Argentina’s unemployed movement:
fragmented but active
By Marcela Valente
Buenos Aires, Argentina, June 28 (IPS)— Although Argentina’s
unemployed movement is more fragmented than ever, it has made the headlines
again in recent weeks with marches, roadblocks, and occupations of public
buildings, foreign-owned businesses and ticket booths that have received
heavy coverage by the local media.
“Our big concern is the lack of work,” Nora Seitz, with the
Union of Piquetero Workers, which along with seven other groups make
up the Popular Workers’ Bloc (BOP), told IPS.
BOP is one of dozens of organizations of the unemployed that have emerged
in the past decade in the heat of the economic crisis, whose name “piquetero”
comes from their common tactic of blocking strategic highways and roads
to force local or national authorities to listen to their grievances.
The problems that originally gave rise to the groups persist today in
Argentina, where 47.8 percent of the population of 37 million is poor
and 14.4 percent is unemployed, according to official statistics.
However, the unemployment rate climbs to nearly 20 percent if those
who receive a tiny monthly stipend (the equivalent of 50 dollars), which
the government has provided to unemployed heads of households since
2002, are counted among the jobless.
A year ago, BOP decided that it would no longer merely stage roadblocks
or demand government assistance, but would start to hold demonstrations
outside of large companies to ask for “real jobs,” said Seitz.
Over the past few weeks, the demonstrators have occupied ticket booths
in the Constitución train station in Buenos Aires, securing a
promise from the private concessionaire running that railway line to
reinstate nine employees who were laid off and create 52 new jobs.
“Our goal is not to interrupt transit or make problems for the
passengers of trains, but to pressure the companies to create jobs,
by hurting them economically,” said the activist.
In this case they are doing that by occupying ticket booths, a form
of protest that enables passengers to ride the trains for free, thus
gaining the protesters support that they were not earning with the roadblocks.
“The media try to separate the unemployed from the rest of society
by dwelling on the chaos caused by the traffic blocks. But we have not
found that a majority of the train passengers reject us; quite the contrary,”
said Seitz, who studied tourism but is unemployed.
“It’s incredible how many people wish us luck, listen to us
and help us hand out flyers,” she said.
The Graciela Romer local polling firm, however, reported that the proportion
of respondents in surveys who saw such actions as “legitimate protests
by the unemployed” shrank from 56 to 33 percent between June 2001
and last May.
In the same period, the percentage of those interviewed who said the
protests are “managed by activists who don’t represent the
people” rose from 35 to 62 percent.
But the new tactic of occupying foreign-owned businesses and government
offices is becoming more and more common in Latin America’s number
three economy, which suffered a financial and political meltdown in
late 2001 and is still in the grip of a severe economic crisis.
Over the past two weeks there have been occupations of railway ticket
and highway toll booths, the offices and businesses of foreign-owned
companies like the Repsol-YPF Spanish-Argentine oil firm, McDonald’s,
the French hypermarket Carrefour, and the US-based Sheraton hotel chain,
as well as public offices, particularly ministries and courts.
There are differences among the groups that occupy companies. Not all
are demanding work. The group that occupied nine McDonald’s fast-food
restaurants on June 18 was the Independent Movement of Pensioners and
the Unemployed (MIJD), led by Raúl Castells, whose face was on
the covers of the magazines Veintitrés and TXT last week.
Castells’ organization, which claims to represent 10,000 unemployed,
demands food and books from the companies, and larger stipends for the
unemployed from the government. The group wants the monthly payment
to be increased from $50 to $120 for all unemployed adults.
The group is also calling on the administration of Néstor Kirchner
to create sources of employment, while it criticizes the government’s
economic policies.
However, the groups belonging to the National Piqueteros’ Bloc,
the Classist and Combative Current, and many organizations of the unemployed
in the rest of the country have shunned such forms of direct action,
and are sticking to their traditional street marches and roadblocks.
On June 26, the Aníbal Verón Movement of Unemployed Workers,
along with other organizations that have pooled their monthly government
stipends to create small community businesses, blocked the Pueyrredón
bridge leading into the capital to demand justice in connection with
the 2002 killings of two young piqueteros at the hands of the police.
The deaths of the two demonstrators during a harsh crackdown on an enormous
protest by the unemployed was the catalyst that prompted then-caretaker
President Eduardo Duhalde, designated by Congress on Dec. 31, 2001 to
complete the term of Fernando de la Ruá, who was forced to resign
10 days earlier by massive nationwide protests, and to call early elections.
The various groups involved in June 26 protests differ in their grievances
and demands, tactics, and political discourse.
But a significant part of the piquetero movement has left the streets
and forged closer ties with the left-of-center Kirchner administration,
including large groups like Barrios de Pie (Neighbourhoods Standing
Up) and the Federation for Land and Housing.
The piquetero movement emerged over 10 years ago among the unemployed,
who took to the streets, since they had no workplace in which to express
their grievances, and to draw media attention to their plight.
The first to organize and use the new tactics were industrial workers
who lost their jobs due to the drop in industrial activity, and former
employees of public energy and services enterprises who found themselves
out of work as a result of the wave of privatizations carried out by
the administration of Carlos Menem (1989-1999).
But as unemployment climbed, the number of organizations of the unemployed
based in slum neighborhoods mushroomed.
These new groups not only included people who once had jobs in the formal
sector of the economy, but also drew people from the informal economy
and those — mainly young people and women — who had found
it impossible to find their first stable job.
Sociologist Maristella Svampa, the author of the book Entre la ruta
y el barrio. La experiencia de las organizaciones piqueteras (Between
the Highway and the Barrio: The Experience of the Piquetero Organizations),
told IPS that the different groups of unemployed “are now seeking
new forms of protesting, because most of them have realized that staging
so many roadblocks was not effective, and that they had to seek out
new forms of action, and build bridges with other sectors.”
Svampa said one of the recent novelties was a new alliance of piquetero
movements with close ties to the government.
The Federation for Land and Housing and Barrios de Pie, two of the most
important organizations, held a congress on Jun. 21 to create the basis
for “a new political coalition” that would support the government
of Kirchner and defend it from groups that are trying to “destabilize
it,” in their view.
Luis D’Elía, the head of the Federation for Land and Housing,
said Kirchner has taken “a totally different direction from that
of the dark periods of the neo-liberal model” since he took office
in May 2003.
In response to that support, the government sent Labor Minister Carlos
Tomada, Social Action Minister Alicia Kirchner (the president’s
sister), and the secretary-general to the president (his chief of staff),
Oscar Parrili to take part in the June 21 piquetero meeting — a
gesture that amplified the differences within the unemployed movement.
Svampa said that while Castells and others have criticized D’Elía
and accused him of receiving favors from the government, the closer
ties actually arise from “a genuine ideological affinity”
with Kirchner.
Despite the continuing high unemployment and poverty rates, the president,
a member of the Justicialista (Peronist) Party, has made progress towards
stabilizing the economy and addressing human rights questions still
pending from the 1976-1983 dictatorship.
The “most interesting” movement, according to Svampa, is BOP,
which besides occupying ticket booths knocks on the doors of factories
to seek alliances with workers and ask for jobs.
She also pointed to the groups that cut off the Pueyrredón bridge
June 26 demanding a right to work and seeking support for community-based
business initiatives.
But of Castells, she said “He does not express clear ideas, no
one knows exactly what his strategic objectives are, and he is authoritarian
and very focused on his own person and leadership. His direct actions,
like the occupation of McDonald’s restaurants, might be original
and have great political efficacy, but they end up being distorted,
because they don’t have a coherent ideological basis.”
Castells is not helping to give credibility to “the demand for
respect for their rights” set forth by the other groups, but merely
accentuates the stereotype of the unemployed who try to “extort”
businesses, demanding food and books from Carrefour or Wal-Mart, or
cooking gas cylinders from Repsol-YPF for households that are not connected
to the natural gas network, said Svampa.
Officials in the Kirchner administration have taken different approaches
to the unemployed movement. Some have called on the leaders to engage
in dialogue, while others have criticized the piqueteros for causing
problems for drivers with roadblocks and scaring off investment and
foreign-owned businesses that provide jobs in Argentina.
There are also officials who have tried to divide the movement, by co-opting
some groups. Yet others call for a law enforcement approach, to crack
down hard on the protests.
Since 1997, 3,000 people have faced legal action for participating in
piquetero protests, said Svampa.
One example is Castells himself, who was arrested several times for
taking part in protests against companies. And Alberto “Pipino”
Fernandez, a former worker with the (now-privatized) YPF oil company
in the northwestern province of Salta, faces legal proceedings in 76
cases for mounting roadblocks in his district.
