Economy & Trade, Headlines, Labour, Latin America & the Caribbean

INT’L LABOUR DAY-SOUTH AMERICA: Unions Under Left-Leaning Governments

Gustavo González*

SANTIAGO, Apr 29 2006 (IPS) - Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and to a lesser degree, Chile are governed by political forces that have affinity with trade unions, but the relationship between them so far has had contradictory and, frequently, negative outcomes, according to experts and labour leaders in all four countries.

The celebration of International Labour Day next Monday finds unions in the Southern Cone of Latin America struggling on two fronts: to defend workers’ rights that were infringed or cut back by free-market neoliberal policies in the 1990s, and to work to maintain the labour movement’s influence in a social scenario where other organisations are increasingly active.

These organisations, born out of discrimination, chronic unemployment, and insecure or black market jobs, such as the ‘piqueteros’ (unemployed pickets) in Argentina, or the debtors’ committees in low-cost housing projects and the Mapuche people in Chile, nowadays participate more actively in protests and demonstrations than the trade union federations.

In Brazil, the rural exodus to the cities has increased labour organisation in rural areas in relative terms, and the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) remains combative, with a high level of participation in conflicts, which is not the case for the Unified Workers Central (CUT-Brazil). Both organisations are identified with the governing leftwing Workers’ Party (PT).

An estimated 18 percent of the work force is unionised in Brazil, according to figures from 2004 – a recovery of 15.9 percent since 1988. This may be attributed to the arrival of the first PT government to office in January 2003, headed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former trade unionist.

In Argentina, where researchers Adriana Marshall and Laura Perelman bemoan the lack of information and reliable, historically comparable data on union affiliation, it was estimated that union membership oscillated between 42 and 47 percent of the labour force in the stormy period from 1988 to 2003.

While Argentina’s workers remain highly unionised, partly due to the social safety nets organised by the labour unions with government support, in Chile, a pioneer in Latin America with respect to the adoption of free-market neoliberal policies under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), union affiliation stands at just 13 percent of the work force.

In Uruguay, according to the only union confederation, PIT-CNT, the decline in unionisation, a characteristic that all of Latin America and the developing world at large have in common, was reversed in 2003, and union affiliation stands now at 24 percent of the economically active population. The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has requested more information in order to study the phenomenon.

The PIT-CNT is strongly identified with the Frente Amplio (Broad Front), the political alliance of leftwing parties that won the national elections for the first time in October 2004. The government of socialist President Tabaré Vázquez took office in March 2005.

Helios Sarthou, who holds the chair of Labour Law at the public University of the Republic, told IPS that there was a “guilt complex among leftwingers,” that impels Vázquez to follow a conciliatory policy in labour relations.

This has paved the way for employers to build “a formidable lobby,” which has “more influence in government, and has reaped more benefits from it than the unions,” according to Sarthou, who believes that businesses have gained more advantages under Vázquez than under centre-right governments in the past.

Sarthou, formerly a Broad Front senator but now an avowed critic of the government, admitted that the PIT-CNT has contributed to this scenario by becoming less combative, and adopting a wait-and-see strategy.

A similar situation applies in Chile between the United Labour Central (CUT-Chile) and the new administration of President Michelle Bachelet, of the centre-left Coalition for Democracy which has been in power since 1990.

Arturo Martínez, a socialist, was a perpetual critic of the labour policies of fellow-socialist Ricardo Lagos, president of Chile from 2000 to Mar. 11, 2006. The union leader said that under the previous government, “business owners continued to trample on labour rights and flout the law.”

The four presidents who have exercised power in Chile since its return to democracy in 1990 have been backed by a coalition of four centre-left parties. One of these, the Socialist Party, to which Bachelet also belongs, controls the CUT in alliance with the Communist Party, which has no participation in the government and defines itself as a leftist opposition force.

The socialist-communist alliance in the CUT represents the last vestiges of the Popular Unity Party which governed, under socialist President Salvador Allende, from 1970 until the 1973 military coup. According to Martínez, it is aiming at labour reforms that will tackle modern conditions, where globalisation brings about a decrease in job security.

Out of the nearly four million employees in Chile, only 13 percent are unionised, and 58 percent of them will have insufficient funds to retire on within the privatised pension system, while 57 percent of workers in the informal sector have no pension coverage, it was announced in February, on CUT’s 53rd anniversary.

José Andrés Herrera, assistant director of the Labour Economy Programme, an independent research centre, told IPS that Chile’s low unionisation rate is due to trends characteristic of the country’s economic model, such as the outsourcing of services and technical developments that displace human labour.

Small businesses employing less than eight workers have proliferated in this country of 15.6 million people, and the law requires a minimum of eight workers to form a union, Herrera added.

The constant messages, during the Pinochet dictatorship, denigrating all forms of organisation with political connotations, also undermined the appeal of trade unions, and encouraged Chileans to organise themselves primarily as consumers.

Herrera saw an additional major factor in the anti-union practices of many employers, who prefer to pay fines and face wage conflicts rather than allow their workers to organise.

Under the left-leaning administrations currently governing Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, trade unions have mainly focused on improving salaries, which have fallen owing to the series of economic crises in the region since the 1980s.

Joao Carlos Gonçalves, secretary-general of Força Sindical, the second largest Brazilian workers organisation after the Unified Workers’ Confederation (CUT-Brazil), pointed to the achievement of salary increases above the rate of inflation, but also said that because the economic model of fiscal stability has not been modified, the unemployment rate is high, especially among young people.

But during Lula’s administration, tripartite negotiating conditions involving the government, unions and employers have improved, and the troubles of the unemployed have been alleviated by government Solidarity Centres, which help people obtain government subsidies and social assistance.

Brazil’s president is the only one in the Southern Cone region to have been a union organiser in the past. The Brazilian minister of Labour, Luiz Marinho, was formerly president of the CUT, and Uruguay also has a former union leader in the ministerial cabinet.

In Argentina, the governing Justicialista (Peronist) Party has a long tradition of close relations with the unions, and embraces a number of different ideological currents. However, left-leaning President Néstor Kirchner has not given preferential treatment to the historic General Labour Confederation (CGT), which continues to unite the powerful industrial unions.

Kirchner has smooth relations with the Argentine Workers’ Centre, a newer, more progressive and up-to-date confederation representing teachers, public employees, pensioners, the unemployed, workers in reclaimed factories, and prostitutes, as well as a variety of other kinds of workers.

* With additional reporting by Marcela Valente (Argentina), Mario Osava (Brazil) and Raúl Pierri (Uruguay).