In social sciences, situations in which a false belief or a false hypothesis about a certain situation causes behaviors that end up making said belief or hypothesis become reality are called “self-fulfilling prophecies.” Today we are faced with a scenario of this nature regarding the labor reform.
If one looks at a good part of the union leaders (the official position of the CGT until now) and a good part of the political leaders of the opposition (such as the statements of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner), the discourse they have is that the reform “cannot be stopped”, that is, “the reform is a fact.” In any case, some specific clauses can be fought (for example those that affect certain economic and political resources of union organizations), the judicialization card in the future can be played, and we can bet on “there is 2027.” In short, although it is a blow to all workers, although it fiercely deepens the crisis of social reproduction that we are experiencing, the reform is taken for granted.
As it could not be otherwise, this discourse, which is the majority in the union leadership and the Peronist opposition, makes many colleagues effectively feel that “nothing can be done.” Even those who would like to fight and oppose, those who have gone out to fight on other occasions, are affected by that resignation. And it is that resignation (sought by some, unsought consequence by others) that guarantees that the prophecy is fulfilled.
I want to argue against this self-fulfilling prophecy, not only because it is a villain, but because in the recent history of the labor movement we have examples that allow us to understand that this is not the first time it has happened and that its consequences are catastrophic.
In the ’90s and in the face of the neoliberal counter-reforms of Menemist Peronism, whose hard core was implemented in Menem’s second term, the majority of union leaders also said that nothing could be done, that Menem had a consensus, that he would later be judicialized, etc. And they opted for what was known as the “preserve their own resources” strategy. What did the preservation of own resources consist of? In negotiating economic resources (that they are not affected by social works, percentages in collective bargaining, even “solidarity quotas” accepting the de-unionization of various sectors), in exchange for giving in to the key to the Menemist reforms: contractual precariousness (the famous monotributistas or other forms of service rental contracts), outsourcing, flexibility of the working day (American shifts and bank of hours in certain industries, loss of the English Saturday, etc.), abandonment of workplaces as a node of organization and union action (internal committees and bodies of delegates) and linked to the latter, precariousness in working conditions (what is called productive consumption of the workforce). The argument was: the key is for unions to remain “strong” because with strong unions we can then fight against these reforms.
What was the result of this strategy of preserving own resources? The enormous fragmentation that we have today (and that we did not have before the ’90s) between effective, contracted, outsourced, self-employed and informal workers. This enormous fragmentation is one of the main weaknesses we have as a working class and is what allows the government to cynically say that the reform does not affect the vast majority of workers because that vast majority no longer has rights.
So, there are two very important conclusions that we can draw from the experience of 30 years ago: a) there is no such thing as a sector of the working class retaining power if the entire rest of the working class loses it, that is a fantasy that perhaps some leaders have (if it is not pure cynicism). Today even those of us who are effective workers are weaker because the reforms of the 90s caused the whole to become much more fragmented. And, hand in hand with this fragmentation with ultra-precarious links such as the self-employed and the informal workers, they weakened all workers, meaning that today having a job in Argentina does not take you out of poverty (a good part of the workers are poor in our country).
That strategy of maintaining own resources that today is re-edited by the main union leaders on which the “segmented neocorporatism” that was talked about so much during Kirchnerism was built, was a disaster and left behind the working class that we have today. When the UOM of the 90s accepted outsourcing at Techint, SMATA accepted the hours bank at Ford, when UPCN let the contracts and monotributism pass in the State, it was not just Techint’s outsourced workers, Ford’s metal-mechanical workers, or INDEC contracted workers who lost: we lost all the workers and that weakness as a class is used today by far-rightists like Milei to say “if you no longer have these rights, what’s hot for you?” this reform?”
Furthermore, this “segmented neocorporatism” of the vast majority of unions generates another type of weakness. We could call it “subjective weakness”: it caused an increasingly large sector of workers to have no relationship with unions and collective organization, much less with representation in the workplace, which is the key to any unionism that claims to be combative. Outsourced, monotributistas, self-employed and, obviously, informal, they were left out of any social and political relationship with the unions and with their classmates. If you add to that the photo of the parking lot of the CGT congress in 2025 full of high-end cars, the result is another layer of weakness of the working class: the strong delegitimization of the union organization before the workers as a class. Layer on which the discourse of caste is mounted.
But there is a third conclusion from the ’90s that applies today: the promises of future struggles are a scam. What is lost today is very very difficult to recover later. The most compelling example is that with 10 years of growth at Chinese rates after the 2001 crisis, we never recovered the rights or working conditions that we lost in the 90s: the real salary was improved, some partial improvements in labor rights were achieved but always on the matrix of the labor market that the 90s left. What the businessmen achieved as general conditions of exploitation of the working class in the ’90s, accompany us to this day.
The second speech that cements the “self-fulfilling prophecy” and to which I will dedicate less time because its fallacious nature is more obvious, is that of “there is 2027.” Here we do not have to go to the 90s to know how the “there is 2019” strategy turned out: 2019 arrived, the opposition to Macri’s right won the elections and here we are. When it comes to defending rights, palace negotiations (even if they take place in San José 1111) are useless.
But I am interested in questioning one last line of water of this “self-fulfilling prophecy”: the everyday one, which makes many colleagues feel resigned or helpless. And I want to question it with what happened just 8 years ago. Macri had just won the mid-term elections comfortably and the world seemed to say that the people (that trick that right-wingers or non-rightists always use when they want to justify right-wing movements), had voted for Macri’s adjustment, but even faster. And Macri launched the double pension and labor reform. And many of us took to the streets (not all of us) and today, with Monday’s newspaper, the same people who said that nothing could be done, recognize that that mobilization of December 2017 was the beginning of the end of the Macri government. Conclusion: the effectiveness of a fight can never be guaranteed, what can be guaranteed is the defeat that not fighting implies.
Finally, I would like to say one thing about the strike, which is one of the rights that is strongly attacked in this bill. Whenever there are major changes in the world of work (as is happening today worldwide), there are sociologists and leaders who believe that the strike is no longer the main tool of struggle of the working class because, in reality, the working class is “no longer that industrial working class of the 1950s” (a discourse as nostalgic as it is impotent).
In the ’90s, this thesis of the end of work and the end of the working class was summarized in a slogan “now the factory is the neighborhood.” I think they were wrong in the ’90s and they are wrong again today. Has the working class mutated? Yes, very much. But what has not changed is that our main tool is the ability we have to interrupt the “normality” of capitalism which, as you know, is a “normality” that makes a handful of billionaires increasingly richer and more and more poor workers. Interrupting this “normality” means making businesspeople lose millions and making the government lose “control of normality,” because ultimately governments are there to guarantee that “normality.”
So, mobilizations are important and more than necessary, but strikes imply the questioning of who controls the situation, they imply the question of “who is in charge?” Because the strike is the demonstration of the social force that those of us who work have, and the key to “capitalist normality” is that that social force is denied, made invisible, particularly before our own eyes. Those who work in the private sector and have “strategic positions” at the productive level, like the oil producers, have enormous social strength because if they do not work, Aceitera General Deheza does not export and loses a lot of money (that is the firepower of the oil producers). Those who work in transportation have enormous social strength because if they do not work there is no circulation of goods and workers (whose labor power is the most important commodity in capitalism). But we, those of us who work in the state, or at least a part of those who work in the state, have an enormous social force that is doubly invisible: the workers in schools, daycare centers, health centers, hospitals, have the enormous social force of being the ones who guarantee the reproduction of the workforce. We call that socio-reproductive power of that particular sector of the working class. When it stops there, the impact on the community as a whole is enormous (which is why they insist on designating it as an “essential sector” and prohibiting strikes there). Because if those striking spaces become nodes of community organization for their rights, things change and you are no longer talking about a sectoral strike but rather a political problem. That socio-reproductive power and that political problem is what the schools and teachers in Minneapolis have generated against ICE, transforming themselves into centers of community organization against the Trump government’s fascist policy of sobering murders and mass deportations.
So, we have to demand that the CGT declare a general strike in the private sector and the CTA declare a total strike (not symbolic, not discursive, but effective) in all state agencies and with particular force in the public institutions that operate as spaces of social reproduction of the population, so that these spaces are spaces of organization and struggle against this labor reform, but also against the rest of the regressive policies of this ultra-right government.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
