National labor unions vs global companies?
Notes about union power and transnational companies in Argentine Steel industry1
Introduction
The world crisis known as the “Petroleum Crisis” is the turning point in the
transition to “neoliberal globalization”. As Astarita (2004) and Smith (2010) assess,
“neoliberal globalization” is the consequence of capitalist logic as it developed in a
particular historical context marked by key defeats of socialist and workers’ movements .
Along with the re-shaping of global division of labor and industrial expansion to former
non-industrialized regions, neoliberal globalization has developed mainly through capital
restructuring and concentration processes. Our concern is about the particular development
of neoliberal globalization in Argentina, a semi-industrialized country with an important
working class. In this regard, our research focuses on the privatization and restructuration
processes in the steel industry, with particular attention to workers’ collectives and changes
in union action. Therefore, our “case” is the workers’ collective of former state owned steel
mill SOMISA, whose privatization in 1992 was one of the main steps in the branch
restructuration process (Soul: 2002, 2010, 2014).
Productive restructuration processes set up an “industrial legality” (Gramsci: 1981)
that lasts until today. As much as the restructuration process was also a process of capital
concentration and centralization, employers needed to develop new tools for channelling
shifting forms of productive consumption of workforce and a new division of labor. As a
result, steel workers employed by Siderar (new company that involves former SOMISA
1
This paper makes part of Research Project PICT 0700/2013 "El accionar sindical en la etapa pos neoliberal.
Una aproximación comparativa a sus rupturas y continuidades en los sindicatos metalúrgicos de Argentina y
Brasil", granted by FONCYT- ANCYT
1
plant) are distributed in eight industrial facilities.2 Since 2000, Siderar was integrated into
Ternium, a “translatine” firm that owned facilities in Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, US and
Guatemala, and Brazil.
Nowadays we are concerned with the conditions that shape union power. Our
starting point is a theoretical assumption that considers labor unions as a workers’
secondary organizational field, shaped primarily by the structural features of capital. In this
sense, although it seems to be clear that national policies shape union action, the company’s
international scope allows us to identify changing relations between the company’s
strategies, union power and national policies. In this paper, we focus on the role played by
internal organizational and political features of metalworker union3 action, as much as by
international union networks in union power construction. For this purpose, we describe
three empirical nodes of relations in order to produce input for comparative insights about
union action as a result of contradictory local/international political and economic
processes. The nodes of relations to be described are:
-Workplace relations between union and company: This level of union action has been
reputed as central to the building of union power. We will describe how company policies
tend to build a “global culture” among workers and how the company is able to impose
form and content to the bargaining processes.
-National relations between union and company: The description of relations at this level
will allow us to discuss the empirical consequences of one of the distinctive features of
Argentine institutional structure of industrial relations: the monopoly of national industry
2
According to company data, it employs 5460 people (blue and white collars), 3350 of whom work at the
plant located in San Nicolás. By 2011 it employed 5500 subcontracted workers, 3000 of whom were members
of the San Nicolás local branch of the metalworkers’ union.
3
UOM (by its spanish acronym) Argentine Metalworkers’ Union
2
representation by only one organization, and the centralization of collective bargaining that
it supposes.
-International relations between national unions and federations and the global
company: Through the description of this level of relations, we will focus on different
actors engaged in the building of international union power. At the same time, this will
allow us to single out the role of governments, national regulations and company policies in
these relations.
Our purpose in this paper is to lay out the shifting relationships shaped by the
company’s transnationalization and the main union responses at different organizational
levels. Our first insight is that it is through their – contradictory – engagement with
international networks that the Argentine union sections achieve a national action level.
Unions, workers and “neoliberal globalization” in anthropological approaches
Academic mainstream characterized neoliberal globalization development through
two topics: “the end of the working class” as a relevant social subject and the “vanishing of
nation-states,” trapped in transnational(ized) capital and resource flows. These shifts put
into question previous social and anthropologic research about the working class, at the
same time that they shaped new issues and matters. In a mid 1990s summary, Robert
Cabanes pointed out three sets of problems for anthropology of work (Cabanes: 1997). Of
those three sets, we shall specifically consider those inquiries that are linked with our
contemporary concerns: the factors that shape union action.
Firstly, the displacement of the individual-citizen paradigm, which supposed that
each individual holds rights and duties within an equalitarian horizon, by what Cabanes
calls “the legitimacy of inequality.” This legitimacy entered labor relationships, through
3
new management policies and labor market segmentations. Remarkably, it also entered
union policies, as Peter Richardson (2010) argues in his analysis of Detroit’s automotive
industry restructuration. In the latter case, private property relationships overrode former
workers’ collective rights and gains achieved by unionized jobs, despite (and because of)
union strategy. In our case study, this process was encouraged by the company’s policies of
“benefits with development” and by the union strategy of “individualizing” decisions
related to the company’s rationalization policies (Soul: 2014). This process continues even
today, with union strategies over subcontracted workers (Soul: 2013). Nowadays,
inequalities are legitimated as part of a set of values that express shifts in contemporary
working class composition. In fact, although inequality has undoubtedly grown in the
context of neoliberal globalization, Leite Lopes’ (2011) research on Brazilian sugar mill
workers describes how it is part of workers’ values and social representations about
themselves, related not only to rights and institutional regulations but also to labor process
organization. Our concern is related to inequality – its expressions, its social representations
and legitimation - as a factor underlying union action.
The second set of problems posed by Cabanes are those related to the concept of nation and
its social representations, especially in connection with social links amongst workers and
between them and the nation-state, at a time when companies seem to be increasingly ruled
by world market dynamics. In this regard, not only the institutional framework but also
ideological and political traditions and engagement held by union leaders are supported by
nationalist values and representations, although the unions’ action scope seems to have
changed. Scholars inspired by transnational history have noted that, in contrast with certain
social movements, labor organizations seem less capable of behaving at a transnational or
global scale (Nolan, MacRaild and Kirk: 2010). An ethnographic study of the development
4
of international solidarity amongst dockworkers by E P Durrenberger (2009) demonstrates
institutional as well as political obstacles settled up by national leaderships to international
coordination. The article describes how international solidarity links between European and
US workers were in fact performed by parallel organizational structures, split off traditional
unions.
Considering that the nation state is the main focus of analysis for a dynamic
understanding of unions, Hürtgen (2014) proposes a different perspective on European
labor union leaders’ nationalist values and social representations. Far from explaining them
as improper in a transnational context, Hürtgen poses them as “ideological weapons” to
improve their members’ position in increasingly competitive labor relationships.
Since they involve important cultural processes, transnational companies as a
research subject are in the scope of anthropologists – and other social researchers – since
mid ‘70s, as they were expanding through former (or still) colonial areas, producing deep
social transformations and the reassessment of cultural patterns and practices (Nash: 2008;
Ong: 1989; Burawoy: 1985). Facing transnationalization processes two decades later, Latin
American scholars focused on free trade industrial zones, characterized by low wages,
female workforce and worse working conditions than average, where independent union
action is very difficult (Reygadas; 2002). They also addressed the consequences of
globalization over corporate branches, their workforce composition and union traditions
and practices (Vogelmann: 2013; 2006; Rodríguez: 2007, Gindin; 2011). Finally, the
consequences of transnationalization “at home” and workers’ cultural responses are
analysed by June Nash (1989) through the notion of “corporate hegemony.” Our own
5
research findings have revealed Techint policies pointed at changing workers’ behaviour
toward unions, jobs and horizontal relationships (Soul: 2010)4.
This is related to the third set of problems assessed by Cabanes, about the class
question, its configuration and expression through unionism. In this regard, Cabanes
identifies a contradiction in Brazilian unionism, related to the break of a former union’s
“virtuous circle,” made up of union control over worksites and managerial policies, and of
bargaining capability within state institutional structures (Cabanes: 1997:127). This
“virtuous circle” relates to the form that political relations take on in capitalist societies.
Reappraising Marxist debates, Ellen Mesksins Wood (2000) considers that capitalist
development relies on the distinction between private political power, held by management
and employers for organizing and disciplining workforce; and state political power granted
by the “monopoly of legitimate coercion” and by political and ideological hegemonic
relations. This assessment poses a key issue towards understanding unionism shifts under
neoliberal globalization. Meanwhile inquiries focused on worksite conflicts reveal new
claims and expressions of workers’ unrest, different forms of solidarity as much as they
observe how working class contemporary divisions shape not only unionization processes
but also union claims and strategies. Other scholars have focused on collective union
strategies for bargaining processes, linking wage contracts to labor conflicts in the public
arena, such as demonstrations, mobilizations or public actions(Atzeni: 2010; Atzeni,
Ghigliani: 2014; Martínez, Soul: 2010).
4
Since the ‘70s, Latin American scholars focused their attention on industrialization processes – regardless of
the national or foreign capital source - in order to explain not only the “proletarization” of peasants and
original peoples, but also the emergence of labor unions holding particular features and traditions (Leite
Lopes: 2011; 1986; Lins Ribeiro: 2006).
6
These academic investigations are key inputs to our present concerns about factors
shaping union action, because of their focusing on labor-capital relationships in a broad
context, with a multiplicity of mediations playing. Thus, through medium-term research, it
is possible to identify how companies’ practices and strategies place limits and conditions
on union action in an unfavorable balance of power for workers, and how unions and
workers can either advance over them - in some particular historical moments – or deal
with them during “normal” times. Theoretically, that means that it is relevant to consider
union strategies as shaped by capital in two dimensions of power relationships: on the one
side, the “objective” dimension, in the sense that it is capitalists who decide about
investment locations, the limits in the number of employed, the main features of the labor
process and labor force organization conditioned by market and competition rules. These
features cannot be changed willingly by particular actors. On the other side, we need to
consider the “economic - corporative dimension,” because this objective feature underlies
unions’ claims and demands (Gramsci: 2003; Offe and Wiesenthal: 1985). The “economic
– corporative” dimension has been performed by capital and state institutional frameworks
as much as by union traditions and policies. Politic anthropologists have focused their
research on the processes of making claims and demands, highlighting their political and
hegemonic aspects and the roles played by unions, state and employers in shaping them.
Worksite organization and productive restructuration
On November 26th, 1992, 5,500 steelworkers were transferred from SOMISA – the main
state owned steel mill – to Aceros Parana, later Siderar – a stock company led by Techint
7
Group’s firm “Propulsora Siderúrgica”.5 It was not a good time for the working class: since
1991, the hyperinflation process had been controlled through a fixed exchange rate policy
called “Convertibilidad” which increased competitive pressure over companies – and
workers. Real wages had collapsed and employers and government were trying to remove
benefits and gains won by workers and to undermine trade union power through the so
called “Labor Reform”.
For SOMISA workers, privatization was the turning point in this process: new
owners were the expression of a different managerial culture, a new “way of being
industrial workers” and new industrial relations. The company needed to increase
exploitation and productivity levels, which is why benefits policies were suppressed or cut
off and management displayed the slogan “Benefits with development,” meaning that
benefits were linked to profits, not to workers’ needs or rights.
Old workers felt that, if they wanted to keep their jobs, they would have to adapt
their practices to the new owners’ conditions and goals. To adapt meant to learn how to use
computers, to adopt new labor patterns, such as cleaning their own workspace, following
and recording productive indicators and trying to “save costs,” not only by saving inputs or
raw materials, but also by saving time.
The adaptation of old workers’ practices expressed the result of a social hegemonic
process – which pointed against working class practices and organizations – and
of
concrete union strategies that assumed the restructuration processes as a need for common
5
The privatization of the mill, along with the productive restructuration in the other steel plants between 1989
and 1992, were the basis for a new steel industry structure, without state owned plants and with two groups
(Techint and Acindar) and three companies (Siderar, Siderca and Acindar) operating in different markets. In
this period, the number of steel workers falls from nearly 35,000 in 1987 to 15,000 in 1992. Nowadays there
are 17,500 steel workers in Argentina. At the same time, labor productivity increased through the ‘90s, from
nearly 500 man tonnes per annum to more than 700 by 2004, because of technical innovations and
management policies.
8
well-being. Union activists, delegates and leaders describe their feelings through a common
picture: “it was a big shock that they were applying to us and the issue was how to endure
it, because we wouldn’t be able to stop it”. Elder workers refer to this period as a
“traumatic one,” and see themselves as victims of a “plan” (Soul: 2002).
In contrast to the workers’ experience, private owners had a long-term plan for the
company and the employees. According to Human Resources managers and engineers, the
main goals of restructuration were: workers’ training and education in technologic
innovation, to prepare the extension of computing systems to productive areas and the
automation of some processes.
The “new organizational culture” that management has been trying to develop since
then involves the workers in the company’s market goals, appealing to their commitment
with quality, health and safety goals and lower costs. These are new tasks, effectively
imposed through the reorganization of job positions and informatics innovation, as much as
the display of subjective involvement with the “new organizational culture.”
As an
example, the list of tasks of a maintenance mechanical worker includes her/his
“participation in eliminating risky conditions”; “to keep order and organization in his/her
position, workshop and equipment”; “to control number and stock of replacement parts,
tools and safety elements”; “to inform (…) about the tasks developed during his/her
workday.” This set of “general tasks” – formerly linked to other job positions - concerns to
time control and to “quality improvement” as it is understood by management.
At the same time, the company shows their “global” extension and the uniformity of
their goals by the dissemination – through corporative magazines and conferences or videos
displayed in the computers in working positions - of information, examples, and
productivity, lost time or injury frequency rates of the plants located in other countries.
9
“Global signals” in the worksite not only came with computers’ information: since 2001
toilet rolls and paper sheets were from Venezuela, cleaning elements were from Brazil and
so on, because the company had centralized input and raw materials provision at a global
scale. An accident would be immediately published and analyzed by safety groups of
different plants, which would identify responsibilities and causes. These policies developed
locally the implementation of international management strategies that had succeeded in
competitiveness improvement, and they were daily life marks of “neoliberal globalization”
at work.
From the union standpoint, privatization was the end of a long and difficult period
of buyouts and layouts, early retirements and the shutdown of some work sections that
delegates and leaders had to deal with. Through the union action line called “participation
and bargaining,” local leaders tended to achieve general agreements about the
restructuration process and to channel workers’ unrest, supporting restructuration plans,
claiming by “social peace” (Soul: 2002; 2010). Whenever privatization law established an
Employees Stock Ownership Plan, the action line of “participating and bargaining”
acquired a management-workers-shared-interests meaning.
After privatization, relationships between the San Nicolás metalworkers’ union
local and the company were channelled through joint committees formed by managers and
by leaders and representatives of the local. Main issues discussed and negotiated in these
joint committees related to:
1 - Outsourcing and subcontracting processes in areas such as maintenance, energy
generation, docks and logistics, countable administration, etc.
2 - Informatics innovations that changed tasks by adding indirect work and computer’s
operations to them. Direct consequences of innovations were the diminishing number of job
10
positions and a new classification of them. The result was an “internal job ranking” that
overlapped with the one stated in the national contract.
3 – Changes in wage composition. While the basic wage and some bonuses such as
seniority were linked to the national agreement, other increase components (such as
bonuses linked to profits participation and to new job rankings) had to be negotiated at each
plant. We consider these are main trends of what we call “flexible industrial legality” in
the steel branch (Soul: 2013). In an interview during 2002, a company manager that was
part of the Labor Relations Department talked to us about the company strategy of setting
up different bargain levels with the union, because delegates’ direct relationships with coworkers made it very difficult to discuss long term agreements, and leaders and
representatives could not deal with day-to-day claims and grievances.
From the union standpoint, these plant-joint-committees are key tools to discuss
particular features of steelworkers’ working conditions in a medium-term prospect and to
leave delegates and internal committees the task of channelling grievance and unrest
without risking medium-term agreements. These agreements include a relevant issue, such
as the unified discussion of subcontracted and main company workers. Leaders and
representatives agree that the wage gap between both groups has been partially closed
through these committees; however, this is counteracted by the increasing amount of
subcontracted workers, and the diminishing amount of “organic job positions” covered by
main company employees. In fact, while the amount of workers employed by Siderar has
increased at lower rates than it did during the state management of the plant, the amount of
subcontracted workers has shown a more cyclical pattern.6
6
Former workers as much as union leaders and company managers agree in their identification of two clear
periods related to employment level: since privatization to 2003 “company’s doors were opened to get out and
11
New workers’ collectives characterized by their unequal conditions and experiences
underlie relationships between rank-and-file and leaders. Nevertheless, joint committees
and the delegates’ situated actions contribute to forge and to channel workers’ competitive
relations, by regulating wage and gain gap and by guaranteeing working conditions that
national contract sets for outsourced and subcontracted workers.7 We consider that this
competitive segmentation is one of more serious obstacles to the development of union
progressive policies.
Delegates’ day-to- day actions have changed too. Daily face – to – face agreement
between delegates, local leaders and managers was replaced by a set of standardized
procedures, consisting of e-mails, form notifications, telephone calls, and waiting times,
that shape what delegates call “the company bureaucracy”. Not only do these procedures
lengthen the amount of time that mediates between the claims and their resolution, but they
also undermine the power of the internal committee to deal with the daily demands of the
members.
The
other
side
of
“company
bureaucracy”
and
the
centralization
of
corporatedecisions is that competition among workers and plants becomes deeper and
deeper.8 Management transfers competitive pressures to workers through threats of
outsourcing, transferring tasks and productive sections or replacing workers with young
technicians.
closed to access;” in contrast, since 2003 “former workers that wanted to retire couldn’t,” because they had to
train to young workers that were being massively incorporated. According to Report and Balance data, the
number of main company employees decreased from 6627 in 1994 to 5460 in 2014, while the number of
locations increased from two to eight. These data support the assessment of subcontracted firms as the main
responsible for job creation.
7
We have registered subcontracted workers’ worksite demonstrations during the ‘90s, specially related to
health and safety conditions, which are key issues to explain union action related to them.
8
Since mid- 90’s, the former state owned steel mill became the core of a broader network of 8 smaller
specialized steel plants - most of them in Buenos Aires state - called Ternium Siderar. Although each plant
has its own range of products, some operations and processes are shared by them and management and
administration are centralized in Siderar headquarters in Buenos Aires City.
12
Since the 90s union-company relationships have acquired different features than
those they used to have. Firstly, the national joint committee – a key labor relations system
deviced to turn work–capital antagonism into commitments - was replicated at the company
level, in order to discuss labor policies while avoiding the limitations imposed by national
joint committees and by the national metalworkers’ contract. The constitution of three
specific joint committees at the main steel plant performs a new level in labor relationships
that makes the advance of private political power evident. Secondly, because of capital
centralization processes, the union has lost a share of influence in channelling individual
and daily claims. Nevertheless, the union can identify workers’ unrest through its delegates,
and it can channel that unrest into negotiated proposals through its involvement in joint
committees. Thirdly, these union-company worksite relationships are not the same for all
the plants of the company. Delegates and local leaders know it, but it was only in recent
years that something like a “national-company organizational level” was performed within
the UOM. In fact, as we will describe, the company developed a centralized labor policy
that deepened differences between worker’s collectives; and it did so through the joint
committees established in the main plant. The shifts in internal committees and in the
position of local unions are a consequence of the processes of centralization and
concentration of capital, which perform new “strategic positions.” However, these changes
in union positions are not an automatic outcome of the company’s centralization process.
We consider them as the outcome of a national union strategy based on confrontation with
central political power expressed by state and governments rather than to private political
power, expressed by managements and companies.
13
New “industrial legality” and the reconfiguration of union action scope
On May 2014, the Industriall9 Global Union had its Regional Steelworkers Meeting in
Buenos Aires, in Metalworkers Union headquarters. There were delegations from
Colombia, Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Peru and Argentina, and the proposal was to discuss the
current situation of the branch, workers and unions in each country, as well as the
development of the Industriall program. Labor Minister Carlos Tomada welcomed the
union leaders and encouraged them to build up conditions for “decent work” in conjunction
with governments.
Meanwhile, in another office, delegates and leaders of Argentina’s main steel
companies were discussing the annual wage improvement and its distribution. Although the
national agreement featured nearly a 30% improvement, the “steel branch” refused to sign
it. Leaders and representatives of “steel locals” demanded that steel workers’ wages reach
the 30% improvement set up by the national contract.
Representatives and leaders in the international meeting – who were from the locals
where main steel plants were located - were worried about that situation, and their chats and
telephone communications were about that issue. For the first time since the restructuration
process, all union locals involved with steel companies were discussing a common
demonstration.10 At lunch or during breaks, delegates and leaders expressed their
viewpoints. Most of them could not understand the employers’ intransigence; others were
expectant about an upcoming agreement, because – they said - direct confrontation was not
9
Industriall: International organization formed in 2012 by the joining of international federations of garment,
chemical and metal workers, in order to confront multinational companies’ global power
10
There had been two moments of Siderar unified demonstrations: a strike in 2005 also caused by wage
claims and a demonstration at the headquarters in 2009, when the company refused to pay the bonus on
profits arguing the international crisis as a cause. An important difference in the 2015 protest is that it
involved the three main steel companies.
14
the “way in which we do things”. Finally, by the end of the day, the resolution was
communicated: employers maintained their positions, so “steel branch” representatives
decided to set up a tent in front of Techint headquarters, claiming the same rate of wage
improvement for all steel workers.
For a “foreign observer” it must have been a strange claim: a particular branch of a
national union was demanding from employers the application of a national agreement that
had already been subscribed by them. Since one of the main particularities of the Argentine
institutional framework is its nationally unified collective bargaining system, which
involves national unions and employers’ chambers and associations in a centralized
discussion, at first sight, the steelworkers’ claim made no sense. However, a closer
approach to the employers’ strategies toward collective bargaining can provide the observer
with some explanations.
During the ‘90s, employers and government had firmly decided to decentralize the
collective bargaining process in order to get an accurate relationship between wages (and
working conditions) and single - company – productivity (even single - worker productivity).11 Even union leaders who were government-allies resisted those policies that
were targeted at weakening their own power sources, so they strived – successfully - to
keep nation – wide bargaining levels, and many of them, such as UOM, maintained the
legal effectiveness of old contracts.12
11
Unions’s engagement with neoliberal government in Argentina and Latin America has been described from
an institutional point of view by Murillo (2000) Etchemendy (2001)
12
The national contract signed by 1975 (before Dictatorship) includes some general chapters about wage
composition (basic wages, bonus and primes) working conditions (working hours/week, extraordinary hours
rates, leaves and special permissions, special labor regimes, health and safety, etc), industrial relations,
grievance procedures for the whole and a set of specific job category scales, related to each branch’s
productive processes.
15
This explains the setting up of joint committees at the core plant of Siderar. Through
them, management discussed new forms of productive consumption of labor force and tried
to extend the agreements reached in the main plant to the smaller ones, considering the
company in a unified view.13 By doing so, they tended to standardize job rankings and
historically differentiated wage compositions, imposing those that were discussed at the
main plant. In fact, the company set up a new bargaining level that involved every plant in
agreements reached with the most “strategic” internal committee.14 This, in turn, meant that
those old gains achieved at each plant level would be replaced by bonus and gains linked to
disadvantageous productive practices (or operational modes) or job rankings. Nowadays
each plant has different wage compositions. Particular bonus and gains’ improvement is
negotiated at the plant level, between the internal committee and management, and the rate
of this improvement is not set up by the national contract.
Long term consequences of this company wage bargaining strategy is an increasing
gap between real rate improvement of steel workers and the rate set up by the national
agreement. According to some leaders’ expressions, wage gaps were also increasing
between the two main companies owned by Techint Group. Additionally, according to
activists and former delegates that were not part of the leaders’ political group, the wage
gap between subcontracted and permanent workers is increasing too.15 Delegates that work
at smaller plants consider that the agreements reached in the main plant constrain their own
claims and weaken their positions and possibilities. Meanwhile, leaders of main plants
That meant that some bonuses (such as the profits one) were discussed in a hierarchical view; workers of
secondary plants and main subcontracted companies received 70 % with respect to those that worked in the
main plant, and so on in a decreasing scale. There were some claims and local conflicts about the
incorporation of some workers who had been excluded from this bonus (such as janitors).
14
For “strategic” positions see Womack John jr. (2008).
15
These agreements are not public. In fact, steel industry collective agreements that involve new job rankings
and wage compositions locally discussed are not published in Labor Minister data based on collective
bargaining.
13
16
assure that those agreements could be deepened if national contract constraints could be
removed, but complain that old national leaders prevent it, because of their conservative
behaviour.
At the same time, some research findings state that since 2003, increasing
centralized collective bargaining has involved registered workers in a continuous wage
improvement cycle, narrowing the gaps created during “neoliberal times”.16 These findings
support the idea of a new labor regime that is reverting employers’ “neoliberal” advance.
However, these approaches don’t take account of the mechanisms that create a kind of
wage/productivity adjustment by differentiating wage improvements. As John Womack
(2008) points out, an “engineering” viewpoint is necessary in order to understand that the
employers’ unified view involves the plants and job positions in a hierarchical scale related
to surplus production, and from that standpoint it deals with unions’ claims and demands
that involve wage improvements or job rankings. In fact, the company’s strategy for
collective bargaining was, since 2005, the institutionalization of new branch job rankings
and wage scales. The employers’ proposal involves the set up of a two – tier system of job
ranking and wages and the introduction of a new hierarchical scale between plants. After
nearly ten years of employers’ insistence, they haven’t been able to agree on these new
rules with the union.
May’s demonstration may evidence some shifts in UOM’s internal balance of
power. After some days, companies and union reached an agreement that guaranteed the
rate of improvement (30%) for every plant, and left the concrete adjustment to each local.17
16
Palomino y Trajtemberg (2006), Neffa (2012)
Besides that, the demonstration pointed at employers, under the charge that they have been enjoying great
benefits which have to be shared with the worker. Finally, through this claim, the union discussed one of
companies’ key mechanisms of profit adjustment: labor costs. The argument as much as the adversary (main
trans-nationalized industrial companies and their owners) echo government claims to business owners related
17
17
It is possible to affirm that May’s demonstration shows that smaller and less powerful
locals have been able to shape a national support force for their wage claim within the
UOM organizational structure, confronting company policies that divided the bargaining
process and weakened smaller local positions.18 At the same time, locals involving steel
plants discussed wage increases in the context of the persistence of heterogeneous wage
compositions and without displacing worksite bargaining level.
In this sense, the most important questions for us are related to the new
confrontational arena performed by steel branch claims, which seems to be contradictory
with traditional UOM political dynamic. In fact, the new corporate structure – and its
political advance – reveals some features of “national” union power. We’ve argued that
during the restructuration processes, UOM strategy focused on confrontation on the public
arena, rather than supporting and encouraging local union’s resistance to restructuration
processes within the private political sphere of the employers. In fact, during the ‘90s, a
general labor rights protective contract and a national union contesting some aspects of the
“Labor Reform” seemed to provide important input for local resistance to management
policies.19 However, these national action lines did not translate into nationally organized
to “their duty” in the redistributive process, providing the claim with an important ideological and political
support and legitimacy.
18
The UOM National Directive Committee is the Union’s executive decisional body. The National Directive
Committee is made up of eleven local general secretaries, and the role they play is related to each local
importance. Seven locals organize steel workers, and two of them (Campana and San Nicolás) involve the
main steel plants in the country, where nearly 12000 of the 15000 steel workers are employed. Both local
general secretaries are part of the National Directive Committee, along with five more general secretaries
whose locals (Quilmes, Avellaneda, Rosario, Morón, La Plata) involve smaller steel company’s plants and an
important number of metallurgical companies.
19
The Metalworkers’ Union (UOM), as part of CGT (General Confederation of Labor), was characterized by
a contradictory policy during Carlos Menem’s government: it maintained an economic corporative
confrontation to “flexibility” and “pro market” policies, but a politic and electoral support for the officialist
peronist party (Partido Justicialista) that was developing the capitalist offensive. During the first half the
1990s, the metalworkers supported some general strikes, as part of the CGT, and at least one branch strike as
a single union. By 1996, with the critical branch situation, metalworkers took part and supported the
organization of CGT mobilizations and strikes confronting Labor Reforms and, in 1997, the UOM acted
together with those union leaders that were openly opposed to government policies and to CGT leadership.
18
support to local strategies of resistance or confrontation to companies’ concrete advances.20
Since 2003, in the context of “neoliberal consensus” and the political erosion after the 2001
popular uprising, the conflict focus seems to have turned to companies’ policies.21
Outsourcing policies, health and safety policies and wage flexibility seem to be main claims
carried out by delegates and internal committees.
Capital centralization processes mediated this new “worksite claims wave” and, as
delegates and representatives noted, “company’s policies” can hardly be confronted at a
plant scale. In fact, managers tend to deal with local claims by threatening to displace
production lines or demands to other plants. A discussion seems to be necessary, as well as
a common action line involving the interests and viewpoints of different plants. Why is it
so difficult to build one?
The UOM organizational dynamic is crossed by “vertical” rules, as an expression of
former metal industry structural configuration as much as of political and territorial power
relations. In this sense, a “golden rule” in relations between local directive committees is
that they – and internal committees, and delegates - do not trespass the territorial borders of
the local. This means that links and communication among internal committees of the same
company are mediated by their local directive committees which meet at national bodies,
From Fernandez Fabian (2013) “La situación de los obreros metalúrgicos en Argentina” (1989/90 - 2001)”
(mimeo)
20
During 1991 and 1992, San Nicolás and Villa Constitución - two steel local unions that were suffering
restructuration processes - demanded a general strike from the National Directive Committee, but it was never
materialized. Meanwhile, during 1991, an internal committee from Propulsora Siderúrgica tried to develop a
resistance action line that was supported neither by the local directive committee nor by the National
Directive Committee. Finally, a workers’ assembly voted for the acceptance of restructuration policies (Soul;
2012; Esponda: 2012). For other metal branches see Fernández F (2013)
21
In the steel industry, we’ve registered conflicts and claims related to temporary employees’ working
conditions or unionization rights, subcontracted workers’ wages and conditions, the payment of bonuses or
gains, the resistance to operative procedures considered unsafe, etc. Since 2005, when unemployment stopped
threatening union activism, health and safety issues caused claims and demands, even open conflicts in many
industrial branches.
19
such as joint committees or different work groups within the union.22 The National
Directive Committee deals with political divergences between local fractions which include
more confrontational traditions as much as orientations linked to a pragmatic unionism and,
as we have described, it failed to discuss a national union action line related to companies’
national policies.
Our argument is that these organizational rules are being undermined both by
structural shifts and by union fails in dealing with management advances in a nonconservative way. It has been only in recent years that the “steel group” – which decided
on the May demonstration - was formed within UOM. The National Directive Committee
was not enough to channel labor relationships at the steel branch, and their action was
limited to a conservative defense of the national contract. As one of the young leaders
forming this group told us, “The General Secretary has not idea of our situation! We’re
losing wage, we have a lot of health and safety problems… we need steel branch claims to
be considered by the National Directive Committee.” The context of “steel group”
formation is an international one. In fact, the need for steel union branch national policies
was only assumed and institutionalized within the union in the context of the main steel
companies’ internationalization processes and the international unionism response to them,
through the shaping of workers’ international networks, related to particular companies.
International workers networks: Unions response to global companies
22
At the beginning of our fieldwork, we relativized these institutional imperatives for effectiveness, because
of the new communicational technologies available to everybody. Nevertheless, the communication between
delegates and internal committees is really mediated by local leaders and representatives. This practice gives
great advantages to day-to-day management policies.
20
On November 2013, the First International Meeting of Ternium Workers (the
international company to which Siderar belongs) took place at the San Nicolas
metalworkers’ local branch. Organized by the international union’s federation Industriall,
the meeting was addressed to the international coordination of union actions against
outsourcing and subcontracting policies; in favour of unions’ participation in health and
safety policies and in the development of environmental protection policies,as well as to
claim wage levels according to workers’ needs and respect for union organization in every
one of Ternium’s locations.
For Industriall representatives, this meeting was the first step in the building of an
international workers’ network involving both steel companies owned by Techint: Ternium
and Tenaris, which rose from the internationalization of Siderar and Siderca, since the
‘1990s. Industriall’s medium term goals are to achieve recognition of the international
union organization from the company (Techint) and the signature of a Framework
Agreement, to set up equalitarian conditions for the whole labor force.
One of the meeting sessions was the public exposition of the answers to a survey
about wages, purchase power, outsourcing and working conditions that the coordinator of
the meeting – a representative of USW Canadian local branch- has previously delivered.
During this session, dialogues between Argentine delegates and leaders highlighted the
differences between the plants, although they addressed their partners from other countries
in the language of “national bargaining system” and “national union power”.
During breaks, participants talked about the situation in their countries, trying to
understand differences such as institutional frameworks for union action and national
features of workers’ daily life. However, some of the San Nicolas leaders were worried
about what seemed to be a recent finding: they had been negotiating wage increases lower
21
than those agreed by Campana leaders, and, what seemed to be the worst, Campana leaders
were reluctant to share their “bargaining strategy.” Furthermore, San Nicolas leaders were
contesting the demonstration at Techint headquarters that had been envisaged by the
international committee, which was finally cancelled.
At the final session, San Nicolas leaders expressed their agreement with the
international organization, at the same time that they asked for more time to assess its
constitution. They argued it was necessary to “know each other well,” referring to leaders
and representatives from different local branches, before advancing to an international
network. However, they supported their partners from Guatemala, who were suffering from
the repression of their union; and promised to intercede with managers in favor of union
leaders that had been fired. Nevertheless, this was not understood as an international
claiming action, but more as a “favor” of Argentine “powerful” leaders to weak
Guatemalan ones. The international expansion of the company and the international
organization of other local branches were not enough to encourage San Nicolas leaders to
form an international network.
While international unionism will have to wait, and the Industriall action line
toward Techint has to be rescheduled, since that moment the “steel group” has been
consolidated within the national level of the metalworkers’ union. This means that national
leaders recognized a particular bargaining level – even a confrontational arena - that goes
beyond local limits and also goes beyond political relationships played out by the National
Directive Committee within the institutional scope. Significantly, the recognition and the
setting of an institutionalized field for steel workers at a national level was a reaction to the
testing of international differences in working conditions and wages.
22
This doesn’t mean that the metalworkers’ union denies the international arena as an
action level. In fact, the International Secretary is an active promoter of international
forums and seminars, and representatives of the office usually participate in events
organized by Industriall, to which the union belongs. Furthermore, the local branch from
which the International Secretary operates
involves one of Siderar’s plants, and the
representatives and leaders of this local branch are firm promoters of a systematic action
line to confront transnational companies – which seems to have succeeded during the
annual 2014 wage bargaining.
Retrieving the distinction between private and centralized-state political power, we
consider that the confrontational arena defined by union action tends to one of two
extremes, and shifts according to particular local strategies. Regarding the international
scope settled up by Industriall action line as a response to corporate multinational power, it
is focused against the company. This action line was assumed at the local, not at the
national level. In fact, local branches like Campana, where the main Siderca plant is
located, which faced direct external competition (70% of this plant production is exported),
were early promoters of international solidarity. Leaders from the Campana local branch
were aware of products and processes overlapping as a consequence of the company’s
international expansion, and were worried about the consequences of this situation over
union action. According to leaders and representatives, by 2007 the Tenaris workers’
international network was born within the metalworkers’ international federation
organizational structure, specially supported by USW Canadian local branches where the
company has been established and by the Argentine metalworkers’ local branch in
Campana – which held out a demonstration in solidarity with Canadian unions.
23
Meanwhile, Siderar followed an international expansion process – in fact it became
one of the main “trans latine” companies according to ECLA reports – through product
lines linked to internal markets, as input supplier of automotive and household appliances
industries.23 Remarkably, facing a relatively closed and protected market, and holding an
action line oriented to participative bargaining supported by the strategic position of the
plant, the San Nicolas local branch seems not to have had international actions until the
2013 meeting.
We consider this situation a consequence of metalworkers’ union strategy, based on
the delimitation of a national confrontation – o conciliation - arena around state policies (or
centralized political power) and government alignment, while confrontation or conciliation
with particular companies’ private political power is a matter of local leaders. The
performing of international networks not only puts local leaders in a political arena they do
not control at all, but it also confronts them directly with employers. It seems that the “steel
group” is establishing that political arena at the national level through the locals’
engagement with international networks.
To conclude… reappraising union action in the light of transnational companies
Describing three levels of contemporary union relationships, we tended to highlight
how structural shifts pose changing constraints and challenges to union action, in a
regressive historical context. First, we described the setting up of a “new industrial legality”
through joint committees at main steel mills since the privatization process, along with the
23
For trans-latine companies performing see: ECLA Foreign Direct Investments in Latin America and the
Caribbean Annual Reports. Available at
http://www.cepal.org/en/publications/list/field_publication_type/8068/field_publication_type/8130/field_publ
ication_type/8110/language/en
24
imposition of a “global company scope” to workers. Union action line tended to reinforce
local bargaining processes and to confront labor reforms in the state but not in the private
field. This way, although the implementation of some aspects of national labor reforms was
defeated, employers were able to impose “modernizing” policies in the shop-floor.
At the branch level, concentration processes have consequences over union action
and over the institutional industrial relations framework. Consequences of the company’s
centralization over union action were changing over time. Local leaders are aware of the
undermining of internal committees in smaller plants, and of the differential empowerment
of union leaders from main plants. As described, this two-tier negotiation dynamic, through
which the company tried to impose agreements reached at the main plant, has failed in
achieving homogenous working conditions and wage compositions. Unrest about this
inequality was the turning point for the configuration of a national – company – centred
bargaining arena, non-existent in traditional union action scope. This recent scope for union
action goes beyond the institutional framework for industrial relations, although it is not
often highlighted by social research as the one that allows filling the wage gap.
As much as Techint steel companies have become transnationalduring the last
decade, the former international federation of metalworkers, actual Industriall, turns into a
key actor in labor – capital relationships in these firms, through the conformation of
international networks, following international European organization examples.
In the case of the Argentine steel union (included in a general metalworkers’
organization) international organization has been used in order to put together and
strengthen a national branch bargaining field, without questioning the institutional
framework oradvancing over companies, which would tend to hollow out the bargaining
power of internal committees. Nevertheless, this process is not enough to encourage UOM
25
leaders to consolidate the union participation in an international arena confronting
particular companies. Usually it is explained in nationalistic terms. However these action
lines are supported by the particular relationship between companies and union leaders
forged in bargaining processes – such as the setting up of joint committees in main plants –
and in a specific engagement within the state labor policies field. And this is supported by
an international management that prefers to deal with workers’ collectives and unions that
are nationally segmented.
Argentina ‘entry’ to neoliberal globalization involved the unions’ engagement in a
government coalition, although most of them quickly confronted the more regressive
aspects of labor reforms. Nevertheless, this opposition in the public arena didn’t turn into
opposition to employers’ political power exercised inside the firms. Thus, restructuration
processes developed in different ways (institutionalized or not) in worksites beyond the
degree of union resistance to legal reforms.
Since 2003, unions and employers returned to annual collective bargain rounds
within an almost untouched labor relations institutional framework. However, the actors
were not the same: employers now constituted nationally concentrated firms - even
internationally expanded ones, the Labor Ministry held more Keynesian policies about
wages and benefits and, finally, unions were engaged in recovering wages, benefits and
labor rights lost during the so-called “crisis of the Argentine Currency Board”.
We described the consequences of shifts in companies’ structures: increasing
inequalities between workers, competitive relationships and wage gaps. Meanwhile, the
power of internal committees in minor plants decreased as much as the power of those in
the main plants increased. It was necessary to question traditional internal relationships
between local branches and the National Directive Committee in order to establish a
26
national – branch – centered field in which to discuss common policies to confront
companies. This development was possible only within an “external” organizational field,
like the one provided by Industriall.
International union action sets up an international industrial legality as a field of
dispute. As a product of globalization processes this has been settled in a way that global
companies confront nationally located work forces. The challenge of the union movement
is to pursue egalitarian working conditions in order to achieve a decrease in wage
competition.
Regarding Argentine union leaders and delegates’ practices, international features
of companies are being assessed neither as factors shaping national labor relationships nor
as shaping new scopes for action beyond national boundaries. Although the institutional
framework (both at the state level and at the unionism instance) is a powerful constraint to
union action, it is necessary to advance in questioning other dimensions of union action,
such us political power relationships, union traditions and the role played by rank and file
activism in performing union policies.
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