Raul Bassi
Under the slogan "less work so we can all work", around 5000 people filled one of the historic places for the Argentine working class, Federacion del Box, on October 29.
Delegates and representatives from different unions — including rail workers, teachers, public sector workers, healthcare workers, telecommunications workers, metal workers and miners came together in the protest. Among them were workers from Zanon, one of the most important factories that has been taken over by its workers. They joined unemployed piqueteros, social movement activists and members of left political parties to launch an important campaign for a shorter working week.
In Argentina, where economic crisis has been met with mobilised mass anger that, in 2001, overthrew four presidents in a week, rallies of thousands of workers to launch a political campaign are not extremely rare. This mobilisation, however, was significant for a number of reasons.
The campaign was initiated by the delegates from the rail workers unions covering Metrovias, the Buenos Aires underground subway system. New union leaders were recently elected to delegate positions to run the workers' struggle. Six months ago, they led a struggle that won a six-hour work day, creating 500 new jobs in the process. The aim of this rally was to generalise the fight, beginning a national campaign for a standard six-our work day. Far from accepting a pay cut, the rally also demanded an across-the-board increase in salaries.
In a country with 17% unemployment, and 48% of workers in the black economy, the campaign offers a real solution to reducing the poverty and desperation of all workers.
It is a solution that flies in the face of the neoliberal trend that has dominated Argentina as it has dominated Latin America. In the last 10 years, 42% of agreements signed between business and unions have including an extension of working hours. By 2003, the average working day in Argentina was 9.5 hours. During that year, the Argentine economy experienced marked "reactivation", turning around the situation from the tremendous crisis of 2001.
Economic growth in 2003 reached 8.7%, with industrial production increasing 33% between March 2002 and January 2004. This growth, however, has come at the expense of the poor. Unemployment remained stable, whilst the average working day increased this year to 10 hours, the same length as in 1887!
This obsessive race to take more time away from workers, coupled with a 22.4% decline in wages during the last seven years, has meant that inequality in wealth distribution has reached historic proportions. The richest 10% now own 44.5% of Argentina's wealth, 50 times more than that owned by the poorest 10%. This makes today's Argentina four times more unequal than it was after the collapse of the military dictatorship in the 1980s.
A six-hour working day would share the work around, allowing 2.5 million of Argentina's 4 million unemployed workers to get jobs. Coupled with major public works investment, this proposal could easily allow the bulk of Argentina's population — the poor — to gain control of more of the wealth created by the last decade's 100% increase in industrial production.
The huge transfer of Argentinian wealth from workers to bosses was only possible because of the collusion of those union leaders who were not crushed. It required, and exacerbated, the fragmentation and disorganisation of the working class.
High unemployment has made this worse. For many workers it seems apparent that with so many without a job, any fight for improved conditions would be unsuccessful. Many union leaders have responded to this pressure with further collaboration, looking for crumbs that the bosses can spare.
This campaign comes at time of relative resurgence in working-class organisation. In the 2001 uprising, while as an organised force the working class seemed largely absent, many workers took part in the protests, and millions more supported them. Since then, social mobilisations have continued, although not at the same level.
Although 2003 registered the lowest strike rate since 1981, this year it has grown by 2.5 times, and there is now an average of 30 strikes a month. Militant tickets are getting high votes in, and in some cases winning, union and workplace elections.
The piquetero movement, formed to unite workers who lost their jobs during the crisis and the years of neoliberalism leading up to it, was at the forefront of the 2001 uprising, and has continued to be a powerful force. In a number of places, workers have taken over factories that had closed down as a result of bankruptcy. These occupations have been a powerful statement that the right to a dignified life is more important than the right to property, and acted as living proof that, while the bosses need the workers, the workers don't need the bosses.
The piquetero movement offered organisation to the unorganised, creating a continuation of class struggle when corrupt union officials chose collaboration with the bosses. Recuperated factories has been an answer to the crisis for a small part of the working class. Now, the movement for the six-hour work day is offering a political alternative to neoliberalism for the whole working class.
Along with a generalised rise in wages, these demands take aim at the right of the bosses to accumulate capital at all cost, directly fighting for people's lives to come before profit. It can succeed because it draws on uniting the working class — employed and piquetero — in defending their common interest.
As Eduardo Lucita, a member of the Economists of the Left, stated at the public launch of the campaign, "We have for the first time in our hands in many years, a strategic political initiative of the working class, a class initiative that, to be able to become reality, needs the broadest possible mobilisation of the united employed workers and unemployed people."
The spirit at the rally was best summed up by Beto Pianelli, one of the leaders of the SUBTE, who said: "This is the fight that will definitively break the fictitious barrier that they have wanted to create between those that are employed and unemployed, this is the battle that can unite us all."
From Green Left Weekly, December 8, 2004.
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