Less work in labour

If in the past couple of centuries, May Day falling yesterday was often the mass event of the year as International Workers Day celebrated by the common people, alternatives are not lacking nowadays –  this column was written ahead of the Thursday protests anticipating yesterday’s public holiday in order to preserve the long weekend but, quite apart from the “passion of multitudes” which may be expected next month when the World Cup kicks off, the CGT rally might well have drawn considerably less people than the half-million-plus watching the Franco Colapinto road show only last weekend (about which this columnist will limit himself to quoting Muriel Spark’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie when the Edinburgh teacher of the title says of the Girl Guides: “For those who like that sort of thing, that is the sort of thing they like.”)

No further mention of Colapinto here to avoid giving offence but he does fall into a wider point. Carl Zuckmayer’s Der Hauptmann von Köpenick (the captain of Köpenick) about an impersonator in a Prussian captain’s uniform wielding absolute authority over a community was written almost a century ago (in 1931) but the underlying concept persists today in the form of some people gaining huge credibility or admiration with little or nothing to substantiate it and staying famous for longer than Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes. Here the prime example would be presidential hopeful and evangelical pastor Dante Gebel spending minimal time here in the past two decades but already commanding superior opinion poll ratings than, say, Néstor Kirchner in 2003 on the basis of being an outsider – what has he said or done to convince anybody that he has the answer to the nation’s problems?

But this digression aside, today’s topic is May Day and the organised labour celebrating it. Trade unionism in Argentina predates May Day as International Workers Day in the world – Argentine printers first unionised in 1878 whereas May Day as an occasion for worker protest rather than folk dances has its roots in the Chicago general strike of 1886 although the government reaction in the United States was almost immediate with the first Monday of September becoming Labor Day in almost every state in the next few years. But yesterday was International Workers Day in some shape or form in around 85 percent of the countries in today’s world.

When May Day became International Workers Day worldwide in 1890, Argentina did not lag behind. One of the last acts of Radical President Hipólito Yrigoyen in 1930 was to make it an official holiday in the midst of the Great Depression while Juan Domingo Perón heading a movement with organised labour as its “spine” attached huge importance to the date in his first two terms between 1946 and 1955. It was precisely in that latter year that Pope Pius XII instituted May Day as the feast of Saint Joseph the Carpenter so that Catholic workers could join in too without feeling children of a lesser god – as an antidote to Communism and perhaps also to Peronism.

In many countries printers have been the first to organise as literate by definition with a strong class-consciousness (thus in the United States they were imposing closed shops even before the George Washington presidency) but the steady influx of European immigrants into Argentina after 1880, often with the anarchist and socialist ideas of the Mediterranean countries, ensured that the 1878 example of the printers was soon followed – train-drivers had already formed La Fraternidad in 1887. But a trade union umbrella was not to come until the next century with the formation of the FORA (Federación Obrera Regional Argentina) in 1901 – anarchist advocates of direct action as ready to organise strikes among the tenants of the conventillo tenements as among factory workers. The Julio Roca Presidency was quick to respond the next year with the Residence Law of 1902 to expel foreign trade unionists – La Semana Trágica of 1919 showed that the historical change to democratic elected governments in 1916 was not enough to end state repression of organised labour in a world stunned by the recent Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

May Day was made an official holiday by Yrigoyen in 1930, as mentioned above, and today’s CGT (Confederación General de Trabajo) was founded in the same year just three weeks after his overthrow to protect worker rights against the new military government. Until the rise of Peronism as from 1943, the CGT became increasingly dominated by its socialist wing more tolerated by the régime over the banned anarchists adamant against compromise.

The central role of trade unionism in the Peronist movement should be too well-known to need much repetition although the point might be made that having everything granted from above rather than won by struggle from below made for a more spineless “spine.” CGT membership grew from 80,000 workers in 1943 to four million by 1955. This expansion was boosted by such benefits showered on workers as collective bargaining, social security, paid holidays and many others in a whole raft of favourable labour legislation although the Peronist government tended to play coy with the right to strike. But whether military or civilian, all non-Peronist governments between 1955 and 1983 tended to take a dim view of a trade unionism irreversibly interlocked with a Peronism banned for 18 years.

Democracy returned in 1983 with the Radical Raúl Alfonsín denouncing a “military-union pact” during his election campaign and pushing an abortive labour reform in 1984 with no less than 13 CGT general strikes during his presidency. The next attempt at labour reform came with the next Radical-led government in 2000 but foundered with the Banelcogate Senate graft scandal – there was to be no further reform until early this year. While pioneering privatisation and deregulation, the Carlos Menem Peronist presidency (1989-1999) was soft on trade unionism but the CGT nevertheless split into a CGT-San Martín backing him and a CGT-Azopardo opposed.

In this century the trade unions were privileged partners of Kirchnerism while the Mauricio Macri interlude (2015-2019)  had too many other problems to take them on seriously. As for the current government we will just have to wait until next year to see how the conflict of the past couple of days and months pans out.