General Confederation of Labour (Argentina) - The CGT Since The Return To Democracy

The CGT Since The Return To Democracy

After the Falklands War, Raúl Alfonsín denounced the association between Labour and the junta, criticizing a "military-labour pact". After his election as President of Argentina in 1983, he failed on passing through the Senate a new law regulating trade unions and guaranteeing freedom of association. In his negotiations with the CGT, Alfonsín conceded the position of Minister of Labour to CGT man Hugo Barrionuevo.

Under Saúl Ubaldini's guidance, the CGT launched 13 general strikes during Alfonsín's government. In 1989, with an hyperinflation corroding the economy, the CGT introduced a 26-point programme to support Carlos Menem's bid to the Presidency, including measures such as declaring a unilateral external debt default. Justicialist candidate Carlos Menem won the 1989 elections on a populist campaign platform, but entrusted the Ministry of Economy to the Bunge y Born company, a major agribusiness firm. This turn led to a rupture within the CGT in late 1989, though following a 1991 conference in which concern over new Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo's free-market policies ruled the agenda, the CGT was reunited under an agreement to keep the union in a stance of conditional support for the measures, which had already been reigniting economic growth. The intransigent Ubaldini was replaced by Light and Power Workers' leader Oscar Lescano.

The move caused some dissent, however, and led to the establishment of the Central de Trabajadores Argentinos (CTA), led by Víctor de Gennaro, and to the development of a dissident faction led by Truckers' Union leader Hugo Moyano, the MTA. Menem's ample victories in the 1991 mid-term elections gave momentum to his agenda of labour reforms, many of which included restricting overtime pay and easing indemnifications for layoffs, for instance. Under pressure from the rank-and-file, Lescano called for a general strike late in 1992 (the first during the Menem tenure). Increasingly marginalized within the Justicialist Party, however, he resigned the following May in favor of Steelworkers' leader Naldo Brunelli.

The CGT endorsed Menem's 1995 re-election campaign; but following a sharp recession, the CGT, CTA and MTA reacted jointly in mid-1996 with two general strikes against the government's neoliberal policies, whose emphasis on free trade and sharp productivity gains they believed responsible for the highest unemployment rates since the great depression. Aside from these shows of force, the CGT, led by Construction Workers' leader Gerardo Martínez, remained conciliatory with the anti-labour Menem for the sake of the Justicialist Party. The party's defeats in the 1997 mid-term elections bode poorly for their chances in 1999 (elections they went on to lose).

Moyano's rapproachment with the CGT was again strained in the year 2000, when President Fernando de la Rúa's plans to make Argentina's labour laws more flexible distanced him from the CGT leadership led by Rodolfo Daer, whose conciliatory stance led to a "Rebel" CGT led by Julio Piumato. The collapse of de la Rúa's government in late 2001 made way for the parliamentary selection of former Buenos Aires Province Governor Eduardo Duhalde, whose alliance to MTA leader Hugo Moyano helped lead to the gathering of much of what remained of the CGT under his leadership. The reunited CGT elected Moyano Secretary General in 2004. Benefiting from a close alliance with the administrations of Néstor and Cristina Kirchner, Moyano has leveraged his capacity as head of the Council on Salaries (an officially-sanctioned advisory board) to secure a stronger collective bargaining position and frequent increases in the minimum wage.

In recent years, and in spite its strength as the only labour representative in many forums, the CGT has faced growing opposition from other trade unions, such as the CTA, or the left-leaning grassroots organisations of unemployed people known as Piqueteros (Picketing Men), groups first in evidence during the Menem years which have since become tenuously allied with the Kirchner administrations.