ARGENTINA: ‘Progressive’ Trade Union Seeks to Follow Lula’s Lead

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 4 2002 (IPS) - The example set by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the founder of a central trade union and the leftist Workers’ Party (PT) in Brazil, and the poll favourite for that country’s Sunday elections, has fuelled the political and electoral aspirations of the Central de Trabajadores Argentinos (CTA).

But the leaders of the CTA, which has grown steadily for the past 11 years, warn that the process of building a political party takes time.

The trade unions grouped in the CTA represent a combined membership of 850,000. The central trade union is well-organised at the national level, and has chapters in 400 cities, leaders who are directly elected by the workers, and a level of militancy that is the envy of political parties and other trade unions.

CTA Secretary-General Víctor De Gennaro took part this week in the closure of Lula’s election campaign. The Brazilian candidate, a former metalworker, is taking his fourth shot at the presidency, and enjoys 43 to 49 percent support in the polls.

De Gennaro and Lula have frequently met in Argentina and Brazil, and the CTA is an important interlocutor of Brazil’s Central Unica de Travalhadores (CUT), the central trade union which the Brazilian candidate helped found.

Lula dove into the political arena when he created the PT as a channel for setting forth the demands and proposals of Brazil’s workers.

At the top of the agenda of the CTA national congress, to be held Dec 13-14 in the eastern Argentine resort city of Mar del Plata, will be the question of building a party structure that enables it to compete in the political terrain with its own policy proposals.

The CTA was born in 1991 when several trade unions pulled out of the Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT), a labour confederation historically affiliated with the ruling Justicialista (Peronist) Party, because they were opposed to the CGT’s support for then-president Carlos Menem’s (1989-1999) privatisation and structural adjustment policies.

At first, the new central trade union grew slowly. But in 2000, when the country’s economic and social decline took a sharp turn for the worse, its activism won it broad public support, at the same time that confidence in the traditional labour and political leadership was waning fast.

Today, Argentina’s centrist and left-wing political parties are fighting for the CTA’s backing for the early presidential elections scheduled for next March.

De Gennaro points out that the CTA enjoys autonomy with respect to the country’s political parties, although he does not rule out the possibility of the union creating a party of its own, in the medium-term.

”We believe the CTA could lead a movement like Lula’s, which was born as a central trade union and later created its own party,” Joao Felicio, secretary-general of Brazil’s CUT, told IPS on his latest visit to Buenos Aires in August, when he took part in a conference organised by the World Social Forum.

According to Felicio, the CTA has much in common with the CUT, and the two central trade unions see eye to eye on many questions of domestic and foreign policy. For instance, both are opposed to the U.S.-led initiative of creating a hemisphere-wide Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).

Although the CTA now says it is independent of all parties, governments or business lobbies, its members are aware of the need to participate on the political front at a moment when the union has won solid prestige, Pedro Wasiejko, CTA secretary of international relations, commented to IPS.

But the movement’s process of maturation is slow, despite the urgency posed by the country’s current collapse, he added.

The Argentine economy – Latin America’s third largest – has been in the grip of a deep recession for four years, which peaked in rioting and looting that toppled the government of Fernando de la Rúa in late December.

The country has defaulted on its foreign debt; 53 percent of the population has fallen into poverty; and unemployment has climbed to 21.4 percent.

”We want to build a serious force for change, which not only has candidates, but is based on a party structure which guarantees that victorious candidates will live up to their campaign promises,” said Wasiejko. To bring that about, ”we must build up the power of the people,” he added.

The CTA has placed great hopes on Sunday’s elections in Brazil, in which Lula may even win a first-round victory.

But the movement’s hopes are not exclusively focused on the prospect of a triumph by Lula.

”If he wins, it will be much better,” said Wasiejko. ”But what is encouraging to us is the growth of grassroots movements in the region, after so many years of struggle.”

The trade unionist also noted that in Uruguay, which is located between Argentina and Brazil, the Broad Front, a leftist coalition of parties, also has a real chance of winning the presidential elections in 2003, and at the very least is expected to significantly expand its representation in parliament.

”In Argentina, we also see society seeking a political movement that reflects its desire for change,” he said.

Centre-left political leaders have approached Lula to share in his triumph, which they see as a given. Buenos Aires’ leftist Mayor Aníbal Ibarra will fly to Sao Paulo over the weekend, along with lawmakers and other representatives of the left.

However, none of them lose sight of the profound differences between the long, laborious process of building up the CUT and the PT, and the frustrated attempts by Argentina’s leftist movements to reach power through alliances with more moderate parties.

In Brazil, Lula is on the verge of victory after striking up an alliance with the right-wing Liberal Party, whose leader, textile tycoon José Alencar, is his vice-presidential candidate.

In Argentina, meanwhile, centre-left politican Carlos Alvarez was the running-mate of the conservative de la Rúa in the 1999 elections, which they won – an experiment that ended, nevertheless, in a rotund failure, with Alvarez’s resignation and de la Rúa’s ouster, said legislators as they packed their bags for their weekend jaunt to Brazil.

ARGENTINA: ‘Progressive’ Trade Union Seeks to Follow Lula’s Lead

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Oct 4 2002 (IPS) - The example set by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the founder of a central trade union and the leftist Workers’ Party (PT) in Brazil, and the poll favourite for that country’s Sunday elections, has fuelled the political and electoral aspirations of the Central de Trabajadores Argentinos (CTA).
(more…)