New Forms of Exploitation of the Working Class in Argentina in the Name of 'Greater Labour Flexibility'

Liberation Party of Argentina (PL)

www.icsbrussels.org , ics[at]icsbrussels.org

Contents:

1. Introduction and outline
2. The Pescarmona-IMPSA case
3. The collective agreement between Fiat and SMATA
4. What is happening to teachers
5. The situation in the supermarket business
6. The head of the CGT allows it in his own union

Glossary and Clarification

Chapter 1 - Introduction and outline

THE EXAMPLE OF ARGENTINA PROVES BEYOND DOUBT: Labour 'flexibility' means casualisation of labour and slave conditions.

1. The anti-working class offensive

Imperialist ideologues and their mouthpieces in dependent countries are in the habit of reciting a litany to the effect that labour laws are too "rigid" (meaning that they are too favourable to workers) and that, as a result of this, unemployment is on the increase. According to this fallacy of theirs, if you want to increase the number of jobs, you have to accept "greater flexibility".

There is, however, no shortage of examples from around the world demonstrating that the opposite is the case. Spain is one. Notwithstanding wholesale introduction of 'flexibility', it has become European record holder for unemployment, this having reached 23% of the economically-active population (EAP).

Argentina is another example of destruction of productive forces (the principal one being man himself). In the four years between 1990 and 1994, unemployment has increased by 300% - having jumped from 6% of EAP to 18%, according to official statistics published by the Argentine National Institute of Statistics and Surveys (INDEC).

According to a survey it carried out in May 1997, there is an admitted unemployment rate of 16.1% (2,002,000 people) and an underemployment rate of 13.2% (1,696,916 people). In all 3.7 million Argentinians are affected (according to the daily Ambito Financiero of 21 July 1997).

What this shows is that it is untrue to say that 'flexibility' reduces unemployment. Even the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has admitted as much in its latest bulletin on World Employment, although its terminology is restrained: it states there is 'no evidence' that flexibility is the answer to unemployment.

During the last two terms of office of Carlos Menem, the major culprit in relation to this negative phenomenon, big business was given the benefit of a series of anti-working class laws and decrees.

Here is a selection of some of these legal instruments:

CASUALISATION OF EMPLOYMENT

Menem's last three 'flexibility'-promoting decrees were rejected by some judges and labour tribunals in Argentina, as a result of which – as usual – the Executive appealed to its compliant Supreme Court of Justice. During the delay, the government agreed with the CGT hierarchy a labour reform plan, which was then put before the Congress. At the present time this plan is being considered by the Senate, having come up against rejection by several unions and sections of workers, responding to these 'flexibility' proposals with three general strikes (August and December 1996 and August 1997).

The National Employment Act, no. 24,013, facilitated casualisation of labour by recognising the so-called 'rubbish contracts' – i.e., fixed-term contracts without rights to social security for the worker or his family, and without any kind of job security. There are 17 different part-time labour regimes arising from that Act: those for young persons, Intensive Labour Programme (ILP), the Jobs Programme, etc.

The last of these is run by the national government and provides for contracts of 3 to 6 months' duration, at a wage of $320 a month, without social security or pension rights. These ultra-precarious jobs are manipulated by the Menem government for electoral purposes. With the help of its agents in the localities, it judges where to create vacancies that will persuade people in need to change their voting intentions, or else – as could be seen in the first half of 1997 – to deal with situations of road blocks put up by the hungry unemployed, with a view to getting these people to cease such activities.

The national government spends only very meagre sums on unemployment benefit, even though unemployment has trebled. In all it spends $200 million a year on unemployment benefit, awarded to only 10% of those affected by closures. By way of comparison one should consider what Argentina in 1997 paid to imperialism, especially US imperialism, to service its external debt, i.e., $5.233 billion in interest and $9.587 billion in capital repayment.

In March this year the daily Clarin published a table setting out statistics as to the numbers of workers in employment:

The unavoidable conclusion is: by adding the unregistered workers (2.5 million people) to those who fall into the three categories of overt casualisation (600,000), one can see that 40% of the work force are currently without job security.

This is no accident. It flows directly from Menem's laws and decrees (taken as a whole), to which we drew attention to above, and from the relevant background legislation, i.e., the so-called State Reform Act of 1989, which set up the neo-liberal privatisation model the Menem government and by the monopolies have put into effect.

In March 1997 the Minister of Labour published his Survey of Labour Indicators containing one remarkable fact: 80% of jobs created in 1996 were either fixed-term or probationary. This shows that between January 1996 and the same month of 1997 "the number of wage workers on permanent contracts fell by 5.9%, while the number of those of a casual or probationary nature increased 3.2 times."

The study revealed that every month there was an increase in the number of workers on probation (having contracts of 3 or 6 months' duration), while the number of workers on permanent contracts went down. The conclusion is unavoidable: the workers on probation never achieve a permanency but are always replaced by other probationers. Even the Ministry had to admit that "the employers are abusing this type of labour contract".

In September 1997 INDED advised that in Buenos Aires and its suburbs* [see Glossary] only 28.4% of the working population were in registered employment, with proper social security entitlements. According to the FIDE foundation, the proportion three years before had been in the region of 42.3%.

In November the Ministry of Labour published national statistics showing that permanent contracts make up 77.8% of the total, fixed term contracts 7.1%, probationary contracts 14.3% and agency contracts 0.8%. These figures take no account of the unregistered workers whose number is increasing. It is known that such workers receive wages on average 40% lower than those who are "legal".

One of the sectors where there is most unregistered employment is in agriculture. In the countryside a million people were employed in 1996 but only 11 workers (no mistake –11 workers) got any pension rights.

The Ministry of Labour discovered that in the first 8 months of 1997 there had been an increase in the number of collective agreements providing for casualisation and labour flexibility. Out of 121 collective agreements concluded, 96 were specific to a given enterprise rather than being for the industry as a whole, or for the trade as a whole, as the unions would have wanted. In most cases the agreements made provision for increased flexibility of labour (in terms of the range of work an employee could be expected to do – multi-tasking), for changes in holiday allocation, for changes in working hours (to be calculated by the week rather than by the day), for wages based on productivity bonuses and for fixed-term contracts, etc.

In order to obtain a clearer picture it should be noted that 58.8% of new collective agreements provided for changes in workers timetables and 44.5% for multi-tasking* [see Glossary].

For years international financial institutions (especially the IMF and the World Bank) have been putting pressure on Argentina to adopt wholesale the concept of labour flexibility. Every visit by Michel Camdessus, managing director of the IMF, and his 'technical' missions headed by Thomas Raichman, which land in Buenos Aires every month, push the country further in that direction.

There was held, for example, in Barcelona in 1997, the Annual Meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank, attended by Roque Fernandez (Minister for the Economy). Claudio Loser, Western Hemisphere Director of the IMF, regaled him with a speech to the effect that "one element that has continuously to be monitored is what is happening to labour legislation in Argentina, because this is a very important aspect of increasing productivity."

Another recent example arose in November 1997, when the Argentine government drafted a letter of intent for the purpose of negotiating extended credit facilities with the IMF. One of the undertakings required by the IMF from the government was that by June 1998 a law promoting labour flexibility should be passed – the law which is in fact before the Senate at this very moment.

In September 1996 the Third International Conference organised by the Confederation of Argentine Industry (CAI), an organisation of local big bourgeois, took place in Mar de Plata. Menem attended to promise complete 'flexibility' – his promise materialising 3 months later in the form of three draft decrees. Menem had just returned from a visit to Malaysia and had brought back from there the recipe for introducing flexibility of labour. Other businessmen, such as Enrique Pescarmona, also fed from the same trough with a view to perfecting the super-exploitation of his IMPSA employees to the point of reducing them to slave conditions (see Chapter 2 below).

At any rate, a year later, at the time of the Fourth Industrial Conference, the promised changes had not yet become law owing to the strong resistance mounted by wage workers. This took the form of strikes and demonstrations. Menem, since taking power in 1989, has witnessed 7 general strikes and innumerable provincial struggles, puebladas* [see Glossary], roadblocks and demonstrations. It has not been the working class alone: many other sectors of the population have realised that the reforms have no purpose other than to reverse previous working-class gains, to intensify exploitation, to reduce real wages and to increase unemployment.

Despite failure to implement to the full the required legislative programme, the local big bourgeoisie, the multinational companies and creditor banks have seen to it that labour flexibility has been introduced in practice. What they could not achieve through the law, they nevertheless put into effect within enterprises, as was admitted by Daniel Funes de Rioja, an expert on the CAI.

One of the collective agreements in the category called "witness cases" was that between the Italian car manufacturers Fiat and the Union of Mechanics and Allied Trades in the Motor Industry (SMATA) for implementation in the Cordoba plant of Ferreyra. There were also others of a similar type involving the same union, concluded with Chrysler and General Motors. Steel manufacturers such as Acindar, Aluar, IMPSA, Siderca, etc.; companies in the food business such as Arcor and Terrabusi; supermarkets like Carrefour, Americanos and Disco - all of them have succeeded in imposing their demand for flexibility – in other words, reduction in the number of jobs, lower wages and deteriorated conditions of work.

Staff in the privatised state industries which have been privatised have lost whatever they had previously gained from collective agreements, above all their security of employment. This has happened to the employees of Telecom, Telefónica, YPF, Aerolíneas, Metrovías, etc. In the case of Aguas Argentinas (the Argentine Water Board), now dominated by the French company, Lyonnaise des Eaux, a collective agreement facilitating flexibility was imposed on its Buenos Aires employees in 1993, on its Santa Fe employees in 1996 and its Cordoba workers in 1997.

Even those who have remained within the state orbit are threatened with 'flexibility', in addition to their wages being frozen since April 1991. In December 1996 the national government put before Congress a bill aimed at drastically changing the conditions of work of those employed in the civil service and its decentralised branches such as PAMI (the pensioners' organisation) and ANSSAL (the unions' social security fund). This affects some 200,000 people.

In practically every province the workers have been subjected to 'emergency laws' which provide for them to be paid in kind (rather than in money), for wage cuts and thousands of redundancies, starting with contract labour.

All these laws and decrees, all this 'flexibility' reigning de facto in so many factories and enterprises, has produced extraordinary rates of profit for the owners. 20 large companies favoured by the government with privatisation have, under the conditions of labour casualisation which we have been commenting upon, earned between them $3,5 billion in 1995, the year of the 'tequila effect'* [see Glossary], a year when business sectors fared badly. As for workers, they fared very badly.

Gregorio Perez Companc (from the oil group bearing his name - who has a personal fortune of $45.2 billion), Robert Rocca (from the steel group Techint), and Amalia Lacroze de Fortabat (from the cement group Loma Negra) all saw their earnings increase to such an extent that they now appear in the Forbes list of the world's richest people.

PUT CLASSISM THE RIGHT WAY UP

It is the workers who are the sacrificial lambs in this neo-liberal economic programme and we will illustrate this here with living examples provided by various unions.

We have already indicated that there are 3.7 million unemployed or underemployed according to official statistics, which generally shy away from disclosing the whole truth as to the seriousness of the problem.

While since April 1991 inflation has increased 60%, wages have in the same period remained frozen as a result of the convertibility law. They have now fallen very much behind increases in the price of goods and services. According to INDEC, the price of the family shopping basket providing a family's basic needs is $1,605 a month, while 42% of wage workers (1.6 million people) earn less that $500 a month and another 29.8% (1.1 million) only receive between $500 and $1,000.

While in 1974 almost half national income went to wage workers, in 1989 this proportion had fallen to 34%. At present it is barely 20.5%.

A significant section of employees are casualised. These workers, as well as those who still theoretically enjoy permanent contracts, have been subjected to the lowering of their wages and deterioration in their conditions of service as a result of the pressure exercised by the so-called ''industrial reserve army'. Fearing dismissal, staff who remain agree to worsening standards imposed by their greedy and vindictive employers. This is what explains the fact that in the years when unemployment was rising and wages were decreasing, productivity increased 141%. In some branches of industry it increased even more.

The trade-union bosses from the CGT and the main unions deserve a paragraph to themselves, for they have betrayed their members and in some cases have become businessmen themselves. Without their assistance it would have been very difficult for the government and the employers to progress very far with their attacks.

The most notable are the bosses of the builders' union (UOCRA) and the health services union (ATSA), whose Secretaries General, Gerardo Martinez and Carlos West Ocampo respectively, are executives of the Private Annuities and Pensions Fund (Administradora de Fondos y Jubilaciones) (AFJP) "Claridad"* [see Glossary], whose majority shareholder is the US insurance company ITT-Hartford. Other examples are the Secretaries General of the two power workers unions, Oscar Lescano and Carlos Alderete respectively, who became owners of the private thermo-electrical power stations in Salta, el Litoral and Patagonia.

The trade union bureaucrats have their price. One of the clauses of the Fiat-SMATA collective agreement provides for the payment of $30,000 a month to the central executive of the union for "recreational and cultural purposes". Besides this 'legal' pay-off there are a great many deals below the table between the trade union bosses and the employers.

 This has become more and more obvious to the working millions who can see themselves getting poorer while their leaders live a life of opulence and luxury. There is a crisis in the relationship between the union grassroots and the union bosses, mostly of Peronist persuasion, who are the accomplices of the Menem government and have completely sold out to the class enemy. All this creates ideal political conditions for those in struggle to build a Militant Trade-Union Tendency to defeat and overthrow the trade-union bureaucracy in order to take up once more the legacy of the class-conscious trade unionism of the 1970s.

Chapter 2 - The Pescarmona-IMPSA case

Pescarmona Metallurgical Industries (IMPSA) is the largest company in this sector in Mendoza province and one of the biggest in the country. It also controls the insurance company, Mercantil Andina, the wine cellars, Bodegas Lagarde, the satellite engineers IMPSAT and two railway branch lines connecting with Chile and the three Mercosur* [see Glossary] countries. These railways are: the Buenos Aires Pacific Railway (BAP) from San Martin and the Mesopotamian Railway from Urquiza, both privatised during Carlos Menem's presidency.

The slavemaster attitude of this company's chief, Enrique Pescarmona, is clear from some of his statements to the daily Pagina 12 published in February 1997: "The Filipino girls who work in our Hong Kong offices are always available for work. There are no Saturdays or Sundays; and if the need arises for them to stay at work several days in a row without sleep, then they do it; and they don't ask for overtime payment either. I am a businessman, not a philosopher. So I don't ask myself what's good and what's bad. All I'm interested in is being more competitive. Asians work every day, 20 hours a day, for $80 a month – and on top of that they are educated, well-mannered and hard workers. If I am gong to be able to compete I have to use them. That is globalisation for you. The hazards of the globalised world. I have young children and I always tell them that this globalised world is very difficult because it is very competitive; but that the world they're going to have to deal with is going to be more difficult still. Therefore I'm preparing them for this world."

Constantly repeating the stinking globalisation mantra, this gentleman has set out to minimise his costs at the expense of his workers' wages and benefits.

Thus it was that in December 1994 new productivity norms began to be applied. The extra hour (which had been paid and was a major cost of production) disappeared, as provided for in the collective agreement.

At that time staff in various sectors were being dismissed as a result of outsourcing - IMPSA having recourse to service companies using the same people who had once been on its permanent staff. They were formally disassociated from the company and then formed themselves into independent co-operatives or limited liability companies operating within the same enterprise - with the same personnel, who had surrendered their redundancy rights in exchange for machines and tools.

In this way Pescarmona saved himself from having to pay out redundancy money and at the same time was able to acquire well-qualified labour very cheap. These workers were not included on the pay roll, so the employer did not have to make any social security or pension contributions for them.

The number of workers on the pay roll went on diminishing. They found themselves at a disadvantage because they had to compete with these groups of former employees who were doing the same work as them but for less money. As a result the plant became totally unstable, as the employers continue to press for yet more flexibility and outsourcing.

IMPSA workers, who are mostly skilled workers, earn on average $700 a month.

Theoretically our labour laws prohibit cheating and disloyalty of this kind, but Pescarmona always manages to cover himself. For example, the head of the Employment Subsecretariat for Mendoza Province, Dr Dominguez Pinto, is the son of the Pescarmona company's in-house legal adviser. What hope then for workers' complaints to the local Subsecretariat?

Before taking action against IMPSA one should endeavour to rally not only IMPSA workers but also the rest of the delegates and metallurigical industry leaders willing to confront the employer.

In general the employers have applied the maxim 'Divide and Rule'. The workers' gains in the metallurgy industry began to come under threat in 1992 when the leadership of the Metalworkers' Union agreed to negotiate a separate collective agreement for one single branch of the industry. This agreement was signed with Sevel SA and the motor industry. This discriminated against the other 22 branches of the metallurgical industry, as set out in the Collective Agreements Act 1975. That act came into force in 1975 at which time it benefited 400,000 workers who were proud at that time of their model collective agreement.

The employers, united in 5 sections of the metallurgical industry, mounted a counter-offensive, hand-in-glove with the Menem government. They had their first success with the Sevel collective agreement and then they redoubled the pressure, following the passage in 1993 of the National Employment Act which – as we pointed out in the Introduction – created new model contracts allowing for flexibility and fixed terms. Pescarmona naturally was one of the employers who most pressed for these changes and most backed Menem's political line. The government not only handed over to him two railway lines, of particular strategic importance because they connect with Mercosur, but also awarded him the presidency of the semi-private, semi-public Foundation Export-Ar, which makes state funds available to facilitate international trade and promotes private businesses, like those belonging to IMPSA.

This Mendoza-based group, like many other holding companies, grew up under the auspices of the military dictatorship (during which time workers at its plants were among those who 'disappeared'). After that the group reached an accommodation with Raul Alfonsin, whose government sold it the Austral airline on advantageous credit terms. Finally it found its ideal government – Menem's.

This is why as far as the proletariat is concerned all these monopolists have to be expropriated without compensation through anti-imperialist, anti-monopolist, democratic, popular and peasant revolution as a step towards socialism.

Chapter 3 - The Fiat-SMATA Collective Agreement

As far as the Argentine motor industry is concerned, a careful analysis of the new Fiat-SMATA collective agreement provides elements proving the seriousness of the crisis brought about by 'labour flexibility'. In truth it is more appropriate to speak of 'labour slavery', especially when one considers that within the motor industry, according to experts in these matters, this collective agreement is not the worse in terms of promoting 'flexibility' or low wages,. The ranking, according to data supplied by specialist magazines, is headed by Toyota and General Motors, followed by Fiat and Chrysler. Behind these come Sevel, Ciadea (now Renault), Ford, Volkswagen, Scania and Iveco.

So what is the significance of the new Fiat-SMATA agreement?

First of all it provides for an extra shift on Saturdays, of between 6 and 13 hours' duration. This provides leeway to average the working week at 44 hours over a 3-week cycle.

And as far as shifts are concerned, operatives can be required to work any of the three shifts. The company only has to give 48 hours' notice, making it impossible for the operative to plan his life and his family's life.

The extra hours are not automatically to be computed on a daily basis, as is the case with other car manufacturers. Each team's working day can be increased by up to 3 hours (11 hours' work per shift), to be made up by off-duty periods to be taken that same week. To earn any overtime one has to work over 44 hours a week.

Production may be suspended at the whim of the employer, during which time pay is very bad. When production is suspended through no fault of the operative, his wages are reduced to 75% of basic, as are his meal allowances – to a maximum of 44 hours a year. The company can pay 100% in return for working outside normal hours on a Saturday (maximum 3 hours).

Something new, not seen in previous collective agreements we have been able to inspect, is reference to 'bridging' days [days bridging a weekend with a bank holiday]. The company gives itself the right to make the bridging day a holiday, and then to require workers to come in on a Saturday instead.

Moreover the company can, by virtue of an innovative provision for 'efficiency' and 'multi-tasking', require people to perform different functions within their grade. In other words the whole idea of specific job descriptions, contained in all previous collective agreements, has been abandoned.

One of the most dangerous provisions, as far as workers are concerned, is what concerns the organisation of work. The employer has changed the organisation of production to allow workers a degree of self-management and responsibility for their own quality control: this means that if a worker points out faults or imperfections, he can cause the production line to be halted. The other side of the coin, however, is that this poorly paid responsibility can give rise to penalties if mistakes are made.

As far as grades are concerned, the collective agreement contains many steps backward in relation to the past. There are now only 6 professional grades, instead of the 12 that existed under the old framework. The effect on wages is prejudicial for thousands of workers.

The hardest blow meted out to the workers by the employer relates to wages. Mechanics today do not have their wages fixed by the collective agreement. The wages are in part fixed and in part variable (related to productivity). Basic wages are low as compared to those paid by other car manufacturers (except General Motors where exploitation is greater): these being 550 pesos a month for the lowest grade (1 peso = $1). The Fiat-SMATA collective agreement established a rate of basic pay between 39% and 43% lower than the average in other car manufacturers in our country.

The traps are endless. For example, when holidays exceed 14 days, the company can decide in which period of the year they are to be taken (December to February or July to August). In the previous collective agreement the holiday period was October to March.

They will still be breaks for snacks, but the worker must have his meals after his shift is over, away from the company.

Faced with barbarities of this kind, the company knows that there will be union opposition. So two committees have been set up to reduce the possibility of conflict. One committee will evaluate company strategy, the other will attend to health and safety. To date the company has refused to recognise the union formed by the workers themselves, i.e., the Ferreyra section of the Metalworkers Union.

That union has revealed that from January to October 1997 FIAT has sacked 900 workers, either directly or indirectly. This fact demonstrates the vindictive, anti-working class nature of labour flexibility. The current experience of Fiat Auto in Cordoba is a blueprint. These dismissals alone show that flexibility is no panacea for curing unemployment.

With all the necessary publicity and propaganda Fiat announced it had inaugurated its new car production plant, having invested $600 million in total, creating 5,000 new jobs. But they forgot to mention that the 1,700 former Cormec employees were dismissed (Cormec being Fiat Auto's predecessor). They were given redundancy payments as a carrot to get them to agree to being dismissed. Minutes later the company lawyers got them signing on to work for Fiat Auto, but on the basis of the collective agreement providing for flexibility which we have been analysing – a collective agreement which erodes their earlier working conditions and, above all, requires them to work for less pay.

In Cormec, for example, the hourly rate ranged from $4.20 to $6.00, while Fiat's is $2.68 plus a 32 cents meal voucher. From 800 pesos a month, wages have fallen to $400. One must remember that the motors and gear-box manufacturer, Cormec, was a joint venture of Macri-Sevel and Fiat of Turin. It has now passed into the sole ownership of the latter.

As if by magic the workers lost their seniority, their grades, their holiday entitlements and their production bonuses. And any worker who refused to be transferred was automatically dismissed.

25 years ago Fiat, the very same Fiat, thought it had put an end to militant unionism when it defeated Sitrac-Sitram, but history made sure Fiat learnt of its mistake. The quest for flexibility led to the Cormec-Fiat plant being occupied for 5 days in September 1996, with the old traitor leadership of the Cordoba Metalworkers Union being thrown out and a new union leadership being elected in a general meeting.

This anti-bureaucratic movement later suffered reverses as a result of the influence wielded by the reformism and social democracy of some of the leaders of UOM Ferreyra. But in any event representatives, informal organisations and platforms of militant workers came to the fore, such as the White Platform at Fiat SMATA, which won the union elections at the Renault plant in Santa Isabel (Cordoba). Every day the working class gives proof of its ability to fight and restore its fortunes.

The Cormec-Fiat experience painfully demonstrates that workers can expect nothing from this much-vaunted 'flexibility': only wage reductions, worsening conditions of work and redundancies.

Chapter 4 - What Is Happening To Teachers?

The Federal Education Act passed by the Menem government in 1993 camouflages under the cover of "educational reform", a most serious and successful attempt to apply labour flexibility to the Argentinian teaching profession.

It was generally agreed that before this norm was invented the public education system was, and is now, in a situation of crisis arising from a series of factors (economic, political, pedagogic and educational). A political solution was needed. But the government, by passing this Act, provided a neo-liberal political 'solution' in line with handing over the country to the multinationals.

Before passing this Act, the government transferred to the provincial authorities all state schools and colleges, without sufficient funding to maintain them. This forced the provinces to pay teachers' wages, subsidies to private schools, equipment costs, etc., out of their limited funds.

The Federal Education Act provided for education funding to increase by 20% a year over a five-year period, with a view to it doubling by 1999. But this did not materialise, either in 1996 or in 1997. Education was swindled out of $7 billion.

Officialdom has plastered the capital of Salta Province with posters proclaiming that in two years education funding has increased by 25%. However, the proper way of assessing this is not to look at the alleged global increase but to look at the amount spent per pupil. At the moment this amounts to $670, which means it has declined by 50%.

The cut was achieved by sacking approximately 3,000 of Salta's teachers. The number of grades was reduced, i.e., grades were fused to create new grades containing more teachers. This left teachers out of work, increasing unemployment on the one hand and intensifying the exploitation of the remaining teachers on the other hand. While previously there were on average 20 pupils per teacher up to the 3rd grade of primary school, and 15 pupils per teacher from 4th to 7th grade, now those maximums have become minimums, and the average number of pupils in urban areas is over 30, even 40-in some cases.

This increase in pupils, which is repeated in practically all the provinces of our country, means that the teacher has to work harder, which cannot but affect the quality of the education provided. The fusion of grades has also led to non-graduation of probationary and supply teachers.

In Salta a provincial education law was passed modelled on the Federal Education Act. The province also promulgated Terms and Conditions of Service for Educationalists, to replace the historic Teachers' Terms and Conditions of Service, in force up to then.

In other provinces, such as Cordoba, the authorities have announced that they will effect "a complete revision of teachers' terms and conditions of service" (see the daily Voz del Interior, 9 October 1997). De facto conditions have already been eroded since out of the miserly monthly salary of $300, $100 has ceased to be part of the basic salary but has instead been converted into an attendance bonus. It is lost as soon as there is any absence, and it is a 'bonus' aimed at discouraging strikes, which has also been introduced in Buenos Aires and other districts. There have been cases of teachers dying as a result of going to work while sick in order not to lose their attendance bonus.

In La Pampa province it has been revealed that "World Bank funding is tied to reform of teachers' conditions of service, fixed-term contracts, loss of job security, reduction of holiday entitlements, lengthening of the working day, phasing out pay increases based on length of service in favour of salaries based on 'merit', assessed by whoever happens to be in power" (see the daily La Arena of 7 October 1997).

Confirming that it is the World Bank which is behind loss of job security among teachers, its Director for Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, Myrna Alexander, declared on 23 November last to Pagina/12 that: "Teachers receive too many social benefits: holidays, study leave, ongoing professional education. If a teacher took advantage of all of these it would consume 50% of his time."

The policies of Salta's Peronist government led to the disappearance of the General Council of Education and the Qualification and Discipline Executive – organisms made up of teachers. The structure has been verticalised to enable the Education Ministry to manipulate appointments, teaching programmes and resources at will.

As a result we have: the end of the teaching career as such, 'political' appointments which take no account of published criteria, and loss of the concept of seniority. Seniority has now been frozen: teachers newly joining the profession will have no seniority pay rises. Seniority pay was cumulative: 20% of basic salary for the first 5 years, 50% until the 15th year and 100% after 20 years' seniority.

Also eliminated in various parts of the country has been the bonus for working in less favoured areas, and the bonus for working long days. Moreover there have been no appointments of Special Needs teachers.

Salaries have been frozen since 1991. Districts which put up a struggle have managed to obtain small increases, such as in Salta where a 7-week strike took place in 1994. The rise was only $70, and that was in 'black' pay, i.e., non-cash benefits which did not lift teachers' salaries in that province above the bottom rung - $250 a month cash in hand.

Another example of labour flexibility has been the lengthening of the working day. This was done by outlawing staff meetings in school time, forcing them to be held after school hours. Another method is to require attendance for non-teaching duties all day on Saturdays. There are provinces where teachers are obliged not only to teach but also to supervise students at lunch and carry out other non-teaching duties, all without extra pay.

Teachers have been threatened to update themselves or face the sack. Through the 'Federal Network' a series of courses have been provided which are not free, which teachers can only attend in their own time and which are of poor academic quality. They require lengthy attendance at inconvenient times, making it impossible for probationary and supply teachers to take part, thus depriving these of access to the credits they need in order to qualify for a full-time post.

'Efficiency' and 'productivity' are two concepts introduced by the Federal Education Act which have undermined solidarity and introduced fierce rivalry among teachers.

The parents of pupils are obliged to contribute financially to the schools, as if funding the schools were the responsibility of parents rather than the state, which raises tax for the purpose. If parents do not pay their children will not be admitted. Various organisations intervene to legitimise and reinforce such requirements, particularly where there are contributions by private companies, Non-Governmental Organisations, local authorities, etc. All this is leading towards the hidden privatisation of public schooling.

The requirement that teachers' qualifications must be updated and post-qualification evaluation will mean loss of job security and the end of the teaching career. The career will be replaced by a regime of fixed-term contracts. For example: an institution will put forward a plan for objectives to be achieved in two years. Administrators and teachers will be guaranteed work for those two years, and will have a contract to that effect. But then there will have to be another contract, starting all over again. And then another, etc.

The reform will also affect the composition of teaching salaries, since it will introduce norms such as professional updating, efficiency and productivity which will be assessed at the DISCRETION of the establishment authorities.

They want special schools closed and their pupils transferred to ordinary schools, which will have two undesirable effects: special teachers will be left without a job and ordinary teachers will find themselves overloaded.

As far as the teaching unions are concerned, they provide several examples of the worst kind of collaborationism between unions leaders and education ministries at both national and provincial level. For example, the leadership of the UEPC (Union of Educators – Cordoba Province) agreed to negotiate a revision of teachers' pay and conditions with the local administration. Other union leaders advocate pinpricks against the government, such as those favoured by the majority in CTERA (Confederation of Education Workers of the Argentine Republic), which is maintaining rotas of teams on hunger strike outside the Congress building – the White Marquee – demanding better funding for education, but not the repeal of the Federal Education Act.

What is needed is to unite and organise the most militant teachers' sections, such as the Pink and Green platform in Salta, the Brown platform in Mendoza, the Education Workers' Front in La Pampa, part of the membership of the former Pink platform at national level, etc. One objective clue to the effect that conditions are ripe for this struggle is that in 1997 teachers waged 5 general strikes and in various provinces threatened not to be available at the start of the 1998 school year.

Chapter 5 - The Situation in the Supermarket Business

Supermarket expansion began in Argentina at the end of the 1960s. Not until the 1990s, however, did they gain the upper hand, driving to bankruptcy small and medium shopkeepers. At the present time there are 60 national supermarket chains which have taken over the lion's share of the market.

Carrefour is French; Disco, Coto and Tia belong to the local bourgeoisie, Norte and Wal Mart belong to the US and Jumbo is Chilean.

Although Wal Mart set up operations in Argentina only recently, it is already the main competitor of the market leader, Carrefour, in an inter-monopolist struggle unleashed throughout South America.

By the reckoning of persons affected (i.e., stores and small shops), for every new job created by the supermarkets, 400 are lost in the businesses that are forced to close down.

Several of the supermarkets mentioned are actually hypermarkets, combined with shopping centres and even, in some cases, hotels.

Supermarkets, from their 1,196 sites throughout our country sell 46.6% of food and drink, a proportion that rises to 76% if you take into account only self-service outlets. The 114,227 traditional stores only account for 28% of this trade.

These large national and transnational companies benefit from state subsidies. For example, the state hands over to them $200 a month by way of subsidy for each young person they employ at a wage of only $300 – meaning that the employers only pay $100 a month out of their own pockets.

One can also see from the Table reproduced below the extent to which the business has passed into foreign hands. We might add that 70% of shopping centres have been acquired by the US citizen of Hungarian origin, George Soros and his company, IRSA.

The exploitation to which supermarkets subject their employees is among the most brutal practised in Argentina. Its starting point is unemployment levels which allow staff, fearful of dismissal, to be reduced to slave conditions of labour. In Cordoba recently Wal Mart advertised for staff, offering wages of $300 a month. For 1,100 vacancies they received 12,000 applications within 48 hours, most of them from young people who had completed their secondary education and including many graduates.

On 23 March 1997 a television programme (D Day, introduced by the journalist Jorge Lanata) showed employees whose exploitation involved 18-hour working days without overtime pay, at wages of $300-$400 a month. The programme showed cases of people who had worked continuously for 24 and even 32 hours, again without extra payment. In this system workers are restricted as to when they can go to the toilet, and when they are allowed to go, they are subjected to a body search to make sure that they are not taking any sandwich to eat there. They are searched again as they leave work. In the washrooms there are TV monitors installed to watch employees even when using the WC, all of which shows the genius of Charlie Chaplin's exposure of capitalism in the film, Modern Times. And they try to tell us that this neo-liberal model is a symbol of modernity!

Let us look concretely at Supermercados Americanos, the retail branch of Petrini SA, and owner of the New Shopping Centre (worth roughly $20 million), who joined up with Delta SA and certain US interests to build the Cordoba Sheraton Hotel ($40 million).

Supermercados Americanos has 60 subsidiaries and obtains part of the meat and farming produce it sells from its own farms and estates in the east of Cordoba province.

It employs 2,500 people, of whom 60% are young people taken on as apprentices, within the framework of the National Employment Act. Their monthly wage is $330, and their contracts are for periods ranging from 3 months to 2 years. No pension provision and no social security contributions are made for them. They are called 'part-time' even though they work 36 hours a week at $2.64 an hour, and they get no entitlement to paid holidays.

'Full-time' workers work 44 hours a week for $380 a month.

Neither full-time nor part-time workers have any job security. They are not organised in any union, only in an in-house 'association', favouring the slave labour system prevalent in the supermarkets. Most workers have to work both on Saturdays and on Sundays, ignoring the requirement of Argentinian labour law that Sunday must be a day of rest. After two warnings employees face dismissal and staff are forbidden to eat anything while on duty – even a biscuit – if they are found doing so, they face suspension.

The working week is arranged to suit the employer, according to peak customer flows. Even on Sunday employees are likely to be asked to attend in the morning and then return for an evening shift.

While all this is going on, the Shopworkers' Union, which has members among supermarket staff, looks the other way – showing an attitude of complicity with the big capitalists. Its top national leader is Armando Cavalieri, who was the first person to sign with the supermarkets a collective agreement providing for 'flexibility', and then he signed another with the rest of the shopkeepers, i.e., with the employers' union CAME. Cavalieri is a typical union boss cum businessman who owns large landed estates, houses and other investments.

Chapter 6 - The Secretary of the CGT Allows it in his own Union

The food industry is able to benefit from the so-called 'comparative advantages' in Argentina. Besides supplying the internal market, it also has major exports to Brazil and Mercosur. It is estimated that in 1997 it will have exported food and drink to the value of $9.5 billion, almost 40% of our country's total exports.

This business attracted foreign investment and - to a lesser extent - investment by local business syndicates. This is undeniably a characteristic of the process by which our economy has been passing into foreign hands under the government of Carlos Menem.

The food industry accounted for "the largest number of transfers of locally-owned businesses into the hands of multinationals. Between 1990 and today there were more than 60 sales, and today, out of the 20 largest processed foods companies, only Arcor remains wholly Argentinian owned", (from the magazine Mercado, October 1997).

Some of the most notable sales were as follows: the sale of the Terrabusi biscuit factory to the US owned Nabisco; the sale of Bagley to the French company, Danone. Nestlé and Kraft-Suchard have been with us for a while. The Italian Parmalat and the Chilean group Luksic have appeared recently. The largest national enterprises are Molinos (owned by Bunge and Born), Arcor, Mastellone and SanCor.

The workers in this industrial sector are represented in Buenos Aires by the Federated Union of Food Industry Workers (STIA) whose General Secretary, Rodolfo Daer, was elected to the position of General Secretary of the CGT.

In 1996 Daer was making speeches, even some fairly spirited ones, against labour flexibility when was being discussed by the National Executive. But his stand was a fake. Two years previously he, along with the leaders of the Federated Food Industry Workers Union, had signed a collective agreement with the employers' union (the Federation of Alimentary Products Industries and Allied Trades – FIPAA) providing for the introduction of flexibility. He himself secured the 5th Article providing for this provision to apply "throughout the territory of Argentina".

This collective agreement provided for plant bargaining, as the capitalists wanted, since they always prefer to negotiate with sections of the workers separately.

It also provided for "multi-tasking to achieve greater productivity". The document goes on to spell out that this "implies it will be possible to require a worker to perform functions and tasks different from those appropriate to his job title, with a view to operational efficiency" (see the daily Pagina/12 of 22 September 1997).

The collective agreement accepted the principle of fixed-term contracts, and permitted the employers to decide on "the modalities and authorisation period" of redundancies, changes of working hours, etc.

Of 14,000 workers who are members of this Union in Buenos Aires and its suburbs, most of them are on fixed-term contracts.

Wage rates are at poverty level: the top rate is $1.80 an hour ($345 a month).

Daer signed an agreement that allows for the employment of children under the age of 14, who will receive wages of $1.15 an hour despite performing exactly the same tasks as adults. And this union bureaucrat surpassed himself when in June 1997 he signed a Statement of Intent with the government on the subject of labour flexibility, which a month later was presented as a draft law to the Congress by Menem.

In this way the CGT leadership is achieving at the national level what Daer achieved in the food industry: to ensure that the employers negotiate with the union bureaucracy 'flexible terms' but don't cast the union leadership aside. In exchange for this betrayal they want the government to leave them in charge of union social funds, considered to be the financial safe deposit box of these bosses.

Encouraged by this collective agreement promoting such flexibility, employers such as Arcor played havoc with their employees. They dismissed about 1,000 of the 5,000 employees they had in their 15 sites in Argentina, and they reduced the wages of those who were left by 10%-15%.

For this reason the workers' fight against labour flexibility goes hand in hand with a struggle to remove the union hierarchies, the partners of the government and the employers.

In some cases this will be possible by means of presenting united militant platforms at union leadership elections, which take place every 3 or 4 years.

But the prevalence among the union bureacuracy of electoral fraud and proscription of platforms of candidates has opened up another route which has already been used in several unions. Workers held general meetings, deposed their capitulationist leaders and elected provisional committees. This is what happened at the Cormec-Fiat plant in September 1996 and in the Cordoba Power Workers' Union the same year.

The bureaucrats' conversion into businessmen, their proscriptive and violent manipulation of union structures, enable one to predict that the most common method for removing them from the unions in future will increasingly be by resort to violence.

GLOSSARY AND CLARIFICATION

1. The Argentine currency is the peso and it is pegged to the dollar at the rate of one peso per dollar.

2. Mercosur: the Common Market of the South, whose members are Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay. It is in the process of admitting Chile and Bolivia.

3. The Buenos Aires suburbs: together with Buenos Aires itself these make up the province of Buenos Aires.

4. AFJP. The Retirement and Private Pensions Fund, set up by act of parliament in 1994 with a view to privatising this area. Until October 1997 it was in charge of funds totalling $8 billion. They take from the workers 11% of their wages, of which they credit them with 7.5%, keeping for themselves 3.5% on account of expenses and commission.

5. SMEs, (in Argentina Pymes), Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises, employing up to 40 people.

6. Puebladas: Violent popular demonstrations in inland townships, such as that which took place in Santiago del Estero in December 1993 in which the masses attacked the respective centres of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial powers.

7. The Tequila effect: This is the expression used to denote recession, flight of capital and runs on banks, with their consequent deleterious effect on workers. It first came into use in 1994 with the Mexican devaluation.

8. Outsourcing: technique used by big companies who bring in independent companies to take over given production processes which formerly they handled themselves, thus reducing their staff and their costs.