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BALANCING THE NEW AND THE OLD:

PRECARIOUS WORKERS’ RESISTANCE IN
RANK AND FILE UNIONISM IN ARGENTINA
Paula Varela

In this article, we want to examine the role played by precarious labor in the process of building up and
consolidating rank and file unions in Argentina. We speculate about the interaction between precarious labor
and union organization in the workplace; and about which elements allow this interaction. This analysis of
the interaction (as opposed to the separation) of both processes emerges from our own empirical research, but
also from the attempt to establish a theoretical prudence in the face of Social Science’s tendency to create “new
phenomena” and isolate them from their procedural frame. The academic logic paradigm of Segmentation
(and its conformation of “case studies” in places where there are only fragmentary processes) forces us to look
at precarious labor as a subject itself, dissociated from steady labor, thus separating it into different ways of
organization and resistance. The re-composition of rank and file trade unionism in Argentina shows gray
areas in which the overlapping of precarious labor and steady labor in the same working area forced the
interaction between the new and the old.

The worldwide expansion of precarious jobs generated a double movement

in the Social Sciences: on one hand, it showed the falsehood of the “End of
Work” thesis (and its resulting “Farewell to the Proletariat”) due to the unavoid-
able growth of what Ricardo Antunes (2005) called “The-Class-That-Lives-
From-Labor.” On the other hand, it questioned the illusion (maybe a Social
Democratic illusion?) of wage labor as a synonym of stability and social mobility
and as an antonym of poverty and social exclusion (a question that has existed in
Latin-America for awhile). What we can observe now is an environment that
would have seemed paradoxical 40 years ago: A never before seen expansion of
wage labor, and at the same time, its integration (not as anomaly but as a norm)
with poverty, and for the most precarious sector of the precarious workforce, the
so-called social exclusion. This is the essence of the English chavs conclusively
reported by Owen Jones (2011) and of the Poor workers in Argentina, which con-
stitute 50 percent of the workforce; most of them young workers. This setting
has started a series of academic (and even political) debates about the concept of
the Working Class, its characteristics as a social subject and its political poten-
tial, in which three main cores of theoretical problems can be recognized. The
first one is the need to re-think the role of the working class as a center facing

WorkingUSA: The Journal of Labor and Society · 1089-7011 · Volume 19 · March 2016 · pp. 105–123
VC 2016 Immanuel Ness and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
106 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

what appears to be an open crisis in the New Social Movements paradigm that
has prevailed for the last thirty years.
After social conflict had been regarded as classless from the New Social
Movements (i.e., the anti-globalization movement), or the new subjectivities
(“the crowd”) perspective, it is now evident how the workers are the main actors
in social conflict and how central are work-related demands. However, this
comeback is not shaped like the workers means of participation already known
until the 1960s and 1970s: It has combined what we might call “classic” forms of
working class struggles with new ways of protest that reveal the complexity and
specificity of the current status of the working class. For example, massive strikes
can be found in European countries where the economic crisis directly affected
the workers, as in the general strikes in 2010 and 2011 in Greece, France, and
Portugal, or the latest in Belgium and Italy; or the mail workers strikes in Ger-
many, transportation strikes in France and telephone workers strikes in Spain.
In China, where the capitalist restauration turned hundred millions of people
into wage-earners, several strikes for salary and working conditions have been
taking place, peaking in 2014 with 1,300 conflicts during the year. In the U.S.,
the “Fight for $15” movement, involving precarious working sectors from the
fast-food industry, has been developing recently and has re-installed a debate
about collective wage bargaining and trade union rights. In Latin-America,
which is reaching the end of a cycle of post-neoliberal (so called “populist”) gov-
ernments, massive strikes are taking place, as with the civil engineering sector in
2011 in Brazil, which spun a heterogeneous strike movement in various other
sectors, the most important movement since the 1980s. In Argentina, the revital-
ization of trade unionism and workplace conflict had, as a result, strong organi-
zational developments at workplaces and five general strikes since 2012. These
clearly working class struggles are combined with other conflicts that involve
primarily young people in which the precarization of work and the end of identi-
fication between labor and social integration is expressed within local peculiar-
ities: a fusion of economic claims and claims confronting the political regime
brought forward by the “youth with no future.” Among these processes, we can
find the “indignados” movement in Spain, the “geraç~ao a rasca” in Portugal in
2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement in the U.S., the so-called “June Days”
in 2013 in Brazil, or even the Tahir Square protests in Egypt.1
The second and third series of questions emerge from the varied features in
these conflicts. On one side, an inquiry about what Therborn (2014) called the
“social bases of resistance”: if these “new masses” that are central to the protests
around the world could be classified under the Marxist category of working class
or if, on the contrary, we have to think about another conceptualization. This
dilemma led to two kind of reactions. Either different attempts at carrying out
an idea that broadens the concept of working class so that it includes different
forms of precarious jobs: by attributing to Marx a narrow notion of proletariat,
by attributing that narrowness to distorted interpretations, the necessity of wid-
ening the limits of this notion (to include the unexpected new forms of exploita-
tion that are widespread) is showing in lot of new debates and empirical
VARELA: BALANCING THE NEW AND THE OLD: PRECARIOUS WORKERS’ RESISTENCE 107

research.2 Or attempts at creating a new category, differentiated from the one of

working class, to name these phenomena within the autonomous category of
“precariat.”3 On another note, a concern about the unions and their role as pos-
sible bodies of discontent in a precarious job world has rekindled, not only
regarding labor and social rights, but as a concrete experience of organization
and struggle. The debates regarding union revitalization and the criticism at
social movement unionism are part of this.4
The renewal of these debates in Argentina did not develop as a result of the
international economic crisis, on the contrary, it came after a period of strong eco-
nomic growth and from an increase of jobs that drove social conflict from 2003
onwards.5 A powerful incorporation of workers to the labor market (with the man-
ufacturing and construction industry as the main branches that prompted a reduc-
tion in unemployment) based on the end of the economic crisis of 2001 through a
currency devaluation (which resulted in pay cuts comprising 30 percent of the sal-
ary thus cheapening the cost of the local workforce) functioned as the base for the
rearranging of trade-unions and the social composition of the working class in
Argentina. This rearrangement manifested itself as a double process. On the State
level, there were various governmental policies designed to re-establish collective
bargaining bodies, and to strengthen the role of the trade-unions at a national level.
For example, from 2004 to 2010, 7,000 collective bargaining agreements were
approved. This raised the annual average five times, from 200 agreements per year
in the nineties, to 1,000 agreements per year. There was also an increase in the
absolute numbers of union affiliations (which is different from an increase in
the union density as the rate of union membership stays almost the same as in the
1990s) and a clear increase in a double dynamic form of labor struggle: on one
hand, strongly centralized (by activity branch) on wage demands and, on the other,
strongly decentralized (by company) when it concerned work conditions and
unions’ rights. This process, that led some people to argue that the 1990s labor
relations model had ended, or to deceive themselves with a return to the “classic”
Peronist model of the middle of the twentieth century, nevertheless came up
against a key factor in understanding the characteristics of the new working class
protagonism in Argentina: The maintenance of the precarious conditions of sale and use of
the workforce in this country. The trade union revitalization that we can see these
days lays on the basis of maintaining (and not reversing) all the achievements in the
precarization of labor that the bourgeoisie started since the 1976 dictatorship and
that were achieved during the 1990s, with the labor reforms, the high unemploy-
ment rates and the weakening of the union organization.
This is the base for the emergence of the rank and file trade unionism as the
main phenomenon in the organization and struggle of the workers in which they
express themselves within their own national peculiarities: precarious labor, the
presence of a new generation (not in biological terms but socially and politically)
and the influence of the radical left parties in the dispute for setting up the parame-
ters of a new worker dignity.6
To rethink the workers condition (and maybe a possibility of reversing it?)
makes us look at the crossroad between the increasingly precarious labor world; a
108 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

youth uprooted from the Social Democratic illusion (in this case, a Peronist illu-
sion), but simultaneously from every illusion; and a radical left with the challenge
of reformulating the relationship between trade union organizations and a project
of social emancipation. In Argentina, rank and file trade unionism has raised these
issues in a heterogeneous way, depending on the case, developing at workplaces as
a locus of organization and workers struggle, and voicing the contradictions of a
trade union revitalization which deploys itself within a neoliberal heritage.
In this article, we want to analyse the role played by precarious labor in the estab-
lishment and strengthening of rank-and-file trade unionism in Argentina. We will
focus on two aspects. The first one will be an analysis of how the conditions of
exploitation inherited from the nineties are maintained in the country (the dec-
ade in which the neoliberal counter-reforms were performed). The second will
analyze the role played by precarious workers in three landmark cases within
rank and file trade unionism. These three cases were chosen according to key
elements. The Body of Workers Representatives from the Buenos Aires subway
was chosen because it has been the undisputed reference for the first stage of
union revitalization up to 2007. In fact, the four days strike in 2004 can be con-
sidered as the beginning of the workers struggle that would increase from that
starting point. Its importance also relies on their strategic position within the
urban transport; moreover, any action they take impacts on 1,500,000 passen-
gers. They can make a workers’ struggle become a political problem for Buenos
Aires city and the suburbs. This made The Body of Workers Representatives
from the Buenos Aires subway gain public visibility; which reinforced its charac-
teristic of being important representatives for the combative unionism during
this first stage of revitalization.7 The second case, the Factory Committee from
the food company Kraft Foods (today owned by Mondelez), became a national
example of combative trade unionism when they had to confront a tough work
conflict in 2009. This conflict revealed a series of features that appeared in the
case of Kraft with its own characteristics, but it also took place in other compa-
nies. We are talking about the strength that the internal commissions were
achieving in the big industrial plants, the importance of Buenos Aires’ northern
suburbs as a territory of struggle and workers’ organization and the presence of
the radical lefton struggle and organization processes.8 Finally, the case of Fac-
tory Committee from the graphic company Donnelley (working today as a coop-
erative called MadyGraf) points out two specific characteristics. First, different
from Kraft or the Subway workers, Donelley’s internal commission gets public
visibility as an expression of the resistance toward the first synthomps of crisis in
the labor market (layoffs and dismissals in different industries that start by the
end of 2013 and are further deepened in 2014). Second, as the features of the
struggle changed, Donelley’s internal commission can bring again, after fifteen
years, the discussion about Workers’ control as a way out against unemploy-
ment. They do this vindicating Zanon’s9 factory experience in Neuquen prov-
ince: the latter caught the public eye in 2014 when the Factory Committee
decided to re-open the factory under the workers control, after the multinational
company decided to close down.
VARELA: BALANCING THE NEW AND THE OLD: PRECARIOUS WORKERS’ RESISTENCE 109

We are interested in the linkage between precarious labor and union organiza-
tion at the workplace; and about which elements allow this linkage. This analysis
on the interaction (not dividing it) of both processes emerges from our own empir-
ical research, but also from the attempt to establish a theoretical prudence in the
face of Social Science’s tendency to create “new phenomenon” and isolate them
from their procedural frame. The academic logic paradigm of Segmentation (and
its conformation of “case studies” in places where there are only fragmentary proc-
esses) forces us to look at precarious labor as a subject itself, dissociated from
steady labor, thus separating it into different ways of organization and resistance.
The recomposition of rank and file trade unionism in Argentina shows gray areas
in which the overlapping of precarious labor and steady labor in the same working
area forced the interaction between the new and the old.

Precarious as a Working Class Condition

One way of analysing how the neoliberal precarious conditions kept is

through the contents negotiated in the agreements and collective bargaining
signed in the last decade.
As Novick points out in relation to the nineties’ decade, “It could be said
that the main issue negotiated was labour flexibility, which included hiring
modalities (‘external’ flexibility): clauses that allow the utilization of modalities
for a determined period or other ‘non typical’ hiring modalities; changes in the
number of working hours (in terms of annual labour day or other ways to mea-
sure it, by units, etc.); flexibility in the organization of labour; flexibility on the
payments (clauses that give certain bonuses according to performance, so a flexi-
ble criteria is applied to the salaries)” (Novick 2001, 33).
If these factors are applied in the period after the devaluation, the following sce-
nario can be found. Regarding flexibility on the purchase-sale of labor force, in
2010 informal labor affected 34.6 percent of the workers and 45.5 percent of the
total labor force. This number represented a recovery compared to the informal
labor rate on 2002 crisis, but it is higher than the rate in the decade of the 1990s
(33.3 percent of informality rate in average among the workers, 1991–1997). It is
interesting to observe how the unregistered labor rate in the 1980s was 25 percent
and it abruptly increased to 40 percent by the end of the 1990s. This means that
after nine years of economic growth with an 8 percent average rate (from 2002 to
2010), the unregistered employment rate reached similar numbers to the period
that followed, at the level of the neoliberal counter reforms. As Clara Marticorena
(2014) points out this is extremely significant as it directly affects the layout of the
“poor workers” as long as the wage policy is a result of the policy applied to those
workers that have a contract (under collective bargaining) and those who do not
(through the minimum wage—SalarioMınimo Vital y M ovil, SMVM—and
through oscillation of the unregistered labor force price). The high percentage of
unregistered labor and other methods of flexibility are a necessary condition for the “new
labour relations model,” and not a residual effect of the nineties; it works as it adapts to the
wage policy that has existed since 2003. If these statements are considered, the numbers
110 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

developed in 2013 can be understood: 60 percent of the workers had salaries lower
than AR $4,200; six out of every ten young workers between 18- and 24-years old
had unregistered employment (54.7 percent) and 54.8 percent had salaries lower
than the minimum wage (established in AR $3,300). If other variables in relation to
precarious labor are assigned, the purchase-sale of labor force, such as those workers
with temporary contracts (not stable work),10 or the self-employed workers (their
incomes are lower to the minimum wage, meaning they are under the poverty line);
we can see that precarious labor affects 53.6 percent of the labor force (2008 data).
Moreover, if we consider the underemployment (workers with a 6-hour workday or
shorter, who would work more if possible) as a social indicator of precarious labor
we find that in 2008 they make up 9.2 percent of the economically active population
(Spanish: Poblaci oneconomicamenteactiva—PEA), which summed up to unem-
ployed workers provides 16 percent total (Rameri, Raffo, and Lozano 2008).
An issue that becomes important throughout the interviews to the workers is
that the counter-part to underemployment and unemployment of 16 percent is
the length of the workday for those who have a job. The average of the worked
hours in 2008 is of 12 hours, with variations among unregistered workers and
registered workers (Rameri, Raffo, and Lozano 2008). This long workday
(which left as an utopia the 8 hour work day), in the manufacturing industry
meant a 7 percent increase in the working hours between 2002 and 2003. If the
measure is the overemployment average, it rose from 35.5 percent in May 2002
to 40.9 percent in May 2003, and remaining at those levels until the second quar-
ter of 2008 (Marticorena, 2014).
Regarding precarious labor through the so called “internal flexibility”
clauses (organization of work), the analysis of Labor Collective Bargaining
(CCT, ConvenioColectivo de Trabajo) approved between 2003 and 2009 finds
at a statistical level many of the features we can observe throughout the inter-
views. Whereas regarding the workday “785 collective bargaining were
approved between 2003 and 2009, at least 409 embed one or more clauses that
makes labor more flexible, equal to 51,6%” (Campos and Campos, 2010, 56).
If it is compared with the CCT approved in the decade of the nineties (from
1991 to 1999) 46.6 percent had clauses that included labor flexibility which
affected the workday. This means that between both periods, the percentage of
flexibility clauses over the workday is bigger at the present time. The most used
mechanism for the implementation of labor flexibility is now and then the rotat-
ing shift, the so called “American shift” or “workday average.” Furthermore, if
we take into account the flexibility clauses in relation to the organization of
labor, what can be noticed is that “at least 375 CCT are introduced, representing
47,8% of the approved CCT contracts, with an important value given to the
clauses that establish multiple abilities or multi-functionality of duties” (Campos
and Campos 2010, 57). If we consider the previous decade, the flexibility clauses
referring to the organization of labor have increased, making the 39.05 percent
between 1991 and 1999, and the 47.8 percent in the period 2003–2009.
At the same time, if we consider the second half of the last decade, in those
five years from 1995 to 1999 most of the clauses in relation to labor organization
VARELA: BALANCING THE NEW AND THE OLD: PRECARIOUS WORKERS’ RESISTENCE 111

were gathered, reaching a 49.07 percent; similar to the current numbers of

47.8 percent. Taken as a hole, the analysis on the flexibility clauses of Labor
Collective Bargaining allow a conclusion in which far from a reversion of the labor
conditions that where legalized during the nineties, there’s a tendency of continuity and
deepening. The new Labor Collective Bargaining keep the characteristics of flexi-
bility regarding the workday and the organization of labor.11
This persistence of the precarious work conditions crashes against the evi-
dence of a new economic cycle. First, the economic growth revealed through an
increase of the production and opening new factories as well as the enlargement
of many of them, with a huge increase of employment. By the end of 2007 fourth
trimester, the unemployment rate (8 percent PEA) represented almost a third of
2002 rate (22 percent).12 This fact could be noticed in every day’s life, but the
government also made big propaganda, becoming as an inhibit of the disciplinary
role that unemployment played during the nineties.
Second, the new cycle became evident within the government policy and the
Trade Union leaders, what had been called “conflicts of growth” (referring to
strikes in 2004 and 2005) in contrast to the “conflicts of crisis” (referring to the
pickets and road blockades performed by the unemployed workers movement by
the end of the 1990s and the beginning of 2000). It became a State legitimacy on
the need for an equitable distribution, the working culture and the “right to
fight,” which worked as the basis of a big change on the expectations among
Argentinean workers.13 The role played by the precarious labor in the develop-
ment of rank and file unionism, can be understood by the crash between the
expectations and their fulfilment.
A change on the expectations does not mean it will be extended mechanically
to collective action or workers’ struggle or organization. Hundreds of empirical
cases would demonstrate there is no mechanical translation. But it is important to
understand that the change on the expectations is the condition of possibility for
the development of the rank and file unionism. It lays on the basis of the contradic-
tion between certain facts and discourses that are introduced as a denial of the
1990s decade (through this denial they motivate workers to a social—political?—
recognition) and a labor regime that confirms the neoliberal decade still active
(confirming this, denies the existence of the workers as individuals with rights).
When this contradiction unfolds it comes on an absence and a presence, with-
out them the emergence of the rank and file unionism it cannot be understood.
The absence is the lack of “moderators” that control or calm the tension between
the exploitation relations at workplaces. This means the absence of Union repre-
sentatives at the workplaces. In Argentina, this lack of representatives has a great
importance due to the tradition of Union organization in this country. Argentina
not only stands out for its high level of trade union affiliation (compared to other
countries in Latin America and Europe), rank and file organization also has a
strong settlement at workplaces. Juan Carlos Torre points out: “. . . Under Pero-
nist governments, the workers had a unique experience in the enterprises’ life.
Through the settlement of the delegates committees among the industries and the
regulation of the working conditions by collective bargaining (. . .). In fact, the
112 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

vitality of the workers’ movement during those years lied mainly under the institu-
tions of workers’ control that operated in the companies” (Torre, 2004 [1986], 89–
90). This characteristic was essential to understand the labor struggle dynamic in
Argentina along the twentieth century. As the historian Louise Doyon (1975)
points out, these rank and file organizations do not emerge as a State policy from
the Peronist government,14 it is the result of the pressure exerted by the workers,
beyond the legal support of the 1944 professional associations decree.15 Because
of this pressure, many years later (1988) the rank and file delegates activity was
regulated (rights and duties) at workplaces and they were recognized and con-
trolled legally. After the existence and extend of these internal commissions and
their relatively independence from the Trade Union leaders, Adolfo Gilly (1990)
develops his idea of “the Argentine anomaly.” His intention is to express the con-
tradiction among the autonomy characteristics of the workers movement (seen in
their rank and file organizations) and the dependence on the commitment with
Peronism. In this regard, the rank and file organizations at workplaces have
expressed a continuous conflict between the rank and file workers and the Trade
Union leadership, the tipping point was during the 1970s decade, before the mili-
tary dictatorship in 1976.
The nineties decade also left a heritage of a weak trade union implementa-
tion in the workplaces; this was expressed in the lack of Factory Committessor
Stewards’ Bodies, or in the transformation into “factory gangsters”
(“punterosfabriles”) to show this is one of the control mechanisms of labor
regime. This turned the workplaces into a place with a lack of workers represen-
tatives at a moment where the conditions (politic and material conditions)
pushed toward expectative of a “factory citizenship” (“ciudadanıafabril”).
It is important to keep in mind this lack of representation is not only a politi-
cal mistake of the trade uni on leaders, as they abandoned workplaces, it is also a
consequence of the role played by them in the processes that meant loss of labor
rights. The policy was accepting this loss of rights on exchange of keeping a seg-
mented representation of a minority sector (with a majority expelled from trade
union representation, also expelled from the possibility of organizing and fight).
This lack combines itself with a small but significant presence of activists
bound to a radical left tradition that are involved in the building of workers
“injustice” feeling and its translation in certain union and political discourses,
programmes and action plans (strategies). This is one of the most dynamic ele-
ment in the process, turning by the end of 2012 into a recognizable union per-
former (by the positions in the industry and the services sectors). There are two
important features for a better understanding of the public visibility of the Left
in the Workers’ Movement. First, on November 20, 2012 the CGT (General
Labor Confederation—Confederaci on General del Trabajo) led by Hugo
Moyano called a National strike making public his political break-up with the
National Government and President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. In this
strike (as in many others to come), the Left unionists emerged as an active sector
of the workers movement, differentiating themselves with the Trade union lead-
ership by the road blockades in different parts of the country, which center were
VARELA: BALANCING THE NEW AND THE OLD: PRECARIOUS WORKERS’ RESISTENCE 113

the Northern suburbs of Buenos Aires Buenos Aires. In addition, an electoral

and political feature was the Left and the Workers’ Front, (Frente de Izquierda y
losTrabajadores—FIT), composed by the PTS (Socialist Workers Party/
Partido de TrabajadoresSocialistas), the PO (Worker Party/PartidoObrero),
and IS (Socialist Left/IzquierdaSocialista). In 2011, after the primary elections,
they were able to participate in the National Elections and get provincial legisla-
tors (Neuquen and Cordoba province). In 2013, in an unusual election for a
Trotskyist front, the FIT got three national deputies (Buenos Aires, Mendoza
and Salta provinces), provincial legislators (in Buenos Aires city, Buenos Aires,
Salta, and Mendoza provinces) and dozens of local councillors in different prov-
inces. The conformation of the FIT and its visibility in the electoral scene pro-
voked a strengthening in the extreme Leftin the union field. For the rank and file
trade unionism, a change of level was expressed in sectors with a left leadership
that “jumped the factory borders” and started a dispute inside the Trade Unions
in a National or provincial level. This is the case of the elections in the Buenos
Aires Graphic Federation (Federaci on Grafica Bonaerense) in April 2012, when
the “ListaNaranja-Bord o” had 29 percent of the votes, reaching almost a 40 per-
cent in the Northern Suburbs in Buenos Aires province. In May, the elections of
the Food Trade Union took place; the “ListaBord o” had 36 percent of the votes,
getting a majority in fourteen factories. In June, at the elections of the Soap mak-
ers’ Union, the “listaBordo” gained 37 percent in Buenos Aires City and Greater
Buenos Aires (Buenos Aires suburbs).

The Solidarity as a Political Construction

There is a strong feeling expressed by the workers in the interviews16 that we

named “desubjetivacion” (“anti subjectivation”) at the workplaces. This is showed
in the statistics as a number, and in the interviews appears as a very concrete wea-
riness with methaphors (Spanish: “que teboludeen,” “que teninguneen,” “ser un
numero”17).The most accomplished expression comes from the most precarious
workers sectors, with temporary contracts or from tertiary industries. Among
these workers, the “desubjetivacion” develops in three ways: they feel they are a
“number” for the company (many times they do not even work for the compa-
nies where they develop their duties); they feel they are “invisible” for the trade
union of the corresponding branch (they do not feel represented); they are
“second hand workers” for their own workmates who work in a more stable con-
dition, and with a bargaining agreement according to what they do.
These three conditions makes them the most accomplished expression of the
contemporary working class condition, and for this reason, in those cases in which
rank and file organization at workplaces has taken as a vindication and their own policy
defending the precarious workers, the rank and file unionism had assumed this spur
characteristic.
First of all, because fighting for the precarious workers to turn into “first
hand workers” is fighting against a policy that has State characteristics: In
Argentina, the economic and employment recovery cannot be thought if it does
114 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

not lay on the precarious conditions conquered by the bourgeoisie during neo-
liberalism. Second, objectively it requires a battle against the bureaucracy union
leaders as long as they have played a role in guarantying the segmentation and
precariousness of certain workers’ sectors. The collective bargaining approved
during the last decade show this. Third, it introduces against neoliberalist com-
mon sense, a solidarity guide that re-builds the “workers collective” beyond the
segmented corporative limits18 that the Union State policy developed. In this
sense, debates can be opened regarding the political potentiality and for the class
struggle, these rank and file organizations have, going further beyond the trade
union and corporative characteristics of a workers’ organization. Fourth and
last, fighting against precarious labor puts the youth in the center of the scene
(the most precarized sector together with the immigrants and the women) chal-
lenging them as “young workers,” as a class.
We will briefly develop three cases (Subway, Kraft, Donelley), where the
Rank and file organizations took the vindications of the most precarious work-
ers. This was a turning point for its consolidation as a workers’ institution. This
is our hypothesis; it stablished a cornerstone for these examples to turn into the
Rank and File trade unionism referents in Argentina.

Six Hours Shift, the Name of Dignity

As we have already mentioned, the Subway Stewards’ Body (Subway CD—
Spanish: Cuerpo de Delegados) has been an unquestionable referent in the first
stage of rank and file unionism (2004–2007) in Buenos Aires. This reference was
directly tied up to three features: the fight for working conditions (especially 6
hours working day); recruiting the outsourced workers to the Collective Bar-
gaining of the UTA (Transport Union), suppressing the divisions among the
subway workers; third, the defence of the rank and file organization and its dem-
ocratic character.
These three features where tackled from the beginning of the social and
trade union recovery process for the working class in Argentina, although this
three issues had been issues that the companies, the trade union leaders and the
government tried to protect and stay inflexible. For this reason, the Subway CD
would be the vanguard of the anti-bureaucratic and combative unionism, in
opposition to the UTA (Transport Union with bureaucrat leaders)19 and as an
example of dozens of processes of organization and struggle at workplaces. At
the same time, these three features set up the main consequences of privatiza-
tion,20 the Subway CD was the workers’ organization that could make a rever-
sion of the neoliberal defeat consequences.
When the Subway was privatized in 1994, there were two immediate conse-
quences: the extension of the working day from 6 to 8 hours21 and the outsourc-
ing of many activities that were performed by subway workers in the previous
situation.22 Workers under different (and worse) Collective Bargaining, with a
lower salary and worse labor and stability conditions, starting doing the
VARELA: BALANCING THE NEW AND THE OLD: PRECARIOUS WORKERS’ RESISTENCE 115

outsource job. BetoPianelli (referent from the Subway CD) described this period
with the following words: “During many years we cleaned toilets and used to say
“yes, sir” (. . .). When a guy was fired everyone was afraid of even talking to him/
her. In those days, we just stayed in silence for not being fired” (Colectivo
Encuesta Obrera, 2007, 97).
Reorganizing the Subway CD has a particular difference from other cases on
Rank and File Unionism. In contrast to the rest, in the year 2000 (just before the
2001 economic and political crisis) a combative sector, bond to a left tradition,
wins a minority in the Subway CD (some of they used to be activists in the Movi-
miento Al Socialismo [Movement Towards Socialism], the biggest Trotskyist
party in the 1980s decade).
In 2002, they took advantage of the crisis on the Political Regime; this sector
of Subway CD (with the support of social movements and left parties) submitted
a bill of unhealthy work at the subway. This is the starting point for the 6 hours
working day fight.
For two years, this fight for recovering a right that was lost during neoliber-
alism gave an identity to the Subway CD and will establish them as referents. On
April 2004, with a four-day strike the Subway CD wins the implementation of 6
hours. Workday for every sector in the subway. This date is of an enormous sig-
nificance for two reasons: first, the triumph that meant for the workers going
back to the 6 hours workday, that had been previously expropriated by the priva-
tization; second, because the impact of the strike (that paralyzed a service that
transports between 1 and 1.5 million passengers per day) published the existence
of a rank and file organization and its possibility of being the way of recovering
from neoliberalism defeats.
This impact could be measured in the trade union elections that same year.
For the first time, the combative sector of the Subway CD wins the majority23;
but it could also be measured in a very significant fact (particularly important for
this article): by the middle of 2004 a sector of the outsourced workers (belonging
to the cleaning company TAYM) starts to get organized secretly and ask help to
the Subway CD with aim of having access to the Collective Bargaining of the
UTA (its agreements are much better than the cleaning workers Collective
Bargaining).
In December 2004, the activists workers were fired by TAYM, they start a
strike as an answer and with help from the Subway CD, asking the reinstatement
of the dismissed workers. The Subway CD, in solidarity, threatens to stop the five
Subway lines if the workers were not reinstalled at their workplaces. The workers
were reinstalled and a new process of struggle and negotiation started; it concluded
with the inclusion of the outsourced workers of TAYM to the UTA Collective
Bargaining on March 2005. These facts made an unprecedented situation for the
working class: they conquered lost rights, but above all, the solidarity of a workers
organization with the workers in the most precarious conditions of the company.
From that point onwards, workers of different outsourced companies started
asking for equitative labor and wage conditions, installing as a “rule” the support
of the stable workers through the public support from the Subway CD. On
116 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

December 6, 2006, UTA representatives, Metrovias, Pertenecer, Servisub, and

TAYM agreed the inclusion of these outsourced companies to the permanent
staff of the company that runs the Subways in Buenos Aires (Metrovıas). On
2007, other outsourced workers sector was added to Metrovıas Staff; those
workers that still have contracts for outsource companies, they do it under UTA
Collective Bargaining.

“We Got There and were not Allowed In. We Run Over the
Security Guards and Entered”24

“The struggle on the food Company Kraft brought a tendency that appeared
in an isolated way on the five-year-period and emerged this year. We are talking
about Rank and Files and Steward Bodies in the factories and activists that work
on their own, outside of the unions that are recognized by the CGT (Confedera-
cion General delTrabajo). They have a dispute on their own vindications, even
when the unions have already closed formal negotiating channels. The phenom-
enon doesn’t recognize geographical limits or different items in economy, this is
one of the main worries of the government and the Business men.” This is the
way it was described by a journalist from the newspaper “Critica de la
Argentina,” Kraft as a “test case” in 2009.
This struggle was the longest fight, with more than one month strike, police
repression, violent eviction, and dozens of protests and route blockades performed
by the workers and by the social organizations in solidarity. It expresses indeed a
phenomenon that exceeded the Kraft case, but also had new features inside and
helped to make a definition of the Rank and File unionism: its organization at the
workplaces, its “political independence” or directly political opposition to the tra-
ditional union leadership, a strong activism that brought together workers (most
of them young) and the presence of the working class left.
However, we do not want to focus on the year 2009 (that was analyzed in
many articles and thesis.25 Actually, there is a feature that was not published
enough but is extremely important because without it the process in 2009 cannot
be understood, neither can be the Kraft Factory Committee (Kraft CI—Comsio-
nInterna) becoming an unquestionable referent of the Rank and File Unionism.
The year 2007 was a turning point in which Kraft CI took the vindications of the
temporary-contract workers; from then onwards a renewal of the factory organi-
zation built a strong activism of young workers with precarious labor conditions
that have considered the Kraft CI as their organization, with a belonging feeling.
From the nineties decade, different ways of hiring workers were installed in
Kraft (as in the rest of the enterprises); the temporary contracts and the precari-
ous conditions allowed the companies to frequent dismissals with no rights of
compensation for the workers. There are two reasons to consider 2005 as
another turning point. First, the factory had a new workers composition after
two years of economic growth and employment; it had hundreds of young work-
ers that were part of the labor market. In this context is when the first resistance
processes (even in individual cases) to dismissals of the temporary-contact
VARELA: BALANCING THE NEW AND THE OLD: PRECARIOUS WORKERS’ RESISTENCE 117

workers start taking place. Second, in that year, the Kraft CI (with a fighting tra-
dition and in opposition to the unions’ leadership) decided to add into their list
some of the young workers of the new generation (among them, there were
some supporters of the working class left). They carry out the Factory Commit-
tee election with all the workers, including temporary-contact workers, stable
workers, those affiliated to the union and those who were not, and the out-
sourced workers. Processes of unions’ activism start, assemblies outside the Fac-
tory, meetings and discussions about the working conditions; they strengthen a
group of young activists, most of them working in precarious conditions. It was
only after two years that this process was made public.
In 2007, a conflict that lasted more than 45 days made the unity between
temporary-contact workers and stable workers grow stronger. This struggle
starts when the union approves a wage agreement for a rise of 16.5 percent. In an
assembly, the workers vote for an action plan that includes: wage rise equal to
the cost of living and including the temporary-contract and outsourced workers
into the permanent staff. They also vote a road blockade in the Pan-American
Highway (next to the factory). It was the first road blockade in the
Pan-American Highway driven by Kraft CI; this highway would become a high
workers struggle territory in this area, and more than 60 percent of the partici-
pants were young workers with a temporary contract. After two days, the com-
pany dismiss 150 workers with outsource or temporary contracts.26
Some of the dismissed workers of the night shift jumped the Factory gates27
to get into the factory and went to the dressing rooms. With some members of
the Kraft CI, they made an assembly and decided to call a strike but staying
inside the workplace. It was the first time that a strike defending the temporary-
contract workers was called. Most of them were between 22- and 25-years old.
The enterprise was paralyzed and the workers could stay with their positions.
These unavoidable events explain the process that has its highest peak in the
struggle in 2009; the Kraft CI has gone through a change with a new generation,
also compared to the “old workers” that had a natural point of view of the divi-
sion between temporary-contract workers and stable workers.
In 2008, the same activists from the factories start asking the election of a Stew-
ards’ Body according to the Working Sector; this organism was lost during the
1990s. The election took place and a Stewards’ Body (CD) enlarged the union rep-
resentation in the factory. Many young workers were elected updating the Kraft
union life. The Union and the Company did not recognize the Stewards’ Body
legally, so the factory actually had its own organization but it was not legal. This
enlarging process with a renewal in the generations, and the policy of organization,
would be the target for the Company in the struggle of 2009 when almost 200
workers were dismissed, many of them members of the Stewards’ Body.
This will be the label of the Kraft CI and would become a reference in Bue-
nos Aires Northern Suburbs. A feature that also builds solidarity as a political
construction will be spreading the need of organizing with other workers beyond
the limits of the factory or workplace, and assuming the challenge of organizing
new rank and file workers struggles. In Buenos Aires Northern Suburbs, a
118 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

territory with a fighting tradition in Argentina, this process will assume a larger
visibility when they make the Pan-American Highway (which connects dozens
of industries) a territory of road blockade and protest of the factory workers. If
the road had been territory for the unemployed workers, Piqueteros, by the end
of the 1990s and the beginning of 2000; it became an extra-factory territory for
the factory struggle in the last decade.

“Everyone In”

In 2014, the multinational graphic Company Donnelley closed their gates

without notice (an extended practice in many countries) with the result of 400
workers dismissed. The Factory Committee (CI) decided to show up in the com-
pany and go on with production. From then on a struggle for the expropriation
and nationalization under workers control starts (following the model of Zan on
Ceramic factory in Neuquen province).
This experience is still in process and it already had support and solidarity
(the expropriation bill had a preliminary approval in Deputies’ Parliament of the
Buenos Aires province28). This had placed the cooperative MadyGraf, ex-
Donelley (it was named MadyGraf in honor to Mady, the disabled daughter of
one of the workers’ leaders of the factory) in the discussion about the “models”
of union revitalization and the rank and file unionism in our country.
The background of this process starts in 2005 and is directly in relation to
the fight against precarious labor in the graphic factory. “It was so natural the
layoff of a workmate, he would go into the factory and by the middle of his work-
ing day he would be called by the bosses, ‘you are fired.’ The workmate would
leave, say goodbye to his fellows and say “It was my turn now,” “ooh, shit!” He
would grab all his things and leave. It was this was it became so natural.” These
are words from Eduardo Ayala (one of the workers’ leaders of Donelley) about
the dynamic of the dismissals on the workers with temporary-contracts and on
the outsourced workers that prevailed in the factory from the 1990s decade.
The year 2005 is a starting point (this date is repeated in the three cases we
are describing). For the first time, the opposition delegates win the hole Factory
Committee (CI) and strengthen as an organization of opposition with ties to the
working class left parties.29 In the Collective Bargaining discussion of 2005, the
company suggests a wage rise in monthly payments. The CI answers including
in the negotiation the temporary-contract workers for the first time: the workers
would accept the monthly payment if the temporary-contract and precarized
workers became stable workers. “That day was a breaking point because we
could have a wage rise and we could eliminate all those precarious contracts.
From 2005 up to now, they could not dismiss any fellow. In 2011, nineteen of us
were dismissed, but we fighted and we were reinstalled in our workplace.”30
From that day onwards, the discussion of what they call “solidarity with
those in the worse conditions” would be a typical feature in the factory and will
express in many ways. In 2007, when the professor Carlos Fuentealba was killed
in Neuquen province (he was killed by the police during a protest in a road
VARELA: BALANCING THE NEW AND THE OLD: PRECARIOUS WORKERS’ RESISTENCE 119

blockade), the Donelley CI raise to the rest of the factory workers the need of a
strike in solidarity with those teachers and as a way of protest against the murder
of Fuentealba. A delegate tells the discussion at the assembly was long and with
different opinions. Finally the strike motion wins but with a part of the factory in
opposition. Six years later, when petrol workers were sent to prison after taking
part in a mobilization in which a police officer was killed (it was never established
where did the bullet that killed the police came from), Donelley CI raised again
the need of a strike in solidarity with the petrol workers. The motion wins with a
big majority. During those six years, they had strengthen an experience of soli-
darity, first regarding the most precarious sectors of their own Factory, then
with other sectors beyond the Factory limits.
On December 11, 2010, the Donelley CI was part of the workers delegation
that brought its solidarity al the ParqueIndoamericano in Buenos Aires city. They
got there to support the homeless Bolivian immigrants that had been brutally
repressed (with four of them killed by police repression) while they were trying
to take a part of the land as a place where to live. In April 2013, Kraft and
Donelley CI called an assembly and made collections to bring food, clothes, and
basic-need materials for the victims of the floods in Las Tunas neighborhood
(located in the Northern Suburbs) and voted to be part of the mobilizations
against the authorities, in this case, they are also breaking the segmentation. The
impact of this action could be seen in the national strike held on April 10, 2014,
when the neighbors of Las Tunas went to the road blockade in Pan-American
Highway, which was being held by the Factories’ Committess of the Northern
Area. These actions (meaning for Donelley CI becoming a referent in the
Northern Suburbs) are part of the conditions that made the possibility for allow-
ing Donelley CI develop the fight for the expropriation and recover the factory
under workers’ control. In their way, they had the support of other factories in
the same area and from social organizations and left parties. This solidarity was
built within ten years of noncorporative actions.

Final Remarks

In this article, we analyzed the interaction of the precarious labor with the
union organization at the workplaces, and which were the features that allowed
or blocked that interaction. Insisting on a point of view in relation (and not seg-
mentation) comes not only from what we can observe in our empirical research
(we briefly outlined three cases). It also comes from a theoretical position (and
political) of resisting the transformation of the “precariat” into an independent
subject in the segmented workers field, and into an object (also independent) in
an Academic Social Science that is full of partial concepts.
In the case of Argentina, the interaction between the precarious labor condi-
tion and the union organization of the low-wage workers is carried out in two
dimensions. One that can be called “objective” and that is in relation to the char-
acteristics of the economy cycle developed in the country from 2003. We have
made a definition for this period: Economy and Employment Growth (also
120 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

unionism renewal) that develops on maintaining (and not the reversion) the pre-
carious conditions of labor conquered by the bourgeoisie in the nineties decade.
This made that thousands of young workers that are part of the new workers
generation, had confronted (as in the Subway, Kraft, and Donelley) to precari-
ous labor conditions. This made an “anti-synchrony between accumulation and
participation” that is the basis for the Rank and File unionism with this young
generation as its heart. It also produced that the working place became a terri-
tory where the workers that came from the neoliberal defeats, mixed up with the
new generation that inherited the defeats but did not suffered them in the 1990s.
A new generation that is precarious from the beginning, and that live in the
working class neighborhoods, whose families suffered unemployment as a natu-
ral working class condition and that have entered to the labor market in a
moment where the expectations were growing up. In these specific historical
conditions, different working class sectors were brought together.
This explains that by the end of 2013, when a brief wave of lootings (pushed
by a political crisis with the police forces), a worker of a factory told us that
many of his workmates had gone to the lootings. Meanwhile, the media accused
the looters as the excluded, the “anti-social,” the workers recognized them as a
part of the working class with the most precarious jobs. The part of the precari-
ous working class that joined the factories with the Economy and Employment
growth. But this did not mean leaving poverty although it meant mixing up with
organized workers with better conditions and the possibility of an experience of
organization and fight with a working class identity.
Mixing up with other workers does not necessary assume an “explosive”
characteristic in a spontaneous way. It requires conditions that are not objective,
but they can develop within political action. The factory became a territory of
struggle experiences and political activists. The cases we briefly described have
the combination of an objective process and the willingness to re-build the
workers’ solidarity (among precariat and not precarious workers) as a solid pol-
icy. This policy became in fact, as opposed to union burocracy.
In this political action, the Radical Left is involved as a sector that disputes
that “workers dignity” parameters, from a discomfort that is produced by the
Economic, Social, and Political contradictions of the renewal union process.
This scenario opens many questions in the “end of cycle” period of the
KirchneristPos-neoliberal government in Argentina (as in other cases in the
region). After smelling the power of strike, carrying out assemblies, the collec-
tive empowerment felt in the road blockades, would the young generations
accept going back to massive unemployment? The answer to this question is not
objective, it involves the debate of strategies that the radical left rises in a work-
ing class signed by the precarious conditions.

Paula Varela is Doctor of Social Science at Buenos Aires University (UBA),

Professor at Sociology and Political Science at UBA, Researcher at CONICET
and member of the “Instituto de PensamientovSocialista “Karl Marx” (Institute
of Socialist Thinking “Karl Marx”). Her research focus is on social protests and
VARELA: BALANCING THE NEW AND THE OLD: PRECARIOUS WORKERS’ RESISTENCE 121

workers’ organization. Address correspondence to Dr. Paula Varela, CEIL

CONICET, SAAVEDRA 15, 4th floor, C1082ACA, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
E-mail: paula.varela.ips@gmail.com

Notes

1. There are a few analysis about the “politicization” processes of the youth in Argentina, some of them writ-
ten by Natanson (2013), Vommaro (2014), and Melina Vazquez (AAVV 2015).
2. Research from van der Linden (2008) or Silver (2003) can subscribe to this debate.
3. The work of Standing (2011) and the new points of view of “social exclusion” are part of this.
4. The articles about union organization in the magazines Capital & Class, European Journal of Industrial Rela-
tions o Critical Sociology express these discussions. It also does the recent the recent compilation by Maurizio
Atzeni (2014).
5. During the second part of the 1990s, a strong protest movement of the unemployed workers developed in
Argentina and was named “movimientopiquetero” (picketers’ movement). The “piqueteros” were a key
aspect of the December 2001 mobilizations, which expressed the repercussions of the 1990s, including
massive unemployment, new ways of protesting, and organizing within the popular sectors. In 2003, began
a strong economic growth (and, consequently, the increase of employment) together with the govern-
ment’s initiatives to institutionalize a portion of the “movimientopiquetero,” and to criminalize the
remaining sectors. As a result, the unemployed workers’ movement saw a drastic decline. At the same time,
a trade union “revitalization” process began in certain workplaces. This moved the discussion, once cen-
tred on unemployment, to struggles over workers’ labor conditions.
6. This process was deeply analyzed in Varela’s (2015) book, “La disputa por la dignidad obrera. Sindicalismo de
base fabril en la Zona Norte del Conurbano bonaerense.”
7. For an analysis of the different moments of revitalization of the trade union action and organization in
Argentina, see Varela (2015). In 2008, the Body of Workers Representatives decide to split off the UTA
(Union Tranviaria Automotor) and make a new Trade Union. They founded the AGTSyP (Asociaci on
Gremial de Trabajadores de Subte y Premetro). Due to the legislation in Argentina in which workers can
only have one Trade Union recognized by the State, who legally represents the workers for the collective
bargaining, the AGTSyP is in fact the real subway Union, although it is still demanding the legal recogni-
tion. For an analysis of this process in the Subway read Colectivo Encuesta Obrera (2007), Ventrici (2012),
Cresto (2012).
8. For an analysis of the workers’ organization process see Cambiasso (2013).
9. The Factory Zanon (now FaSinPat-Fabrica Sin Patrones/Factory without Bosses) became an example of a
self-managed factory in Argentina and Internationally. See Naomi Klein’s documentary film, “The take.”
10. The labor informality rate is higher than the percentage of nonregistered workers, most of them are
autonom workers, which in our country means subsistence-level labor. They must be considered informal
because there are no accurate statistics on this sector. The labor informality rate was 45.5 percent in 2010;
precarious and outsource labor must be added to these numbers as they also work under conditions that do
not guarantee their minimum labor rights (Elbert 2013).
11. According to this point of view and with the precedent analysis, the thesis by Marta Novick about
the “righteous” development of labor, regarding their quantity and quality, can be discussed. Although it is
unquestionable how the quantity of laborrised, it is difficult to confirm its quality has improved Novick
(2006).
12. In 2014, unemployment started as a threaten again (with its center in the automotive industry) and as a dis-
ciplinary mechanism for the rank and file unionism and left activists, changing the “conflicts of growth”
for the “conflicts of the end of cycle.”
13. The change on the expectations among workers and popular sectors is not exclusive in Argentina, it has
also been analyzed in other Latin-American countries that have gone through the so called “pos-neoliberal
governments,” as the Brazilian case.
14. Diego Ceruso estudia los orıgenes de la organizaci
on de fabrica en Argentina entre 1916 y 1943. Vease,
Ceruso (2015).
122 WORKINGUSA: THE JOURNAL OF LABOR AND SOCIETY

15. The regulation of the Trade Union organizations in Argentina is based in three kind of laws: (1) The Profes-
sional Association Law (Ley de Asociaciones Profesionales) Nbr. 23.551 of 1988 (its precedents are in the
decree of the year 1944 and the first time as a law was in 1953). The Collective Bargaining Law (Ley de
losConveniosColectivos de Trabajo—CCT) Nbr. 14.250 of year 1953 (its precedents are also in the decree of
the year 1944). Third, the Health Insurance Law (Ley de ObrasSociales) Nbr. 23.660 of 1988 (its precedents
are in the decree of the year 1944, and were then turned into Law in 1970). These legislations are the basis for
the legal structure of the Trade Unions that was established later. They base on three mainstays (1) The estate
tutelage, that recognizes the State as an authority that provides the legal entity to the Trade Union organiza-
tions, without this, an organization cannot represent the workers legally, despite the workers will. (2) “Sole-
Union,” which establishes that for each branch of activity, only one Trade Union is recognized by the State.
This means that collective bargaining are established with this Trade Union, and applies for all the workers of
this branch (although they are not affiliated). Those leaders recognized by this Trade union have Union Char-
ters. A Union monthly payment is inferred from the affiliated workers’ incomes automatically. This union is also
able to establish private labor agreements with the bosses of their branch to get “extraordinary payments” for
all the workers that result “beneficiaries” of the collective bargaining, whether they are affiliated or not. The
recognized Union is who charges and administrates the fee for the Health Insurance that is also inferred from
the workers’ incomes. (3) The State Intervention in labor struggles establishes if a strike is legal or illegal, and can
promulgate the “Mandatory conciliation,” and so forth through the Ministry of Labor.
16. In the last years, our own research team at Buenos Aires University and the CONICET have performed
different investigations on different cases in the industries of Buenos Aires Northern area. Mariela Cam-
biasso, Julieta Longo, Georgina Andrada, Laura Meyer, Adriana Collado, and DeboraVasello are part of
this working group, which is coordinated by Paula Varela.
17. Abal Medina (2014) makes an analysis on the workers of the Supermarkets and the call centers of Buenos Aires.
18. Etchemendy and Collier (2008) state that the uni
on revitalization in Argentina is the key for a “segmented
neo-corporatism.”
19. This also explains the National Government intentions about convincing a sector of the CD for their own
plans, through the CTA (Central de TrabajadoresArgentinos CTA). They achieved this in 2008, making
the Subway CD divide in two, with a sector that supports the government and a fighting sector.
20. In 1994, the Subway service was privatized.
21. Between 1973 and 1980: 8 hours; 1981–1984: 7 hours; 1985–1993: 6 hours; 1994–2003: 8 hours; 2003 hoy:
6 hours (Colectivo Encuesta Obrera 2007).
22. The outsourced areas were the following: passenger assistance and security, cleaning service, treasury
management, and fund rising, advertising and maintenance of facilities. The Collective Bargaining
belonged to the branches of Commerce, Security, Cleaning Service, and Civil Engineering.
23. The anti-bureaucratic lists won the election in seven sections: the five working lines and two workshop
areas. Workers (1200 of 1500) gave their vote to anti-bureaucratic renewal. In 2006, they won again with
71 percent of the votes.
24. Interview to Kraft temporary worker, 2007.
25. Read Varela and Lotito (2009); and Cambiasso (2013).
26. The temporary-work agencies are a precarious way of labor contract, where the worker is not the
employed by the Company where he works, but is a temporary employee of an “agency” of temporary job.
27. “Saltar el molinete” (Run over the gates) was a way of protest toward the layoffs and going into the Factory
anyway.
28. Christian Castillo, deputy for the PTS in the Left and the Workers’ Front (FIT) rised the bill.
29. Eduardo Ayala, uni on leader at Donnelley became a militant of the PTS (Partido de
losTrabajadoresSocialistas).
30. Interview to Kraft temporary worker, 2007.

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