure from foreign creditors to pay off its debts and which was eager to

re-establish its cash flow and put its foreign accounts into order (Gerchunoff 1993, pp.

18-19). So the selling of state-owned companies offered the possibility of achieving a

quick reduction of the external debt by means of debt-equity swaps (Fuchs, 1993).

Once the waiver from creditors was obtained (as state-owned companies had been

given as a guarantee for the external debt to creditors, during the previous

administration), the government sold all ninety-three companies, allowing the rapid

recomposition and re-grouping of the capitalist class.

Not only was genuine income generated through privatisation restricted due to

the debt equity swap system, but it also was not reflected in the structural and

fundamental changes in the economy. Privatisation was also an obscure process

secured by the use of bribes and illegal commissions, by the government’s coercion of

institutions in charge of monitoring transparency, through the repression of the

unions, which opposed privatisation, and through the corruption of parliament

(Dinerstein, 1993; Basualdo 2002a: 69). The new ‘business community’ of less than

ten corporations in the areas of energy (water, electricity, gas and oil, water) transport

and iron and steel industries, premised their purchase of state-owned enterprises on

having favourable collective agreements, which modified employment and working

conditions, and deregulated industrial relations in the public and private sectors before

privatisation (Tomada, 1999, p. 185). Between 1989-1991, workers’ opposition to the

privatisation euphoria of the Menem administration spread despite the ‘anti-strike’

decree (No. 2,184/91) that forced all workers from state-owned enterprises to provide

what the government decided were ‘essential services’ (which meant 90 per cent of

services) during any strike. The law of Economic Emergency (23,697/1989) restricted

the hiring of new employees in public sector and state-owned enterprises, and

authorised efficiency and productivity policies in the public sector.

The financial decentralisation of education and health services, and provincial

budget adjustments were the next two policies introduced to achieve fiscal balance.

As demanded by the World Bank, responsibility in the provision of social services

was passed down to the provinces, while simultaneously reducing their revenues

7

(Richards, 1997, p. 34), which left local governments in several provinces and

districts (already in a critical economic situation) unable to pay wages on time, and

unable to deliver public services properly. In 1994 provincial public sector workers

mobilised against these policies and in particular against overdue wages, cuts in

education investment, suspensions and dismissals in the public as well as private

sectors, wage reductions, payment of debts to employees with bonuses, against

adjustment and redundancies, as well as against the corruption of the local

governments. A series of wildcat protests began in the northern province of Santiago

del Estero and spread throughout the country over the next two years. In terms of

sources of industrial conflict, the significane of unpaid wages and redundancies rose

from 40.6 per cent in 1992 to 70 per cent in 1995 (Gomez et al, 1996, p. 134).

The New Employment Law (NEL) of 1991 was the first legal step towards the

flexibilisation of labour, further reinforced by the Flexibilisation Bill for Small and

Medium Enterprises (PYMES) and the modification of the Employment Contract

Law. The law introduced four types of hitherto illegal fixed-term contracts, which

allowed employers to reduce their contributions to pensions, the national employment

fund and family benefit schemes by 50 to 100per cent (see Feldman, 1995).

Additionally, as will be discussed below, new legislation and decrees re-regulated

pension schemes, workers’ compensation insurance, the reduction of employers’

contributions to social security and to union-managed health systems (Obras Sociales,

OS), and the decentralisation of collective bargaining.

But the key outcome of the neo-liberal reforms of the 1990s was the

staggering increase in unemployment. In August 1995 it was revealed that since the

implementation of the convertibility plan, unemployment had risen from 6 per cent in

1991 to 18.5 per cent in that year (EpdH INDEC May, 1995). Official

pronouncements claimed that rising unemployment had to do with the success of

stability i.e the ‘influx of non-traditional job-seekers attracted by new economic

opportunities’ in the context of a still rigid labour market (McGuire, 1997, p. 222).

The opposition argued that unemployment was the product of the failure of stability,

that is the simultaneous rise in the number of job-seekers due to unemployment, low

wages and poverty that forced women, pensioners and even children to try to enter

into the labour market or to find a second job (Beccaria and López, 1995) on the one

hand, and economic growth based on job destruction on the other hand.

8

New policies were launched that sought to protect the economy from the full

effects of run-away unemployment. First, the Regional Agreement for Employment in

the North of Argentine between unions and the government as well as Regional

Agreements were signed in 1994. Second, a New National Direction of Employment

was created to deal with all aspects related to (un)employment. Third, Job Centres and

Regional Employment Departments were opened throughout the country. Fourth, a

policy to fight ‘non-registered employment’ was launched insofar as non-registered

workers earned 40 per cent less than a worker under a legal contract and were

excluded from social security during work time and from pensions at the age of

retirement. Fifth, in the absence of a universal employment benefit, the NLE included

a new contribution system funded by the National Fund for Employment that entitled

all unemployed workers who had previously worked to 50 per cent of their

highestwage over the last six months, for one month to one year maximum. However,

the benefit covered only ten per cent of the urban unemployed.

III. The reshaping of labour Business-like unionism: the CGT’s accommodation to the neo-liberal times

Although initially workers’ mobilisation and organisation was led by anarchist,

syndicalists and socialists trade unions, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the

working class was only included in political life with entry the into government of

Colonel Perón in 1943. Thereafter, labour relations came to be considered a state

affair and a highly politicised state-sponsored trade unions movement was formed.

Since then, trade unions have been organised in a pyramidal form based on the

monopoly of one union per activity or industry. Legislation enabled a very

centralised, hierarchical and financially powerful trade union system to emerge for

two reasons. First, the Law on Collective Bargaining forced employers to negotiate

with the national union on an industrial sector basis. This gave the union a

‘monopoly of representation recognized by the state, and established the right of

unions to negotiate with employers on the retention of extraordinary quotas, which

applied to members and non-members alike because the outcome of collective

bargaining included every worker’ (Murillo, 1997, p. 76). Second, legislation allowed

‘national leaders to collect union dues and compulsory fees for welfare funds through

9

a system of automatic retention at source by the employers (Law 14,250 and 23,551)’

(Murillo, 1997, p. 75). Welfare funds finance the trade union-managed health system

of Obras Sociales (OS) run by each union per branch of activity for their members

and families, which together with public hospitals and private medicine form the

health system as a whole.

Union power at stake

The introduction of collective agreements at the company level without the

intervention of the unions at the branch or industry level, the suspension of

compulsory retention of welfare funds at source and the reduction of employers’

contributions to the OS were long-term demands of both the Argentine Industrial

Business Union (UIA) and the IMF. Under Menem, a series of decrees aimed to

partially modify collective bargaining and wage policy. Decree 1757/90 swept away

the obstacles to flexibilisation by revising those clauses within collective agreements,

which according to employers ‘distorted productivity’ (Goldin, 1997, p. 31). Three

decrees (2,284/91, 1334/91 and 470/93) allowed collective bargaining below the

industry-wide level, introduced wage negotiation at a lower level than those of

branch, including the level of the enterprise, and linked wages to productivity, thus

imposing a flexible wage policy, which required decentralised negotiation,

respectively. In January 1992, the government announced its intention to reduce the

number of OS from 340 to 30-40, introduce free affiliation of workers to the OS and

create a special body that would collect the employers’ contributions and redistribute

them back amongst unions, instead of the unions retaining the contributions at source.

The ‘deal’: retaining financial power at the expense of workers’ rights

Being under the direct pressure of both the IMF to deregulate the OS and reduce the

power of trade unions, and also the unions to put a limit to the IMF, President Menem

offered the CGT leader a deal: if the CGT accepted the reduction of employers’

contributions to social security by decree 2609/93, the National Treasury would

provide extra financial support to those unions’ OS affected by such a reduction of

employers’ contributions and more union leaders would be appointed to governmental

posts. The CGT unions had to participate actively in the elaboration of new

10

flexibilisation schemes, new legislation for workers’ compensation and accidents at

work, the reform of the industrial relations system, and Menem’s re-election

campaign.

On July 25 1994 the CGT, the government and eight employers’ organisations

reached the National Agreement for Employment Productivity and Social Equity,

(AMEPE). Four pieces of legislation delivered the 16 points of the agreement

between the government, employers organised in the Argentine Industrial Union

(UIA) and the CGT in 1995. First, the Law of Flexibilisation of Labour in Small and

Medium Enterprises (PyMES) stated that an agreement at the company level could

rule over a collective agreement or even a decree or a law (i.e. the so called ‘collective

disposal’) Secondly, the reform of the Labour Contract Law (LCT, no 24,465)

introduced a training contract for three to 24 months for young people aged 14 to 25.

The first three months of the fixed-term contract were considered a probation period,

that could be extended to six months if this was agreed with the union at the company

level. Employers were exempted from contributions to pensions and to the FNE.

Third, the pension system was opened to market competition (Law

24.241/933) The previous system constituted in the 1940s required all workers to

contribute an equal percentage of their earnings to common pension funds and in

return they received an equal sum of basic, decent state pension. The new system,

which was based on previous projects designed by the IMF and inspired by the

Chilean system, combined the old individual distribution system based on a solidarity

mechanism sustained by the basic universal pension (PBU) plus a compensatory

pension (PC) provided by the state, with a new system of capitalisation open to

market competition. The latter induced the creation of privately administered

retirement funds, namely, Insurance Pensions Funds (Aseguradoras de Fondos de

Jubilaciones y Pensiones, AFJyP). The AFJP funds were constituted as a limited

company involving an administration, bank and an insurance company whose

function was to manage investment funds. However, the contributors to the funds

were essentially `captive’ contributors, who were not consulted about the use of their

contributions. In addition, each worker needed to buy a life insurance. Workers

contributed 11 per cent of their salaries, the insurance contributed between 1.5 to 2

per cent and the AFJP commission contributed between 2 and 4 per cent. Only

between 6 and 7.5 per cent out of eleven per cent went to the capitalisation fund from

which, if everything went well, workers would get their pensions. This mechanism

11

gave the AFJPs extraordinary profits with absolute no risk (Muchnick, 2000: 83-4).

As will be discussed below, it also became a business opportunity for the unions

joining CGT.

Fourthl, Law 24,557 eliminated the clause requiring the protection of workers

that had been established under the previous the labour code and civil code. This law

was successful in reducing legal disputes labour costs. It also raised the level of

uncertainty among workers who were banned from initiating a case against their

employers. The counterpart of the withdrawal of protection by the law was the

creation, by the same bill, of new private entities with lucrative ends hired by the

employers to protect themselves from accident compensation: the Risk at Work Funds

(ART). Unions were allowed to create their own ART and collaborate in the company

risk assessments. Employers were thereby exempted from their responsibility for

accidents since, with some exceptions, an accident was considered a civil and not a

labour issue.

In exchange for the legitimisation of these policies, unions joining the CGT

not only retained their power of bargaining and secured their financial resources (OS)

but they also even increased their ‘power’ by participating in business that emerged

out of the reforms. In addition to this, some of these unions were successful in `doing

business’ out of the privatisation of state-owned companies, as well as the

deregulation of pensions, safety at work, and health.

. Strong unions created firms that hired laid-off workers, they took advantage

of outsourcing; managed the Property Shareholders Programme, which gave workers

10per cent of the sale of the company by authorising the sales of the workers’ shares;

and participated actively in the new deregulation of the pension system either by

creating together with a bank and an insurance company their own AFJP or by

mediating between AFJPs and workers. Similarly, trade unions and employers jointly

participated in the constitution of the workers’ compensation insurance schemes

(Aseguradoras de Riesgo de Trabajo, ARTs).

As promised, the government first, compensated the union bureaucracy for the

reduction of employers’ contributions to social security and to the OS, which fell by

fifty per cent total in 1994, and second, delayed the deregulation of the OS. In

addition to this, and ignoring IMF discontent with the labour reforms (Memorandum

of April 1998), the government reassured the CGT leaders of the organisational power

of their unions. They did thisfirst by reinforcing the role of centralised collective

12

bargaining. This was done through Law 25,013/ 98, which made unions at either

branch level or according to their activity, the legal representative again in collective

bargaining at the company level, unless this representation was delegated by the

central unions to the committee of enterprise. They also did this byk , by separating

out the Solidarity Fund for the OS from the national budget and transferring it to the

control of a tripartite body constituted by the CGT, capital and the government. The

decree aimed to bring back both the power of negotiation over the funds for the OS

and the power to manage financially the annual $ 360 million pesos in the funds.

However, the decree was suspended by the courts after the CTA claimed it was anti-

constitutional.

Challenging state-sponsored unionism: the Syndicalist Movement (Sindicalismo Movimientista) of the CTA The Argentine Workers’ Central (CTA) was created in 1992 as a new pole of

opposition to neo-liberal reforms with the aim of organising the fragmented resistance

that had emerged in the course of casualisation, unemployment, poverty, and the

criminalisation of poverty. The CTA brought together mostly public sector and some

industrial and service unions to become the voice of the unemployed, poor and

marginalised (Dinerstein, 2001; 2003). The CTA founders argued that ‘the old trade

union model, which was sustained by its dependence on political power and its

complicity with economic power, was no longer the tool to channel workers’ demands

and defend workers’ achievements and rights’ (Senén González and Bosoer, 1999:

76).

The CTA pursued what has been called ‘social movement unionism’ (Moody

1997): the central redefined trade unionism on a wider and more social and pluralist

basis than before, becoming the force for a process of networking with other social

movements and social and political organisations at the local, national and

international level. The CTA contested the traditional state-sponsored Peronist trade

unionism by proposing three new premises: independence from the state,

independence from political parties, and direct affiliation to the central union, the

latter including the unemployed and those who were technically ‘socially excluded’.

These three premises stood consciously in contrast to the three pillars that

underpinned the previous forms of trade unionism: statism, political dependence on

13

the Peronist Justicialista Movement, and centralisation and bureaucratisation of the

labour movement. At the workplace, they encouraged individual membership and a

relationship between individual workers and the central union. At the political level,

they aimed to give voice to the public sector and state workers as well as the diversity

of subjects emerging from the process of transformation such as the unemployed,

pensioners and the poor. With regard to membership, the CTA made some key

changes so that individual workers and the unemployed as well as pensioners or other

social groups could join the central union and vote for the executive committee

directly, avoiding the traditional hierarchical system. In addition to general strikes,

strikes, marches and demonstrations, the CTA’s tactics against neo-liberalism moved

outside of the workplace towards an engagement of the unions with other

organisations in civil society and the general public.

Reappropriating the public space: teachers’ hunger strike under the White Tent of Dignity

One of the best examples of the CTA’s re appropriation of the public space and the

expansion of unions’ concerns and struggles is the White Tent of Dignity. Whilst the

decentralisation of education (1992) reinforced inequality in working conditions and

wages among teachers, the new Federal Law of Education passed in 1993 provoked

resistance from teachers joining the Argentinean Confederation of Teachers

(Confederación de Trabajadores de la Educación de la República Argentina,

CETERA within CTA as it altered the allocation of national resources to the

provinces and limited the possibility of investing in education. As strikes,

demonstrations and negotiation with provincial authorities did not produce any

results, in April 1997, the National Congress of the Teachers’ Union initiated a

hunger strike under what was called the White Tent of Dignity located opposite the

National Congress in Buenos Aires. Alongside the teachers’ hunger strike were

marches and general strikes organised by unions joining CTA and MTA. These broad

protests served to nationalise and universalise teachers’ demands. These demands

included increased funding for education, the suspension of the Federal Law of

Education, payment of overdue wages, job stability and wage increases. They also

served to link problems of education with unemployment, poverty, and exclusion and

14

underlined the significance of education to overcoming uneven development and

inequality.

The CTA’s First National Meeting for the Unemployed

A second example of the CTA’s intention to network and represent wider sectors of

society was the organisation of the First National Meeting for the Unemployed in

August 1997. Whilst the CGT leadership argued that a union’s job is to represent the

workers and not the unemployed, the organisation of the unemployed and casual

workers became one of the key CTA’s goals. At the gathering, representatives of

incipient unemployed workers organisations with diverse backgrounds and political

affiliations from all over the country shared their experiences and provided the CTA

leadership with a picture of the collective action that was being undertaken by

unemployed workers. These ranged from achieving special treatment for the

unemployed with regard to the payment for public services, to tax exemption,

suspension of mortgages with no interest paid to the Housing National Fund

(FONAVI), free public transport, training courses for the unemployed in

telecommunications temporary jobs by agreements with small companies, and

training for small businesses and professional counselling, particularly for treating

male unemployed workers traumatised through unemployment. As will be shown

later on, the CTA’s goal of organising the ‘disorganised’ and in particular the

unemployed, was only partially achieved by the creation of the Housing and Land

Federation (FTV) within the Central (Dinerstein, 2001)

Piqueteros! The birth of a labour subject

Roadblocks: Making unemployment visible

In June 1996 and March 1997 two popular demonstrations supported by roadblocks

and general and hunger strikes, were initiated by public sector workers, the

unemployed and their communities in Cutral-Có and Plaza Huincul, Neuquén. These

communities had been deeply affected by the process of privatisation and public

sector reforms and company restructuring. The roadblocks also became battlegrounds,

where entire communities resisted state repression until negotiations, usually

15

mediated by the Church, took place to discuss social programmes and benefits, job

creation for those dismissed through privatisation, discounts in gas and electricity

bills, and productive investments in the area. The roadblocks in Neuquén consolidated

a new form of protest that spread widely in the following three years in the north and

south of the country progressively involving retirees, students, and workers They

facilitated the visibility of the unemployed (Dinerstein, 2002) and the formation of the

Piquetero identity of resistance, as well as allowed the local communities to

reconstruct solidarity and implement grass-roots action restoring the social fabric.

The Unemployed Workers Organisations (UWOs) The UWOs were created piecemeal and patchily out of incipient local organisations

undertaking collective action to fight against the effects of privatisation public sector

reforms and company restructuring. The UWOs evolved from ad hoc and spontaneous

protest organisations born at the roadblocks and grew into flexible but relatively

stable organisations, deploying a broad repertoire of newly devised and traditional

forms of collective action such as trade unions and social movements. The

organisations differed according to distinct strategic orientations and political

projects. The Land and Housing Federation (FTV) was created within the CTA in July

1998 to represent unemployed workers from the La Matanza County (greater Buenos

Aires). The history of the FTV goes back to the creation of the Neighbourhood

Network and the land occupations in El Tambo by a group of 200 families in 1986.

The leader of El Tambo, now leader of the FTV, became a member of the executive

committee of the union central, and manager of the unemployment programs for the

region. The CTA also developed a close alliance with the Classist Combative Current

(CCC) and forged political links with the Maoist Argentine Communist Revolutionary

Party. Both the FTV and the CCC agreed with the CTA’s demand that income

redistribution and job creation should constitute the basis for a political project based

on national economic development, sovereign autonomy and democratisation. The

National Piquetero Block (BPN) united the UWOs linked to left political parties,

rejecting what they believed to be the reformist demands for inclusion of the CTA.

For them, the unemployed were a fundamental protagonist of the political struggle for

socialism. For the BPN the idea of jobs for everyone and a fair distribution of income,

that was promoted by the CTA, represented a deeper subordination of labour into the

16

capitalist logic. Autonomous groupings were also reluctant to join the CTA. They

devoted their energies to transforming neighbourhoods into territories of democratic

participation and to exploring new forms of producing solidarity (Dinerstein, 2008).

In contrast to the CTA’s demand for ‘income distribution’ and the BPN’s struggle for

socialism, the autonomous sector (UTD Mosconi, MTD Solano) aimed to construct a

‘counter-power’ from below (see Chatterton, 2005; Colectivo Situaciones, 2001;

MTD Solano, 2002; MTD Solano and Colectivo Situaciones, 2002).

Contesting workfare: the UWOS’ cooperative projects

It was at the roadblocks that the UWOs won their ability to negotiate and manage

employment and social programmes, and learned to negotiate with the provincial or

national governments for social programmes, and for individual benefits to be

distributed by them to their unemployed worker members. In other words, in the

absence of a universal employment benefit, monthly payments for a fixed period of

time from several different specialised schemes and social programmes were paid by

the government to the unemployed but distributed by the UWOs among those

unemployed workers who were registered with the organisation, and were willing to

undertake community work that had been agreed by that community. These

‘unemployed workers’ were therefore simultaneously ‘workers’ in projects run by the

UWOs (e.g. housing construction) and ‘recipients’ of state programmes. As a female

unemployed worker from the MTD Solano put it, ‘I have been working as an

unemployed worker since 2001’ (MTD Solano, 2002)

Each of the many extant UWOs learned soon how to move ‘between the road

and the neighbourhood’ (Svampa and Pereyra, 2003), that is to simultaneously

maintain high levels of grass-roots mobilisation and organisation, and to implement

autonomous endeavours that have influenced both local communities and the politics

of the country to the present day. The resources obtained via mobilisation and

resistance allowed what had been earlier strategies of alleviating the effects of neo-

liberal reforms to evolve into sophisticated community ventures. These community

projects ranged from land occupation and housing construction to the creation of work

cooperatives and community farms, recycling, the negotiation of temporary jobs for

the local unemployed and the creation of ad hoc job exchanges.

17

A common feature of the ventures is their political dimension: their goal was

to replace the individualism of social policies with innovative forms of sociability,

reallocating resources from federal employment and social programmes to community

ventures in housing, education, employment and environmental issues. These

endeavours challenged workfare by transforming the shortcomings of workfare as

seen in the workfare employment and social programmes into opportunities to

develop locally crafted community-based projects. For example, the Unemployed

Workers’ Union (UTD), that was created in 1996 by former workers from the former

state-owned oil company Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales YPF, established a local

cooperative project and supplanted the state in addressing significant public concerns

such as recycling, environmental protection, street and road cleaning, education and

housing.

In order to form cooperatives the UTD sought the help of local companies.

Among the most important projects were the housing co-operative project, -which

developed through an agreement between the UTD and the Salta Provincial Institute

for Housing under the Federal Programme of Housing Emergency; the recycling of

plastic bottles project; the project of bean selection and packaging; the garment

factory; the wood recycling and environmental protection project; and the creation of

a new college.

The UWO’s union-like role

Some of the UWOs also mobilised the unemployed to discuss with local firms the

creation of temporary jobs, wages and working conditions for the unemployed. In

doing so, they deployed different forms of collective action and organisational

devices which were not led by trade unions. Some of thesewere traditional forms of

union action while others were more innovative. The UTD constructed and constantly

up-dated a register with the personal details and job history of each unemployed

worker. It organised a team which systematically visited the main companies in

charge of large projects in such as construction, engineering, and oilin the area. It

listed the needs of the company and put pressure on them to hire unemployed workers

frorm UTD. Once the workers got a job, the UTD agreed hourly or monthly wages,

working conditions, pensions and training. Interestingly, the UTD was recognised by

local firms as a legitimate representative, signing ‘macro agreements’ and ‘collective

18

agreements’ with companies to keep social peace. Before a company started working

in the area, they held a meeting with the UTD to discuss labour conditions and the

basic terms of employment. If the companies needed workers with specific skills, the

UTD decided collectively which of its registered workers were able to take the job

and did the administrative work for workers to start receiving their wages. If the

company did not comply with the agreement, the UTD implemented simultaneously

two forms of direct ‘industrial’ action. Outside the company, the ‘access blockade’

(corte de acceso) by the UTD members prevented the flow of trucks in and out of the

company . Inside the company, those who had been hired temporarily by the company

through the UTD, undertook a ‘production line stoppage’ (corte de línea). Through

this direct action, the UTD pressed its demands for genuine jobs, better labour

conditions, negotiation of benefits and extras, respect for agreements, donations of

raw materials, and fees for the UWO.

IV. Social mobilisation and the re-politicisation of labour: trade unions and the UWOs against the IMF (1999-2002)

The labour reform under de la Rua (1999-2001): corruption, roadblocks and cabinet reshuffle towards the crisis

The political collapse of the ruling coalition government in 2001 was largely due to

both the corruption within the Senate around the voting for labour reforms and the

persistence of the roadblocks and general strikes. The de la Rua administration started

its term in office by ruthlessly repressing a roadblock in Corrientes, which resulted in

the death of two workers During April and May 2000, a new country-wide wave of

roadblocks reached massive proportions in the north and south. Despite the two-digit

unemployment rate and the social unrest, the government’s two obsessions were still

the decentralisation of collective bargaining and the deregulation of the OS. These

were achieved by decree despite the strong opposition from the unions. . In April

2001 the ongoing dispute within the national cabinet between those defending the

country’s financial performance and obligations and those pushing for social reform,

especially related to ‘unemployment’ broke, the coalition in power: those cabinet

members who belonged to the centre-left wing of the political front Solidarity

Country (Frente País Solidario, FREPASO) within the Alianza left the government in

19

opposition to the subordination of the de la Rua administration to the IMF and the

demands of the banks (Dinerstein, 2001).

This breakdown of the coalition was followed by increasing economic and

financial instability . Internal struggles within the Cabinet led to resignations and

reshuffles. Then, Domingo Cavallo returned to the Ministry of Economics to launch

the Zero Deficit Plan demanded by the IMF. This prompted white-collar workers and

the middle class to join the popular protests that were led by the trade unions and the

UWOs. The government reduced wages and pensions by 13per cent affecting 92per

cent of the public sector workers’ wages. On July 19th 2001, a general strike was

organised by the CGT and the CTA. This was followed by protests, in which the

increasingly impoverished middle classes now took part. .

Nationalisation of the Roadblocks, the ‘National Front Against Poverty’ and the CTA’s popular referendum In July 2001, for the first time, fifty roadblocks took place simultaneously throughout

the country. Moreover, these were not taking place in remote areas of the country but

on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Whilst the struggle of the UWOs was supported by

other sectors of the population of Buenos Aires, who had, not long ago, remained

indifferent to the struggles of the ‘unemployed’ Concerned about continuing

negotiations with the IMF, the government refused to acknowledge the significance of

social and labour protest and, in understating their magnitude, continued to

criminalise their activities. The presence of the G7 leaders, as well as the direct

intervention of the US in national matters, in addition to the Zero Deficit Bill,

inflamed the climate of social unrest. A two-day nation-wide protest took place on

August 7 and 8, involving roadblocks, strikes, neighbourhood and workplace

assemblies, strikes, soup kitchens, public classes, and marches in several provinces of

the country.

Whilst the government’s economic team was pouring over the question of how

to eliminate the deficit, almost three million people voluntarily participated in a four-

day popular referendum organised by the National Front Against Poverty

(FRENAPO) on 13-16 December 2001, which resulted in massive support for the

CTA’s proposal of a ‘redistribution shock’. The CTA-FTV ‘Income Distribution

Shock, National Autonomy and Democracy’ entailed a more comprehensive strategy

of income distribution, which would spur demand and rejuvenate the domestic

20

economy, suppress recession, force capital to respond more closely to the needs of the

population, and force the state to invest in the unemployed, pensioners and young

people rather than in subsidising capital. Unlike the government’s patchy employment

programmes, the CTA’s project set out to have an impact on the level of demand and

the development of the domestic market so as to reactivate the economy, move out of

recession and discipline capital in line with the needs of the population (IDEP-CTA,

2002)

Crisis and institutionalisation

In December 2001, there was both a financial collapse and the country defaulted on

the external debt, as the IMF failed to provide Argentina with another loan. There

were also mass protests, mainly in the capital and other large cities. Dollar peso

convertibility was ended. All this spelled the end of the de la Rua government. Suffice

it to say that December 2001 embodied both the collapse of neo-liberal and

stabilisation policies and the consolidation and expansion of the resistance which

emerged against the ‘violence of stability’ (Dinerstein, 1999; 2002). The

demonstration of 19th and 20th December 2001 under the banner of ¡Que se vayan

todos! (Out with them all!) was not led by any political party or trade union but was

driven by ‘the people’, who, occupied public space, demanded an end to the effects of

neo-liberal globalisation, IMF rule in domestic matters and corrupt politics and

business (Dinerstein, 2004).

The new government’s devaluation policy accelerated poverty, as inflation

eroded the incomes of wage earners, so that by mid-2002 more than 57 per cent of

Argentines lacked sufficient income to cover their basic needs. The new social

programme ‘Male and Female Unemployed Heads of Household’ (Jefas y Jefes de

Hogar Desocupados, JyJHD) sought to assist heads of household and to achieve

constitutional family rights to social inclusion that were enshrined in the National

Constitution. This social programme provided a cash transfer of 150 pesos (£30) per

month to eligible individuals who were required to engage in productive work or

training, and ensure that their children were in education (Dinerstein 2008). The

launching of this mega plan was coupled with the systematic repression of the most

radical autonomous groupings of the movement of the unemployed, which ended in

the deaths of two unemployed activists from the UWO Anibal Veron, MTDAV) in

21

June 2002. This marked a turning-point in the politics of the country, as the impunity

of the crime unleashed a cross-class solidarity action with the UWOS and forced

President Duhalde to call for presidential elections in 2003(See Dinerstein, 2008).

As a result of these events, the UWOs have been integrated into the state

agenda. New social programmes, such as the ‘National Plan for Local Development

and Social Economy: Let’s Work!’ were launched by the Nestor Kirchner

administration from 2003 onwards, in an attempt to both recognise and depoliticise

the UWOs, by incorporating the communitarian and solidarity principles and social

practices that underpin the UWOs’ endeavours into a ‘new policy ethos.’ Inspired by

World Bank funded social programmes that support community work and micro-

ventures aimed at community sustainability, these programmes included the provision

of technical and financial support to the Piqueteros, and encouraged the social

economy. Whilst the government recognised the UWOS as legitimate actors, it also

kept them outside the orbit of the Ministry of Labour. Governmental support for the

community projects is channelled through the Ministry of Social Development which

forced the UWOs to become officially registered ‘NGOs’. This involved a process of

authentication by government inspectors, and assessment of the worth of their

proposed project. Nonetheless, the state attempt to institutionalise the UWOs action

was ‘contested’ (Dinerstein, 2007; Dinerstein, Contartese and Deledicque, 2010).

Despite being at risk of incorporation into state projects, the experience of the UWOs

shows that the practice of autonomy can ‘open up the frontiers for resistance and

change towards radical practices, an equal society and self-organisation’ (Böhm,

Dinerstein and Spicer, 2010: 28). Thus, the risk of incorporation can be mitigated.

V. The contribution of unemployed workers organisations to the renewal of the subjectivity of labour

So far, this chapter has addressed the political dynamics around neo-liberal reforms in

the 1990s. These dynamics involve on the one hand, ‘labour subjects’ and on the other

hand, the state in Argentina. The analysis brought to light the transformation of the

subjectivity of labour during this period. The chapter focused on both the process of

contestation between trade unions and the state, and the emergence of unemployed

workers’ organisations as key aspects of the reshaping of the labour movement..

Rather than focusing on the ‘crisis’ of trade unions and the dilemma of how best to

22

categorise those outside the labour market, this chapter instead has focused on the

process of transformation.

The theoretical premise expounded here has been that the forms of subjectivity

of labour are historical, and achieved through processes of contestation and struggle

in and against the state and capital. Capital cannot exorcise labour; but it is able to

transform permanently the conditions for the production of subjectivity. Neo-liberal

adjustment unleashed a struggle over the subjectivity of labour, that is over the forms

of identity, organisation, mobilisation and politics through with labour subjects

articulate collective action within a particular context, Unemployed workers

with their local communities and unions inject into labour resistance an element

which has been overlooked by sociologists mainly concerned with the study of

‘unemployment’ and ‘social exclusion’: the political capacity of unemployed workers

to overcome the barriers to collective action (Wolff, 2007) to organise themselves and

to put forward an active critique of hegemonic political projects. To be sure, the

existence of unemployment per se cannot be seen as a sufficient condition for the

emergence of a movement. Historical and ethnographic accounts of the mobilisation

of unemployed workers (Hannington, 1936/1977; Bagguley, 1991; Mathers, 2007)

illustrate how, under certain conditions, the unemployed ‘beg[i]n to define their

personal hardship not just as their own individual misfortune but as misfortune shared

with many of their own kind’ (Piven and Cloward, 1977, p. 49). In Argentina, two

such conditions are significant: the history of grassroots resistance and the form of

social and employment policy. Since citizenship relied historically on notions of

social justice and workers’ rights, social policy always depended on the capacity for

negotiated settlements between corporations, trade unions and the state (for example,

in healthcare provision) or the capacity of ‘marginalised’ groups to get organised and

put forward specific demands (Barbeito and Lo Vuolo, 1995). The lack of

universality, the low supply of benefits, the absence of clear criteria for beneficiary

selection (Garay, 2007, p. 306; also Giraudy, 2007) gave the UWOs the opportunity

to consolidate their negotiation skills with the local and national governments. As

Bagguley (1991, p. 70) rightly suggests, the state played an important role in the

formation of the movement of the unemployed. In this case, it facilitated their

participation in the management of employment programmes, which otherwise would

have been assigned to individual beneficiaries by local or national governments.

(Dinerstein, 2010)

23

But none of this would have happened without the mobilisation and resistance

of the unemployed at the roadblocks. The CTA and the UWOs were key actors in the

mobilisation before the crisis of 2001, when the space for negotiation narrowed and

the power of the union bureaucracy was displaced. This was indeed the dilemma of

the Menem administration: whilst on the one hand, the government relied on the

support of the union bureaucracy to implement drastic reforms, on the other hand, the

reforms fragmented the labour force, disempowering the union bureaucracy in two

ways. First, new forms of production and management techniques in the auto,

metallurgical, iron, electronics and telecommunication sectors, empowered shop-floor

representatives and ‘enterprise committees’ (comisiones internas) as they required

daily negotiations at the workplaces rather than the national bureaucracy, freeing them

from the constraint imposed by union ‘verticalism.’ Second, the participation of

unemployed workers in these social struggles called into question the idea that the

unemployed constitute a residual subjectivity vis-à-vis the working class as conceived

by the CGT leadership.

Since the birth of the UWOs, and particularly during and after the crisis of

December 2001, labour collective action could not be identified only with workplace

struggles and industrial disputes run by powerful trade unions. Labour conflict could

not be reduced to a single principle of organisation but progressively became a

complex jigsaw of labour subjects. For some of them, less corporatist and more

autonomous forms of action vis-à-vis the state had become a powerful tool for

critique and resistance. Decentralised and non-institutionalised forms of protest which

spread in and against the neo-liberal reforms, and particularly during and after the

December 2010 crisis, made apparent the incompetence of the CGT strategy to retain

power by lobbying and negotiating with the government. Such super-structural policy

missed the significant transformation of the politics of labour that was evident in the

fragmentation, decentralisation, geographical dispersion and politicisation of labour

conflict, owed in great part to unemployment, one of the main products of the labour

reforms agreed by the CGT.

The mobilisation of the unemployed was a key factor in forcing trade unions

to rethink the meaning of union power. For the CTA, that had its origins inthe

sindicalismo movimientista of the CGTA in the late 1960s, power meant the ‘political

capacity to articulate geographical, political and social differences and diverse

experiences of exploitation and subordination’ (CTA leader cited in Cuadernos del

24

Sur 22/23-1996, p. 107). The CTA leaders also realised that the unemployed were

becoming an identity and a ‘distinctive social category’ (Standing, 2009, p. 115). The

creation of the FTV within the CTA structure allowed the latter to expand its scope

and fulfil some of the Central goals. But as mentioned the CTA’s efforts to integrate

other UWOs into its structure proved difficult (Dinerstein, 2003). During the period

under consideration, these autonomous forms of organisation and collective action

overwhelmed the corporatist tendencies of the labour movement. This does not mean

that trade unions became less important but rather that they redefined the nature of

union power. They achieved this by mobilising more broadly in civil society and by

articulating the demands from different labour subjects. They also allowed new labour

subjects to develop alternative ways of conceptualising ‘unemployment’ and ‘work’,

and to translate these into innovative practices that have challenged mainstream

conceptions of social justice.

The autonomous collective identity that emerged from the roadblocks and

became the heart of the UWOs had two strands: the first was the Piquetero strand,

which contested the idea of the unemployed as powerless victims of the labour market

and passive subjects of policy. They challenged the stereotypes of the jobless as

inactive, demobilised, excluded, and marginalised, disadvantaged. This ‘resistance

identity’ (Castells, 1999, p. 8) is illustrated by the following statement: ‘I am

Piquetera, I am a social fighter (luchadora social). Everything we have is thanks to

our struggle’ (Female participant UTD, 2005). The second strand concerned a labour

identity captured in the notion of 'unemployed workers’. This strand is reflected well

in the following statement by an unemployed, female workers, ‘I have been working

as an unemployed worker since 2001’ (cited in MTD Solano, 2002). This strand

included not just the temporarily jobless but also the beneficiaries of employment

programmes, who worked in projects organised by the UWOs or who had temporary

jobs that had been negotiated with local firms by the UWOs. This strand contained

some elements of a ‘project identity’, in that it redefined their position in society and,

by so doing, sought the transformation of the overall social structure’ (Castells, 1999:

8).

Clearly, the UWOs’ collective action is but one of numerous types of

collective action carried out by those experiencing unemployment and poverty as a

result of the neo-liberal reforms (Dinerstein 2010; also Pearce, 2010). These

endeavours, which point to a new role for civil society in development (Howell and

25

Pearce, 2001), have been described in various ways such as : third sector, social

economy, community self- help alternatives, local development initiatives; new

cooperatives, solidarity economy (Moulaert and Ailenei, 2005) and alternatives to

development (Santos, 2006). In this particular case, the new labour subject put

forward a threefold critique of capitalist work: first, the unemployed re-entered the

world of labour by treating unemployment as a form of, rather than the lack of,

capitalist work, wherein the subsumption of labour in capital is invisibilised and

interpreted as ‘social exclusion’. Unemployed workers regained their visibility at the

roadblocks and repositioned themselves vis-à-vis one of the most excruciating forms

of subordination brought about by the neo-liberal reforms: unemployment with almost

no state protection. Second, they also denaturalised paid work (Cole, 2008; Levitas,

2001; Gorz, 1999) by creating what they called ‘genuine’ work, that is true and

dignified work as opposed to ‘false’ (temporary, subsidiary) and undignified work

associated with the work(fare) involved in focused policies, or casual work

(Dinerstein, 2010). The cooperative projects functioned as nodes that facilitated

sociability and social cohesion through the articulation of collective needs in confined

territory: a neighbourhood or a network of neighbourhoods. Finally, the UWOs

projects offered ‘dissident meanings’ (Cornwall and Brock, 2005) to official

discourses on public needs, particularly regarding employment and social policy and

could be seen as the delivering of ‘welfare policy from below’ (Steinert and Pilgram,

2003). These cooperative experiences, that go back to the practice of ‘reciprocity’

(Quijano, 2006: 423), have moved from ‘survival strategies’ (424-425) to the

articulation of ‘real utopias’ (Wright, 2010; c.f. Quijano, 2006).

The focus of this enquiry was on the transformation of the subjectivity of

labour and in particular the contribution of unemployed workers and their

organisations to the renewal of labour subjectivity in Argentina. The key conclusion

here is that unemployed workers organisations have opened up many autonomous

spaces, not only for contestation and protest, but also in the search for social justice,

which has had a significant influence on trade unions, civil society and the state. Their

endeavours have democratised rather than disempowered the Argentinean labour

movement and society.

Acknowledgment

26

This research was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC,

UK), award RES -155-25-0007 ‘The Movement of the Unemployed in Argentina’,

Non-Governmental Public Action programme (NGPA). I would like to thank the

ESRC and to the NGPA programme director Jude Howell for their support. Thanks to

all the interviewees, workers from the organisations of the unemployed and

governmental senior functionaries for providing priceless information and access to

material and documentation used in this chapter. I am also indebted to Daniel

Contarese and Melina Deledicque for their contribution to the research fieldwork, and

to Gregory Schwartz for his generosity and his helpful commentaries on the previous

versions of this chapter. Suggestions from those who attended my presentations at the

ESRC workshops on NGPA and Theory, NGPA and Labour, and NGPA in Latin

America, and at professional meetings of Work, Employment & Society, European

Group of Organisation Studies, Latin America and European Meeting for

Organisation Studies, and Society for Latin American Studies between 2006 and

2010, have greatly enriched this chapter too. All the habitual disclaimers apply.

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