By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Jul 15 2004 (IPS)

After a decade of growing unemployment and poverty in Argentina, the once-powerful Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT), which used to be the country’s only trade union confederation, is awakening from slumber and will try to gain influence in the movement of the unemployed.

After splitting in two in 2000, the two factions of the CGT decided in a congress Wednesday to reunite, and designated a tripartite committee to head the union for a year while seeking to build a consensus that would lead to the election of a single secretary-general.

Argentina’s labour movement has ”a strong tradition of unity”, and the reunification of the CGT is a goal that all of the factions have shared for at least the past year, lawyer Alberto Robles, research director at the Institute of the World of Labour, told IPS.

But Robles also noted that the discrepancies persist within the CGT, where some member unions are more willing to engage in dialogue with the left-leaning government of President Néstor Kirchner in order to strengthen the economic recovery, while others want to take a more confrontational stance.

”Those unresolved differences are reflected by the designation of a tripartite leadership,” he said.

The government and the leaders of the CGT all belong to the Justicialista (Peronist) Party, which is itself divided into various factions, several of which are hostile towards each other.

Unemployment in this once-wealthy South American country stands at 19.5 percent, while 47.8 percent of the population of 37 million has fallen below the poverty line.

In the mid-1990s, when the undesired effects of the neo-liberal, free-market economic policies followed by the (Peronist) government of Carlos Menem (1989-1999) began to be felt, unemployment soared from six percent to 18.4 percent.

Some workers who lost their jobs due to the privatisation of public enterprises and utilities began to block key roads and highways to protest and draw attention to their plight.

The piqueteros movement expanded as growing numbers of industrial workers were laid off and the wave of privatisations continued. It also began to incorporate retirees surviving on tiny pensions as well as tens of thousands of people who had never been able to find a formal sector job (mainly young people and women).

Some 2.2 million unemployed, who form the social base of the piqueteros, scrape by on a government stipend equivalent to just 50 dollars a month, depending heavily on soup kitchens that have cropped up all over the country in the past few years of economic crisis.

At the same time, a new trade union federation, the Central de los Trabajadores Argentinos (CTA), was founded in 1990 based mainly on the unions of public employees and teachers, and grew in terms of prestige and the number of members, incorporating social organisations and groups of the unemployed.

”For some time now, the unions have been debating a policy for the unemployed, and in fact more than 90 percent of the unions continue to provide health care coverage for those who lose their jobs far beyond the time period mandated by law,” said Robles, who is also a consultant for the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

The CGT, however, has no policy towards the unemployed, he added.

He also pointed out that not all of the unemployed are represented by the piqueteros movement. ”The piqueteros are the most militant and mobilised segment of society, but they encompass only five to 10 percent of the jobless.”

The CGT tripartite leadership named at Wednesday’s congress – attended by more than 1,500 delegates – to plaster over the divisions includes Hugo Moyano, the head of the truckdrivers’ unions and the ”rebel” faction of the CGT, and two representatives of the ”official” CGT: José Lingeri, the leader of the federation of water company and sanitation workers; and Susana Rueda, who represents the health workers’ unions.

According to Robles, the newly designated CGT authorities come from the most traditional sector of the labour movement leadership, many of whom have been accused of amassing fortunes and of contributing to the trade unions’ loss of prestige.

But, he added, there are younger second and third-tier leaders who are already making it to the top, and are raising new issues like the need to discuss ways to preserve jobs and to design a basic trade union policy for the unemployed.

Rueda is the first woman to reach a top leadership position in one of Argentina’s central trade unions. Her designation was meant to send out a signal of change, said delegates to the congress.

”The crisis we have experienced has shown us that we have to unite,” said Moyano, the head of the unions that broke off from the majority CGT in 2000 and created a ”rebel” confederation.

”We will begin to recuperate the spaces and protagonism that the organised labour movement has lost (to the piqueteros movement), and we are going to show that we are an irreplaceable movement,” said the head of the truckdrivers’ union Wednesday.

Four years ago, the CGT split over differences regarding the reaction to government policies, in particular a labour reform that made it easier to dismiss employees, among other aspects.

The ”official” CGT remained more or less docile and complacent under Menem and during the administration of his successor Fernando de la Rúa (1999-2001).

After de la Rúa was forced to resign in December 2001 by massive protests and rioting, both factions remained relatively inactive while the country suffered outright economic, social and political collapse after years of recession.

Meanwhile, the various groups of piqueteros intensified their protests and demands for work, unemployment subsidies, food assistance, clothing and school supplies for the poor. Nearly a dozen piqueteros have died in harsh police crackdowns on roadblocks and other demonstrations.

”We cannot only represent employed workers, but must also think about demanding the creation of new jobs for millions of unemployed Argentine workers,” Lingeri told the delegates to the congress of the reunified CGT.

For her part, Rueda stressed that for years women have watched ”their partners being left without jobs and their children being left without the chance of attaining quality education,” and that they must now participate in leading the trade union confederation to revert the painful growth of poverty and unemployment.

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