Flexible Workers,Gender,and Contending Strategies for Confronting the Crisis of Labor in Chile

Abstract

Two decades after the transition to a civilian-elected regime, Chilean labor remains unable to stem its downward spiral. Declining unionization rates, shrinking average size of unions, wage increases below productivity gains, increased female labor force participation in low-wage and low-status jobs, and a dwindling number of workers participating in collective bargaining all attest to the paltry benefits obtained so far by workers and trade unionists from Chile’s acclaimed negotiated transition to democracy. The triumph of the right-wing billionaire Sebastián Piñera in the January 2010 presidential elections heralds a renewed capitalist offensive against the working class in that the government promises to attack weak economic growth rates and declining labor productivity with increased labor flexibility, further privatization, and the dissemination of a “culture of entrepreneurship” among Chile’s poor. To overcome its crisis, Chilean labor must enact a paradigm shift involving at the very least the incorporation of a gendered perspective. This would allow labor leaders to recognize that women’s paid and unpaid labor has become central to the continued expansion of the current regime of capitalist accumulation and that this reality must be placed at the core of more effective organizing strategies.

Dos décadas desde que ocurre la transición a un régimen electo por civiles, el sindicalismo chileno permanece incapaz de frenar su espiral hacia abajo. El decline del nivel de sindicalización, el encogimiento del tamaño del promedio de los sindicatos, las alzas en el trabajo asalariado por debajo del avance en la productividad, el incremento de mano de obra femenil en trabajos de mal pago y de estatus bajo, y un disminuyo en el numero de trabajadores participantes en negociación colectiva, todos atestiguan cuan ínfimos han sido los beneficios que se han obtenido hasta la fecha por trabajadores y sindicalistas de la aclamada transición negociada hacia le democracia en Chile. El triunfo del multimillonario derechista Sebastián Piñera en las elecciones de enero de 2010 anuncia el recrudecimiento de la ofensiva capitalista en contra de la clase obrera en lo que el gobierno promete en atacar bajas tazas de crecimiento económico y el decline en la productividad laboral con aumentos en la flexibilidad, mas privatización y la difusión de una “cultura empresarial” entre los pobres en Chile. Para superar su crisis el laborismo chileno debe poner en marcha un cambio en el paradigma que por lo menos incorpora una perspectiva de género. Esto permitiría al liderazgo laboral reconocer que el trabajo pagado y no pagado que hace la mujer se ha vuelto central en la expansión continua del actual régimen de acumulación capitalista y que esta realidad tiene que ponerse en la base de las mas efectivas estrategias de organización.

Keywords

Flexible workers Gender Unions Transition to democracy Chile

Two decades after the transition to a civilian-elected regime, Chile’s labor movement remains unable to stem its downward spiral. Since the formal end of the Pinochet dictatorship in 1990 and despite four consecutive “center-left” administrations—those of Aylwin (1990–1993), Frei (1994–1999), Lagos (2000–2005), and Bachelet (2006–2010)—Chilean labor still finds itself as it was a decade ago: “organizationally weakened, politically marginalized and with only very modest and precarious material gains” (Barrett, 2001: 562). Declining unionization rates, shrinking average size of unions, wage increases below productivity gains, increased female labor force participation in low-wage and low-status jobs, and a dwindling number of workers participating in collective bargaining all attest to the paltry benefits obtained so far by workers and trade unionists from Chile’s acclaimed negotiated transition to democracy. After 17 years of savage neoliberalism under the Pinochet dictatorship (1973–1989) and 20 years of the “kinder and gentler” policies of Concertación administrations (for critiques see Leiva, 2008; Petras and Leiva, 1994), Chile offers unique insights into the challenges the labor movement faces under a “mature” neoliberal regime of accumulation.

This essay examines why Chile’s once powerful labor and trade union movement has failed to craft a successful organizing strategy for overcoming its crisis. Specifically, it aims to throw light on three interrelated questions: (1) What explains the persistent weakness of the Chilean labor movement? (2) Why has Chilean labor displayed such sluggishness in forging an effective strategy for the new historical period? and (3) What obstacles must Chile’s labor movement overcome to regain its strength?

These questions have recently acquired greater relevance and analytical urgency. The triumph of the right-wing billionaire Sebastián Piñera in the January 2010 presidential elections heralds a renewed capitalist offensive against the working class in that his government promises to attack weak economic growth rates and declining labor productivity with increased labor flexibility, further privatization, and the dissemination of a “culture of entrepreneurship” among Chile’s poor. At the same time, this right-wing electoral victory takes place six years after a perceptible shift in Chile’s labor movement. On August 13, 2003, the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (Workers’ Unitary Central—CUT), Chile’s largest labor confederation, called for a national strike, the first such mobilization convened by the CUT since 1987, during the waning days of the Pinochet regime and under a Concertación government.

In the aftermath of this seemingly more activist post-2003 stance, three contending strategies for overcoming the crisis of labor emerged: a “partnership” trade unionism, represented by the Colectivo Siglo XXI, dominated by the Christian Democrats and moderate Socialists, which left the CUT in 2004 to form the separate Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (National Workers’ Union—UNT); a “sociopolitical” unionism made possible by the advances of the Communist Party–led Corriente Sindical Clasista (Classist Union Current) and the consolidation of the socialist labor bureaucrat Arturo Martínez in the CUT leadership; and a territorially based “grassroots” unionism represented by a heterogeneous set of initiatives unfolding mostly in Chile’s key export sectors. Given that each of these currents offers a specific program for overcoming its crisis, these developments would appear to suggest that Chilean labor’s downward spiral had finally reached an inflection point. Moreover, during 2007–2009 massive extralegal mobilizations by thousands of subcontracted and low-paid workers in the forestry, state and private copper, port, and salmon-processing sectors also seemed to imply that a more combative labor movement was finally poised to emerge.¹

However, the crisis of Chile’s labor movement is deeply rooted not only in the far-reaching economic, political, and cultural transformations of the past three and half decades but also in factors internal to the Chilean labor movement that so far have received scant attention. To overcome its crisis, Chilean labor must enact a paradigm shift involving at the very least the incorporation of a gendered perspective. This would allow labor leaders to recognize that women’s paid and unpaid labor has become central to the continued expansion of the current regime of capitalist accumulation and that this new reality must be at placed at the core of more effective organizing strategies. Until then, all three currents will remain unable to respond to the politico-economic and sociocultural challenges of revitalizing Chile’s workers’ movement under the current conditions of transnational capitalism. Such a gendered perspective must go beyond the liberal feminism of the Bachelet administration, which, given its emphasis on the “politics of recognition” and its subservience to transnational capital, tended to encourage a feminism easily co-opted and made functional to capital accumulation (see Fraser, 2009).

Labor’s Downward Spiral under Civilian Rule

Chilean labor’s inability to recover its strength after the 1990 return to civilian rule remains one of the most startling and at the same time indisputable outcomes of the Chilean transition (Barrett, 2001; Epstein, 2001; Frank, 2005; Haagh, 2002; Palacios-Valladares, 2010; Taylor, 2004). Diverse indicators illustrate this downward trend and labor’s declining organizational and negotiating ability. The labor movement has been unable to recover the rate of unionization reached in 1991 immediately after the return to civilian regime (see Table 1) As a percentage of the employed labor force, the rate of unionization fell from 15.1 percent in 1991 to 11.9 percent in 2008. When only the waged labor force is considered, we observe an even more acute decline, from 19.2 percent in 1991 to 16.1 percent in 2008. At the same time, the percentage of the employed waged labor force covered by collective bargaining agreements declined from 16.5 percent in 1990 to only 9.6 percent in 2004 (Salinero et al., 2006: Table 13).

Table 1

Unionization Rates in Chile, 1990–2008

Year	Number of Active Unions	Members of Active Unions	Total Employed Labor Force	Percent Unionized	Total Employed Labor Force Legally Entitled to Unionize	Percent Unionized	Members of Unions of Dependent Workers	Waged Labor Force	Percent Unionized
1990	–	606,812	4,525,530	13.4	3,745,599	16.2	515,825	2,692,459	19.2
1991	7,707	701,355	4,630,670	15.1	3,862,016	18.2	586,716	2,765,416	21.2
1999	7,057	579,996	5,404,480	10.7	4,552,804	12.7	463,071	3,192,874	14.5
2000	7,659	595,495	5,381,460	11.1	4,528,339	13.2	467,835	3,170,319	14.8
2001	7,410	599,61	5,479,390	10.9	4,631,937	12.9	466,138	3,187,987	14.6
2008	9,340	801,251	6,740,408	11.9	5,782,781	13.9	685,763	4,251,018	16.1

Source: Dirección del Trabajo (2009).

Data on the internal composition of trade unions suggests that the weakening trend has deepened in recent years. Most striking is the decline in the average size of unions from 60.5 members in 1990 to 34.5 members in 2006. There have also been significant changes in the internal composition of the union movement by type of union (Dirección del Trabajo, 2009). Pinochet’s labor legislation, still in force today, permits Chilean workers to organize into one of only four types of unions—enterprise, interenterprise, independent, or transitory—depending on the worker-employer relationship. Enterprise unions, made up of dependent (waged and salaried) workers with a single employer, are the most important because only they can engage in collective bargaining. Interenterprise unions group workers who, though dependent/receiving a wage or salary, have several employers (subcontracted workers, agricultural seasonal workers, or temporeros).² Independent workers consist of workers lacking an identifiable employer who rely on their own labor to survive (artisans, street vendors, sex workers, taxi drivers, small agricultural producers, artisan fishermen). Finally, transitory unions can be organized by workers who receive a wage and have a single identifiable employer but are hired only for short-term work or work cyclically during the year (construction workers, port workers, seamen, temporary agriculture workers, etc.). Since 1990 the internal composition of the labor movement has changed significantly. There was a striking decline in the proportion of unionized workers belonging to enterprise unions, which fell from 69 percent to 57.1 percent by 2004. By 2008, using data on active unions (and not just those that exist on paper but never engage in negotiations), enterprise unions made up 63.4 percent of unionized workers. At the same time, the proportion of nonwaged workers—those in independent unions—climbed from 15 percent in 1990 to almost 22 percent in 2004 and remained at 20 percent in 2006. By 2009, workers in independent unions and transitory unions represented 29.7 percent or close to a third of Chile’s unionized workers, while those in enterprise unions represented only 65.3 percent of unionized workers, a significant decline from 69 percent in 1990 (Dirección del Trabajo, 2009).

Thus, despite the fact that waged and salaried workers constitute around 70 percent of Chile’s 5.8 million employed labor force, reflecting sustained proletarianization since 1990, the composition of the organized labor movement has failed to reflect this trend.

The dynamics of proletarianization, labor flexibility, and unionization have been deeply gendered processes to which the three emerging union currents have been unable to respond. In the past several decades, women have entered the Chilean labor market on a massive scale, increasing female labor force participation from 29.9 percent in 1990 to 40.8 percent in 2008. Beyond what this implies for child care, family structure, and who bears the costs of social reproduction, this trend highlights the fact that Chile’s economic model increasingly generates “female” jobs. Between 1997 and 2004, for example, the Chilean economy created 375,500 net new jobs, 252,500 (concentrated in social and personal services [36.5 percent] and commerce [35.3 percent]) for women and only 120,300 for men. Whereas establishments employing 5 to 9 workers shed 9,500 men during this period, they hired 8,100 women. In establishments with 10 or more workers, the trend was even more acute: between 1997 and 2004, 4,500 men lost jobs in these establishments, while 108,000 women were hired. Close to 56 percent of the net new jobs taken up by women during this period were in the form of private-sector waged work (OIT, 2004).

Increased preference for female labor can also be seen more recently. While the size of the employed labor force with the legal right to form a union (private-sector wage workers + domestic service workers + own-account workers) increased by 1.1 million in 2002–2008, 563,000 of these workers were women and 497,000 were men. The number of these workers who actually joined an active union during the 2002–2008 period was only 182,000, a mere 17.2 percent. Because 117,000 of these new trade unionists were women and only 65,000 were men, it follows that 20.8 percent of the female entrants into the labor force with the right to form unions exercised that right in contrast to only 13.0 percent of the male entrants. In sum: 64 percent of new union members in the 2002–2008 period were women. Thus, in the context of flat or declining total unionization rates, the female rate of unionization increased from 8.2 percent in 2002 to 11.7 percent in 2008, while the male unionization rate declined from 15.3 percent to 15.0 percent over the same period. Increased proletarianization of women, declining male waged-labor rates, and rising female labor union participation are all part of the Chilean economic model’s gendered dynamics.

The 2008 Encuesta Nacional de Coyuntura Laboral (National Survey of the Labor Situation—ENCLA), based on a sampling of 2,113 formal enterprises (out of the total of 92,266 firms existing in Chile), showed that women’s increased union participation at the rank-and-file level was not reflected in a similar willingness to participate at the federated or confederated levels of the labor movement. It indicated that 75.8 percent of female workers in feminized (female-majority) enterprises and 62 percent of workers in nonfeminized enterprises were not affiliated with any of the national-level confederations existing in Chile (the CUT, the UNT, or the Central Autónoma de Trabajadores) (Díaz and Mella, 2009). This lack of participation is mirrored by the significant underrepresentation of women in union leadership at the federated or confederated level. In 2003 only 18.6 percent of rank-and-file leadership positions within unions, 11.4 percent of leadership positions of federated unions, and 12.9 percent of leadership positions in national-level confederations were occupied by women (Díaz, 2004).

In brief, the most important organization of the Chilean labor movement, the CUT, has shown itself incapable of organizing and representing this newly proletarianized and increasingly female labor force experiencing flexible employment. Not only has it failed to organize private-sector workers into enterprise unions but also it has failed to reach the flexible, casualized workers who constitute the bulk of the labor force in the most dynamic export sectors, such as mining, agriculture, fishing, and lumber, and in the country’s expansive service sector (see Winn, 2004, and, for mining, Agacino, Gonzalez, and Rojas, 1998; Klubock, 2004; for agriculture, Tinsman, 2000; 2004; for fishing, Schurman, 2001; 2004).

One explanation for the sustained decline of unionization rates is that workers have been able to obtain increases in real wages without having to rely on unions (Marinakis and Velasco, 2004). Though it is true that since 1990 some types of workers have seen real wages climb,³ historically these raises have been less than increases in productivity. In other words, wage increases have been produced by the extra effort of workers themselves. In 1990–2003, for example, productivity increased at an average annual rate of 4.5 percent per year, while wages rose at only 3.9 percent per year (CENDA, 2005). This suggests that labor has not been successful in transforming workplace struggles over the distribution of productivity gains into a dynamic organizing element.⁴

What explains the enduring weakness of Chile’s labor movement and its multidimensional failures? Posed differently: if Chile’s capitalists and business associations have been in the vanguard of capitalist globalization, why haven’t the Chilean working class and the workers’ movement been able to play a similar groundbreaking role in forging new, more effective strategies for the new historical epoch? Undoubtedly, the answer to these questions is partly to be found in the scope and depth of the restructuring of Chilean capitalism under Pinochet and in its subsequent successful consolidation and legitimization after 1990 under the Concertación governments (Winn, 2004). Not surprisingly, most analyses of the diminished condition of Chilean labor emphasize economic, political, and cultural elements outside the labor movement, among them (1) the lingering effects of 17 years of brutal repression; (2) the profound restructuring of the geographic, occupational, and internal composition of the working class (Campero, 2000); (3) the debilitating effects of savage labor market deregulation under Pinochet and the pro-business labor reforms of the ensuing elected Christian Democratic and Socialist civilian governments (Leiva and Agacino, 1994); (4) the constraints imposed on the labor movement by a negotiated transition, resulting in its loss of autonomy from the government and the ruling coalition (Epstein, 1993; 2001); (5) the effects of a restructured capitalist economy and of the reorganization of production processes, employment relations, and labor control; (6) the “epochal transformation” bringing about society-wide realignments of subjectivity and the sense of identity, away from notions of collective action and toward individualized market-based forms of participation (Brunner, 1996; Garretón et al., 2003; Tironi, 1999); (7) firm-level modernization strategies that, through a “vicious cycle of overtime work, consumption, and debt,” have “eroded class solidarity and challenged a model of masculinity centered on workplace and social solidarity” (Stillerman, 2004: 17); (8) the ability of workers, especially after 1990, to obtain wage increases without having to rely on unions (Marinakis and Velasco, 2004); and (9) the modification of the content and functioning of political systems and the redefinition of democracy that have accompanied economic and social transformations (Zapata, 2003).

Undoubtedly, the relentless search for new forms of labor flexibility by firms and the state over the past three decades has profoundly altered the organization of production and work, transforming the conditions of existence of millions of Chilean men and women. Along with intensifying the fragmentation of productive processes and the internationalization of capital, these strategies have reshaped the foundations of union organizing and action. Yet changes in labor legislation and in the organization of production, the combined effects of state- and firm-level strategies seeking flexible labor, changes in the composition of the working class, and changes in the modes of construction of worker identity, subjectivity, and culture do not and cannot tell the whole story.

Such explanations fail to explore factors internal to the conceptualizations and practices of the labor movement itself. This has become a glaring oversight for a number of reasons. First, the weakness of the labor movement persists decades after the bulk of neoliberal restructuring has been completed (Campero, 2000; Martínez and Diaz, 1996). It would seem that enough time had passed for the leadership of the labor movement to regain its footing and historical initiative. Second, 17 years after the end of the military regime and two decades after the allegedly “pro-labor” center-left governments, Chile’s labor movement seems much weaker than it was at the beginning of the 1990s. Finally, focusing on factors external to the labor movement makes it impossible to evaluate the differential impact of the recently emerged strategies of partnership, sociopolitical, and grassroots territorial unionism may have on the trajectory of Chile’s labor movement. All this suggests a need to shift the focus and begin examining the politico-cultural orientations existing within the labor movement itself and their role in facilitating or impeding the crafting of effective organizing strategies. A gendered perspective is a central element in gauging the historical effectiveness of these politico-cultural orientations.

The Old Sociocultural Matrix

By stressing that the current weakness of the Chilean labor movement must be sought within the labor movement itself, I am calling attention to the fact that the persistence of an antiquated sociocultural matrix keeps labor leaders and activists from formulating strategies more effectively rooted in the current subjective and structural conditions faced by Chile’s flexible workers.⁵ Through the concept of the sociocultural matrix, I try to capture the way attempts to overcome the crisis of the labor movement in the wake of neoliberal restructuring continue to be constrained by old ideas and conceptions that weigh “like a nightmare on the brain of the living.”⁶ More specifically, I use the notion of a sociocultural matrix to describe how the labor movement constructs its particular understanding of reality and strategies to transform it. Comparable to but going beyond the “framing processes” of social movement theorists,⁷ the sociocultural matrix influences the practice of trade union leaders, cadres, and organizers by providing culturally learned routines, shared meanings, and “repertoires of contention” (McAdam, McCarthy, and Zald, 1996; Tarrow, 1998). A sociocultural matrix informs choices, lines of action, identification of trusted actors, priority setting, and decisions about what type of organizational resources must be deployed to defend social interests.

At the risk of oversimplification, it is not far-fetched to hypothesize that current labor movement leaders approach their problems through a lens ground and polished by the praxis of the union movement and the left from 1936 to 1973, when Chile’s distinctive class-oriented and generally successful political unionism was forged. Five core traits characterize the sociocultural matrix of that period:

A labor movement originally built upon a social base constituted mainly by miners and, later, urban manufacturing-sector workers predominantly from large establishments. As the historian Thomas Klubock (1996: 435) has shown, this social base led to the masculinization of Chile’s working-class culture, in which “images of the strong and burly miner with his helmet and drill have stood as symbols of both the Chilean working class and working-class manhood.”

A leadership and cadres endowed with markedly androcentric thinking and practice.

A conception of the union as a tool for defending and guaranteeing the legal observance of what is stipulated in the labor contract and doing so fundamentally through processes of collective bargaining.

A state-centrist character, with the role of workers’ movement being seen mainly, in the short term, as a means to pressure the state into intervening and modifying economic variables and, in the long run, as an instrument for the construction of socialism, which was also seen as passing through the control of the state. Both short- and long-term objectives required that worker demands be articulated by the union movement but delegated to the political parties and the system of political representation.

A markedly national vision of problems and a willingness of union leaders to influence the course of national events mainly through the established system of political representation and the Congress. Despite marches and mobilization, many of them very combative, the ultimate goal of this activism was to exercise political influence through the established party and electoral mechanisms, not through direct, autonomous, social representation such as the cordones industriales that arose in militant workplaces under Allende (see García, 1991; Gaudichaud, 2004; and pt. 2 of Patricio Guzmán’s documentary The Battle of Chile).

Emerging in the 1930s and 1940s under the pre-1973 import-substitution-industrialization regime of accumulation, this androcentric, productionist, state-centered, legalistic, and fundamentally nationally bounded framework successfully guided Chile’s union movement toward gaining a national voice and society-wide political influence, while at the same time promoting a proletarian identity underpinned by the male-breadwinner wage model. This sociocultural matrix was the outcome of a number of factors: the class compromise enabled by state-led, inwardly oriented capitalist development, the political strategy adopted by the Communist and Socialist Parties, and the deep aspirations for social improvement and voice on the part of organized workers. On the basis of classist political unionism, Chile’s labor movement was able to have an impact on the national level (Berquist, 1986), reaching the pinnacle of its influence during the government of President Allende (1970–1973). Ironically, however, the very same orientations that in the past contributed to building labor’s social, political, and cultural power have become an albatross around its neck. The paradigm shift required to stem the continued erosion of the labor movement and recover its ability to represent the majority of today’s wage workers, facing increasingly precarious employment conditions, calls into question the viability of these five core traits (see Table 2).

Table 2

The Old Sociocultural Matrix, Recent Transformations, and Required Paradigm Shift

	Matrix	Transformations	Paradigm Shift
Period	Political unionism under import-substitution industrialization (1936–1973)	Neoliberal-led restructuring of Chilean capitalism (1974–1989)	Sociopolitical unionism for export-oriented regime of accumulation? (1990–2010)
Social base	Mining-urban social base—conception and construction of proletarian identity	Change in composition of working class, incorporation of women and youth, spatial and occupational restructuring of production	Broader conception of work and of the working class capable of understanding that capital has effaced old boundaries
Role of union	Ensuring the contract and observance of collective bargaining agreements	Expansion of flexible and precarious employment, fragmentation of production, a new pro-capital labor code, multiplicity of work arrangements, informalization of labor-capital relations	Direct action, cross-sector social mobilization, and active participation of all union members
Orientation	Androcentric perspective: productionist, ignores sphere of social reproduction, ignores gender and class in construction of subjectivity and identity	Transferring the costs of reproduction onto the shoulders of workers and women, changing composition of production	Labor-community alliance that combines struggles in the sphere of production and social reproduction
Scope of action	National, allied with political parties and emphasizing influencing the government	Transnationalization of capitalist class, foreign ownership of key export sector and dynamic domestic firms, and protected democracy that prevents social actors from influencing market forces	Transnational labor organizing strategy that relies on cross-border networks

A Gendered Perspective for Labor Organizing

The absence of an explicit gendered perspective is perhaps the main obstacle to the development of effective union strategies. The critique raised by Klubock (1998: 7) in his analysis of Chile’s El Teniente copper miners can also be leveled at current labor union leaders, cadres, and emerging strategies:

By eliding gender’s role in working class-formation, [they] have naturalized the masculinization of labor and class identity and have neglected women’s role in the process of proletarianization. They have also ignored the ways in which working-class formation was structured by gender ideologies and involved the reorganization of relations between men and women and social constructions of masculinity and feminity.

The more than three-decade-long delay in enacting this paradigm shift dulls the edge of labor’s analysis of contemporary reality. A gendered perspective offers the possibility of performing three qualitative leaps necessary for strengthening the strategies for promoting workers’ collective action under the current historical conditions.

A Broader Conception of “Work”

The dramatic economic and social restructuring experienced by Chile can be fully grasped only with an approach that examines how gender and class relations are simultaneously and mutually constituted. Incorporating a gendered perspective would clear away the remnants of and nostalgia for the reductionist masculinist and productionist perspective within Chile’s left that continues to influence the labor movement. It would recast questions about who constitutes the working class in contemporary Chile and create greater awareness of the importance of understanding (and challenging) the intertwined mechanisms involved in the construction of working-class masculinity and social status within the trade union movement. This is an essential precondition for a thorough critique of current individualistic uses afforded by legal protections for union leaders (fuero sindical) such as irremovability and time off for union-related tasks and the way these link to masculinist identity construction patterns among rank-and-file and local union leaders.⁸ Despite the talk within the CUT leadership about gender equity, a strong androcentric and productionist bias still prevails. The reproduction of human beings and the unpaid domestic work performed mostly by women remain a hidden dimension of reality and of the valorization of capital. From the perspective of the old sociocultural matrix, the large portion of Chile’s proletariat that is casualized, subcontracted, and informalized is considered, if at all, as lacking the shared interests with “normal” workers that would make it worthy of organizing efforts. The delay in adopting a perspective that recognizes both class and gender therefore interferes with efforts to understand the main systemic characteristics of the current model of capital accumulation and how the model can be effectively challenged. The Chilean experience of the past three and a half decades shows that capital has sought to transfer the costs of reproduction of the labor force from the firm and the state to working-class families and women through liberalization, privatization, and deregulation. Thus not only unpaid domestic work but also the expansion of precarious, subcontracted, informalized workers both ensures the physical reproduction of individuals and reproduces the ways of thinking and forms of social organization necessary for the accumulation of capital and for the reproduction of the current system of domination as a whole.

These processes essential to the current export-oriented regime of accumulation have remained outside the gaze of mostly male trade union leaders. In a predominantly male union culture, gender issues, household relations, problems of collective consumption, the role of unpaid domestic work, consumer rights, and precarious work are still seen as issues that mostly concern women or young workers and are not central to the union movement or, at best, as issues to be grudgingly and opportunistically incorporated into labor’s discourse.

The Construction of Subjectivity and Identity as a Gendered Process

The processes of identity construction and the formation of working-class subjectivities are deeply and unavoidably gendered.⁹ Up until now, partnership, sociopolitical, and grassroots unionism and the extrainstitutional left have actively ignored the gendered nature of class identity construction and subjectivity. As Acevedo (1995: 80) points out, however, “Workers’ identities based on gender are further maintained in the workplace by the establishment of differences among gendered workers in terms of skill, competence, and discipline. These differences have far reaching implications for the relationships established between workers and management and among workers, relationships that shape their attitudes, authority relations, and career pursuits.” In the context of a society that has seen its class structure and class formation dynamics drastically transformed, understanding the gendered nature of identity construction and subjectivity in the workplace, in the sphere of social reproduction and consumption practices, and at the level of the locality becomes indispensable; they are at the heart of the contradictory dynamics that today both contribute to and undermine working-class solidarities and identities. In other words, a gendered perspective is key for determining how workers today can forge the cultural, economic, and political ties that facilitate the emergence of collective identities and action.

Organizational Strategy and the Construction of a New Sociocultural Matrix

One of the most important challenges faced by Chile’s labor movement is democratizing labor organizations so that they effectively represent the interests of the rank and file. This goes against the historically constructed relationship between Chilean political parties and the trade unions, the masculinist and androcentric approach that stubbornly continues to arise from the ashes of the male-breadwinner wage model. While key for understanding the new conditions experienced by workers under the new transnationalized export-oriented regime of accumulation and for overcoming the crisis of Chile’s labor movement, a gendered perspective can also be perceived as a threat: it is anathema to the social status defended by hierarchical union leaderships and to the masculinist notions that underpin the culturally constructed traits of what is considered an effective rank-and-file or local union leader.

Labor’s Response: from Subordination to Internally Weakened Contestation

In the wake of the 1999–2000 economic recession, rising unemployment and the decision by the Lagos administration to send Congress a bill enhancing “labor adaptability” heightened dissatisfaction with Concertación labor policies.¹⁰ In 2003, long-simmering discontent finally boiled over, turning that year into an inflection point in the post-Pinochet trajectory of Chile’s labor movement. The carefully crafted subordination of labor to Concertación governments was unraveling. The ideological and organizational roots of the three contending strategies for tackling the crisis of Chile’s workers’ movement that emerged—what I have called partnership, sociopolitical, and grassroots unionism (Table 3) —can be traced to class dynamics preceding the 1973 military coup, to the various experiences of antidictatorial resistance under Pinochet, and to how different strata of the working class fared under Chile’s Concertación-led civilian-elected regime. Though a careful genealogy lies beyond the scope of this essay, I offer below a thumbnail sketch of each of these strategies, highlighting their distinct orientations and shared gender-blindness.

Table 3

Features of the Contending Strategies Seeking a New Unionism

	Partnership Unionism (Colectivo Siglo XXI/UNT)	Sociopolitical Unionism (CSC, CUT)	Grassroots/ Territorially based Unionism (CONSIEP, Colectivos de Trabajadores)
Androcentric perspective	Yes	Yes	Yes
Trade union as a guarantor of contract	Yes	Yes	No^b
Preference for national space	Yes	Yes	Yes
Emphasis on labor process/workplace	Yes^a	No	No
Social-movement strategy	No	No	Yes^b

Colectivo Siglo XXI/UNT focuses on workplace management/labor cooperation.

While both the CONSEIP and Colectivos de Trabajadores stress autonomy, only the latter relies on direct action as the preferred way of building the workers’ movement.

Partnership Unionism

Partnership unionism, represented by the Colectivo Siglo XXI (Twenty-first Century Collective) during the 2004 CUT elections and led by Concertación trade unionists such as the Christian Democrats Diego Olivares and Oscar Verdugo, embodies the idealized “modern and technically prepared” trade unionism that Concertación labor ideologues (e.g., René Cortázar, Guillermo Campero, Eugenio Díaz, Hernán del Canto, and Joaquin Vial) have proclaimed as necessary for the new historical epoch. This type of trade unionism enthusiastically promotes tripartite agreements among employers, labor, and government and understands that labor rights and labor demands must be subordinate to the defense of a shared proyecto país and that building synergy between labor and capital is a prerequisite for increasing Chile’s competitive edge in a global economy. This approach is the natural counterpart to Concertación policies seeking “on the one hand, to make workers feel as though they were participants in the system as well as potential beneficiaries, while on the other hand, ensuring that they do not demand immediate wage improvements that would endanger Chile’s international competitiveness” (Vial et al., 1990: 79, my translation here and throughout).

A key actor in fashioning this strategy and producing the basic documents for this current has been the Corporación de Investigación y Asesoría Sindical (Corporation for Labor Research and Consulting—CIASI), a nongovernmental organization/consulting firm that since 1983 had been the main advisory body to the CUT leadership. Made up of Christian Democrat and moderate Socialist labor experts, the CIASI, along with much of the Concertación labor apparatus, emphasizes the importance of tripartite agreements and pragmatic acceptance of the overarching logic of international competitiveness and globalization while rejecting a “resistance-based identity” (CIASI, n.d.). Guillermo Campero (2000: 33) celebrates the emergence of this more pragmatic unionism that rejects the “vision of the so-called progressive sectors that emphasized distributing the fruits of development and the aspiration for equality” and “welcomes, especially among younger labor leaders, the development of a vision that is more adjusted to the links between the economy and social outcomes.” This involves labor’s accommodating to “what economic growth demands and to the requirement of disciplining demand making” as determined by “factors such as productive investment, labor productivity, and the requirements of adjusting the economy to various market cycles, including those in the labor market.”

Imbued with such thinking, the Colectivo Siglo XXI stressed the importance of each union’s identifying with the economic and cultural goals of management at the workplace level, actively contributing to the creation of an “engaged” labor force eager to “put on the team colors” (ponerse la camiseta) in the race for competitiveness. At a national level, this type of trade unionism sees itself as a partner of the government and employers in promoting the further internationalization of the Chilean economy. In fact, Diego Olivares, who for over 20 years headed the CUT’s international relations department, forcefully lobbied the AFL-CIO in the mid-1990s to drop its opposition to Chile’s incorporation into the North American Free Trade Agreement. Because Olivares and other candidates on the Colectivo Siglo XXI slate were soundly defeated in the January 8, 2004, CUT elections, they left the CUT, creating the UNT. At the time of its founding, the UNT claimed to have 54,000 members as opposed to the CUT’s 430,000 and sought to double its size shortly after its formation year through training programs funded by trade unions from Europe and Latin America, as well as the International Labor Organization (Olivares, 2005). By 2009 it claimed to represent close to 108,000 workers (Olivares, 2009).

Sociopolitical Unionism

Under the banner of “A Trade Unionism with Class Consciousness,” more than 200 trade union leaders gathered on April 10, 2003, to form within the CUT the Corriente Sindical Clasista (Classist Union Current—CSC). According to the organizers, this current arose from “a critical and self-critical proposal to confront the manner in which, both within and outside the CUT, a labor movement docile to the neoliberal model has been fostered that has forsaken social mobilization and the strike as weapons of the workers’ movement” (“Corriente Sindical Clasista,” 2003). This strategy emerged as a result of a leftward realignment within the Socialist Party labor leadership and advances achieved by the CSC, supported by the Communist Party. Both won significant positions during the 2003–2004 CUT elections, forcing Concertación-affiliated trade unionists to reassess whether they should finally abandon partnership unionism and consider, if not reembracing a classist orientation, at least adopting the more proactive stance of previous decades. This shift arose from a belief in the need for “an autonomous and independent trade union movement that has a high level of sociopolitical content at the same time, because autonomy is not synonymous with depoliticization . . . a union movement capable of interacting and representing workers with governments, the Congress, political parties, and all other social entities, a unionism that acts without an inferiority complex, capable of dialoguing and reaching consensus and of mobilizing and engaging in struggle” (Zambrano, 2003: 15).

A comparison of 2000 and 2004 electoral results within the CUT highlights four trends that fueled the emergence of sociopolitical unionism. First, the Communist Party increased its support from roughly 25 to 34 percent of the votes cast. Second, the Christian Democratic–Socialist Party alliance broke down, and the majority of Socialist Party labor leaders rallied behind a ticket led by Arturo Martínez, whose support rose from 26 to 37 percent of the total between 2000 and 2004. Third, the Christian Democratic Party ticket, going solo in the 2004 elections, received only 15.6 percent of the votes. Finally, Fuerza Social, made up of former Communist Party labor leaders critical of the party’s labor policy and other left trade unionists, increased its support from 1.7 to almost 8.6 percent in 2004, making its leaders (Jorge Pávez from the Teachers’ Union and Miguel Soto from the Confederación de Trabajadores Metalúrgicos de Chile) a visible presence within the CUT. As a result of these realignments, the new CUT leadership decisively supported sociopolitical unionism and adopted a more active role in confronting the economic model and the Concertación government policies supporting it (see Leiva, n.d.). CUT President Arturo Martínez defends the adoption of sociopolitical unionism “to combat poverty and inequality” and said that this required a “profound transformation of Chilean society, its economic, social and cultural policies . . . in the permanent quest for greater development with social justice” (Zambrano, 2003: 7).

To achieve these goals, sociopolitical unionism aims to strengthen the national influence of the labor movement by linking the struggles of all different sectors against the neoliberal model, to develop the political awareness of workers, to increase unionization rates, and to democratize the labor movement and particularly the CUT. Martínez also emphasizes the political education of the membership, arguing (Zambrano, 2003: 14) that

Chilean society and particularly workers have experienced broad processes of depoliticization that have made them easy prey for populism and deceit. And trade union organizations have limited themselves to workplace demands, assuming that nothing can be done because this is our destiny. This is the main challenge: to make the working class once again dream and imagine a society with values and principles.

Martínez also asserts the need to link short-term struggles over wages with political action so that “in the medium term we can change the present composition of the Congress” while making “the transition toward a unionism that sees itself as a beacon for workers beyond the enterprise, envisioning workers as members of society concerned about everything that affects them and their families at the social, economic, political, and cultural levels” (Zambrano, 2003: 14).

However, sociopolitical unionism is not a creation of the Communist Party or of the CSC, having been adopted in 1989 at the Twelfth Congress of the Organización Interamericana de Trabajadores (Inter-American Workers’ Organization— ORIT). Almost 15 years later, the CUT’s Fourth Refoundational Congress, held on August 22–24, 2003, and the regular CUT Congress held on January 8, 2004, adopted a new declaration of principles, platform, and statutes that made sociopolitical unionism the guiding orientation for relaunching the labor movement. These two events failed to democratize the CUT so that the leadership could be elected directly by members. Instead, the Martínez–Communist Party alliance opted for “sharing power” with trade union leaders outside of Santiago. One of the major changes was creating an expanded national council by adding to the 45-member national council and 15 alternate delegates representatives of the provincial CUTs and the national-level unions. Nonetheless, a broadened bureaucratic superstructure, a greater number of critical public declarations, and national calls for social mobilization failed to lay the foundations for an alternative practice that restored the negotiating capacity of Chilean male and female workers vis-à-vis transnational capital and the domestic conglomerates that dominated their lives.

Grassroots Unionism

Territorially based grassroots unions strive to reconstruct a combative labor movement independent of the dictates of political parties and freed of the bureaucratic, hierarchical approach that has prevailed within the CUT. Constituted by a wide array of initiatives ranging from the Consejo Nacional de Sindicatos de la Empresa Privada (National Council of Private-Sector Unions—CONSIEP) and the Movimiento de Sindical por los Cambios (Union Movement for Change—MOSICAM) to Colectivos de Trabajadores (Workers’ Collectives), this third strategy represents the persistent action of rank-and-file trade unionists and local unions seeking to coordinate their struggles at a local territorial level. It traces its inspiration to the historical memory of the cordones industriales and comandos comunales under Allende, resurrected under conditions of the dictatorship as mutual-support agreements and coordinating bodies of unions at a municipal or local level (e.g., the Coordinadora Maipú and the Coordinadora Cerrillos).¹¹ Two of the most representative dynamics that led to the emergence of this broad strategy, the CONSIEP and Colectivos de Trabajadores, are briefly discussed below.

The CONSIEP originated in the 2001 formation of the Coordinadora de Sindicatos del Grupo Luksic (Grupo Luksic Union Coordinator—COSILUK), an innovative organizing strategy adopted by workers from enterprises belonging to or controlled by the Grupo Luksic, one of Chile’s most powerful economic conglomerates. The COSILUK came to represent about 10,000 workers employed in different Luksic-controlled firms and sectors, including Luchetti (pastas), Banco de Chile (finance), Telefónica del Sur (telecoms), Agromaule (agroexports), Viña San Pedro (wineries), Hotel Carrera (services), Compañía Cervecerías Unidas (beverages), and Maestranzas del Cobre MADECO (metalworking) (Klenner, 2003). For the first time in Chile, unions sought to organize not by economic sector but according to the way capital is currently structured. Defending the idea of independence from political parties and very critical of the bureaucratization of the CUT, the COSILUK sought to incorporate younger workers alongside older ones to recreate working-class solidarity and class consciousness through practices of mutual support around concrete and localized negotiations, strikes, and mobilizations.

The CONSIEP’s first national conference, held October 11–13, 2002, drew about 150 union leaders representing the Coordinadora Luksic, the Federación Nacional de Trabajadores de Medios de Comunicaciones, and enterprise-level unions from OTIS, Chilectra, Lever, Artel, and Cervecerías Chile. According to one participant, the average age of the union leaders was 27 years (Silva, 2002). The longtime local labor leader Hector Velásquez was a key force in shaping the CONSIEP’s objectives. In his view (Velásquez, 2002),

With the labor movement isolated, without the traditional support structures of yesterday, one can now see its real structural weakness. This is rooted not in the lack of willingness for struggle or of class consciousness but in an inadequate organizational form that can and must be remedied. . . . In fact, 700,000 workers are dispersed and fragmented into 14,000 similar and insignificant unions, without real strength, that simply freely abandon their offensive potential to their class adversary.

The key to overcoming this structural weakness, he said, was unity at the rank-and-file level where workers’ real strength lies. “Unity at the top, by Federations or Confederations, and even under the banner of a single central organization, cannot be a substitute for unity at the base level. If this is not realized, unionized workers will always be defenseless and without effective leadership” (Velásquez, 2002). The distinctive characteristic of this variant of grassroots unionism is its clear position that leadership should be taken up by private-sector production workers and that organizing efforts should concentrate on this sector. In contrast, teachers and white-collar state workers have gained hegemony over the CUT and are not really as interested in promoting unity at the base of the working class. As Velásquez (2002) argued,

What and who unites the industrial, mining, and agricultural private sector unions, the cream of the crop of the Chilean working class? These are the union sectors that must be unified, resting on their rank-and-file unions. These are the unions that are dispersed, disunited, and underestimating their own strength but that despite all of this are united by the fraternal bonds of class, by their productive role, by their consciousness, and by long experience in struggles and that today are coming out of their slumber and are unified, in the broadest sense of the word, by a common way of thinking.

The CONSIEP’s organizing strategy therefore sought to “group in one organization those sectors of workers that have been most forgotten and are the most combative, to strengthen a class-based program free from extraneous influences and capable of blazing a path for the definitive emancipation of workers” (Velásquez, 2002). The organizational reestablishment of the labor movement requires first unifying small unions into industrial-branch unions. Preventing these unions from becoming a mere bureaucratic leadership will require that they be complemented by factory or enterprise committees that unify and represent all the workers in the workplace. These committees will create various work commissions that involve workers in day-to-day struggles. This will provide the foundations for class autonomy—organizational and political independence supported by a class-based program that struggles for both the immediate and the historical interests of the proletariat, leading to its emancipation.

Whereas the CONSIEP emphasized the features of private-sector wage workers, treating them as ontologically and politically unique, Colectivos de Trabajadores attempted to rebuild a combative labor movement through an opposite maneuver: discursively and organizationally erasing the specificities of workers by emphasizing their commonality: “The sale of our labor power makes us equals, independently of whether it is manual or intellectual, whether one wears a blue-collar overall, a white collar and tie, or a skirt and heels” (CCTT, 2001). By celebrating this commonality, the organization aimed to build a new type of labor movement and displace corrupt and “collaborationist” leaders so that workers could better reject the neoliberal economic model.

Its strategy, based on experiences of de facto organizing in industrial construction, ports, forestry, fishing, and other sectors, was to ignore the restrictions imposed on labor by existing labor legislation and “let hundreds of workers’ collectives bloom” (CCTT, 2003):

We say yes to the organization of male and female workers and of popular sectors of a new type. Build de facto organizations. Don’t fall for formalism. About 80 percent of workers sell their labor power and are externalized, made absolutely precarious, without job stability, with miserable wages, and with no possibility for organizing, given the way in which capital operates today.

The multiplication of such grassroots efforts was expected to create a social and political force capable of defending a platform of struggle for the general rights of workers (CCTT, 2001). These union leaders were acutely aware that the reconstruction of the workers’ movement implied “challenging capital’s notion of common sense and the consciousness of our children, our brothers, workers. We must imagine more effective organizations, work methods, and forms of collective conviviality so that class consciousness can be reborn” (CCTT, 2001). In a speech on the third anniversary of the movement this idea was further emphasized (CCTT, 2002):

This hope is not baseless if we understand that we can construct identity on the basis of the simple condition of being a worker and, in this sense, of being equal one and all. This common condition persists even though there is a tendency to abolish the factory regime for many workers and to eliminate skill as a means of mutual acknowledgment, thus preventing workers from coming together in shared spaces and times.

The commonality inherent in the condition of being workers was seen as continually reinforced by the contemporary development of Chilean capitalism: “The expansion of the precariousness of labor in all of its violence makes it evident today that beyond all the particularities, we are all subject to the same conditions of existence as workers in general, as a pure and simple commodity that here or there, in the last analysis, confronts the same problems.” On the basis of this vision, workplace, skill, work environment, gender, age, and occupation have been erased as the material and cultural basis for the construction of worker identity. From this the organizers concluded that an appropriate strategy would be one that promoted the formation of workers’ collectives, “conceptualized as instruments for organizing workers independent of their occupation, contract status, enterprise, or nationality. What is important is that workers acknowledge each other in their condition as such and share a willingness to come together to contribute to the reconstitution of the workers as an independent class movement.” Thus, in its effort to develop a combative and autonomous workers’ movement, Colectivos de Trabajadores took the dematerialization of labor to the limit. Not only were the characteristics of workers secondary but so were the daily gendered and racialized workplace conflicts with employers with respect to the overarching goal of rebuilding an autonomous workers’ movement. Under the present conditions, workers’ consciousness could emerge only from an understanding of their role as “abstract labor.”

The New Strategies and the Old Sociocultural Matrix

These three contending strategies illustrate the different directions taken by contemporary efforts to revitalize Chile’s labor movement. Though vastly different in terms of priorities, directions, and methods, all three strategies remain prisoners of the old sociocultural matrix. No significant rupture with the main components of the old sociocultural matrix has transpired. On the contrary, through different pathways—attentive collaboration with employers, increased visibility and negotiating capacity vis-à-vis the state, and the development of class consciousness from below—all three currents attempt to resuscitate the central role of labor. When each of these strategies is examined along each of the five axes constitutive of the old sociocultural matrix, one conclusion is clear: they all remain firmly entangled in an androcentric, productionist, and nationally bounded perspective. With the exception of Colectivos de Trabajadores (much more willing to engage in extralegal social mobilizations), all three strategies remained wedded to a legalistic vision of the union as guarantor of the labor contract (Table 2). Beyond the lip service to issues of “gender bias,” “gender discrimination,” and “sexual harassment” prevalent during the Bachelet administration, none of the three currents has embraced a coherent gendered perspective. This conceptual leap remains critical for understanding the dynamics of Chilean capitalism and formulating a new labor organizing strategy.

Identifying these limitations should not lead us to overlook the fact that a very exciting, rich, and dynamic process is unfolding in the leadership, cadres, and activists of the labor movement, who are increasingly aware of the need to address these issues in a more systematic manner. However, for these efforts to bear fruit will require a paradigmatic and conceptual break with the old sociocultural matrix. The first challenge is the incorporation of a gendered class perspective that eliminates the last vestiges of androcentric reductionism. Only such a perspective can do this and avoid the dangerous liaison between feminism and neoliberalism of recent years that has led to feminism’s co-optation by the neoliberal class project.¹²

Conclusion: Can a New Type of Unionism Emerge in Chile?

The 2003 call for a national strike, the CUT’s Refoundational Congress, the increase in extralegal mobilizations by forestry and copper subcontracted workers, and, most important, the emergence of three contending trade union strategies signal that important changes within Chilean labor are under way. The subordination of Chile’s much-weakened CUT to the policies of the Concertación had started to unravel in 2003, well before the Concertación lost the 2010 elections. Nonetheless, so far none of the three distinct currents—partnership, sociopolitical, and grassroots unionism—seems so far to have formulated an effective strategy that resonates with the increasingly flexible workers created under Chile’s export-oriented regime of accumulation. Part of the reason is that these three contending strategies continue to be hampered by the conceptual and cultural remnants of labor’s old sociocultural matrix, which during the 1936–1973 period enabled a portion of Chile’s working class—mostly male, urban, and employed in larger establishments—to become national actors and protagonists while providing the means for sociability, identity construction, and status in the union movement. During that period, working-class livelihoods and subjectivities were decisively linked to the male-breadwinner wage model and working-class demands and identities were validated through a sociocultural matrix suffused by a productionist, legalistic, androcentric, and state-centric culture actively promoted by leftist political parties and movements.

By highlighting the role that the survival of this sociocultural matrix plays in prolonging the weakness of Chile’s labor movement, the following three elements of a working hypothesis requiring further research can be put forth:

First, with its national, legalistic, and androcentric predilections, the old matrix imprisons the labor movement within a limited vision, undermining its ability to grasp the full scope of the newly emerging dynamics of capitalism in the current era of globalization. Second, all three currents seeking to rebuild and reenergize workers’ organizations in Chile remain captive to the limitations of the old matrix, handicapping them in representing the vast majority of flexible workers, many of them female, young, and lacking stable wage employment or adequate social protection, spawned in the strategic poles of the new transnational export-oriented model of accumulation. Third, significant progress in resolving the present crisis of Chile’s labor movement requires an explicit conceptual or paradigmatic shift to close the existing gap between organizing strategies built upon the remnants of the old sociocultural matrix and the current characteristics of capitalist exploitation.

The experience of other workers in Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, the United States, and Canada suggests that the components of such a paradigm shift are (1) the incorporation of a gendered perspective that links production and social reproduction in demand making, the construction of subjectivity, and organizing strategies, (2) the embrace of a labor-process approach, and (3) a transnational optic that links local, workplace, and community struggles to national, regional, and transnational processes and strategies for the valorization of capital. In countries where the labor movement has been deploying innovative strategies to confront neoliberal and corporate globalization, these components have led to the adoption of social-movement unionism (Bezuidenhout, 2000; Lambert, 1998; Moody, 1997; Waterman, 2002). While in Chile such debates are only relatively recently beginning to emerge and a wealth of experience is being accumulated in the increasing number of albeit localized labor-capital strikes and conflicts using new tactics such as workplace occupations, cross-sectoral alliances, community-based organizing, and joint mobilization (e.g., ports, El Abra, Líder, Escondida, forestry subcontractors, CODELCO subcontracted workers, the Collahuasi strike, the mobilizations of unemployed salmon workers and superexploited forestry and cellulose workers), this experience has not yet gelled into a paradigm shift at the national level.¹³

A first conceptual step toward that paradigm shift seems to be the adoption of a gendered perspective in which class and gender are inextricably entwined. Embracing such a perspective will enrich the understanding of the multidimensional transformations in living conditions faced by workers today. By focusing on the way the current strategies for the self-valorization of capital continually articulate the spheres of production and reproduction, it will deepen the capacity to envision initiatives that more effectively contribute to the constitution of working-class identity, subjectivity, and consciousness, all indisputably gendered processes. Finally, the incorporation of a gender perspective will also contribute to opening up discussions about the organizational strategies, the link between the personal and political, and the importance of building genuinely democratic and participatory labor organizations and culture. Moreover, without such a shift the three contending strategies currently vying for leading Chilean labor out of its downward spiral will likely falter in their efforts and once again reproduce the shortcomings of a labor movement constituted by the old sociocultural matrix and incapable of dealing with new structural and subjective conditions.

Partnership unionism, now represented by the UNT and the leadership of Diego Olivares, will exacerbate the exclusionary and economicist tendencies of a labor movement subservient both to transnational capital and governmental discourses. It will mistake “modernity” and gaining voice for successfully representing an ever declining number of workers whose skills and job security make them the few “insiders” and beneficiaries of the current economic model. At the same time, it will continue legitimizing the interests of transnational capitalist conglomerates as repositories of the universal interests of all of Chilean workers. Though not widely representative, this current is the one best positioned to take advantage of the changes in labor legislation governing union finances and government and international subsidies for union training programs; its advisers are precisely those government officials and international consultants who have designed this legislation in order to strengthen governability and government hegemony over labor.

The growing influence of sociopolitical unionism resulting from the strengthening of the Communist Party–endorsed CSC-Martínez alliance within the CUT, while resuscitating memories of an idealized Socialist-Communist Party alliance within the national labor confederation, could strengthen a legalistic, state-centric, hierarchical, and increasingly bureaucratized national labor leadership unresponsive to the needs and demands of rank-and-file workers and local unions. Without a paradigm shift, this strategy will continue equating successful labor politics with the short-term, conjunctural jostling that responds more to the electoral needs and calculations of national political parties and the bureaucratic positioning of party-sanctioned labor leaders. Resistant to questioning the way in which masculinization and the fuero sindical contribute to privilege and to the reproduction of hierarchies within the labor movement, this current may expand by promoting top-down politics bestowing limited opportunities on local unions and expanding its top-heavy leadership structures.

Grassroots unionism, though presenting the greatest opportunity for growth, also faces the danger of mimicking the more limiting aspects of the old sociocultural matrix. By emphasizing the alleged epistemological superiority of private-sector wage and salaried workers, the CONSIEP has attempted to rebuild working-class solidarity by deploying a symbolic imaginary reflecting a masculinized proletarian identity. Bereft of a gendered perspective, this third trend runs a serious risk of short-circuiting the still unrealized potential of territorially based coordination and alliances between workers and local community organizations. Its radical postures pose the danger of becoming no more than a bargaining chip in negotiating the incorporation of the male leadership structures of confederations like the CUT. At the same time, postures such as those of Colectivos de Trabajadores squander the potential for creative mobilizing strategies aimed at incorporating marginalized and “atypical” workers by employing an overideologized discourse that celebrates working-class unity by dissolving the skill, occupational, age, and gender particularities of the flesh-and-blood men and women who constitute the new working class. Though relatively successful at times of mobilization and conflict, grassroots territorially based unionism has not been able to build durable working-class organization and bargaining capacity because it is not solidly connected with the daily workplace, community, and household-based needs of the vast majority of male and female workers and their families.

By refocusing research efforts on factors internal to the labor and trade union movement itself, a novel research agenda can be developed that encourages Latin Americanists and labor scholars to engage in “activist research”¹⁴ so that, alongside Chilean labor activists and trade unionists, they can come to a better understanding of how a new labor movement and a new labor leadership in Chile and Latin America can emerge from current struggles. The blinders imposed by the old sociocultural matrix have yet to be fully removed. Only when they have been can the revival of class solidarity and class consciousness be seen in a clear positive light as giving life to a labor movement of a new type—as an “awakening of the dead” for the purpose of “glorifying new struggles, not parodying the old; of magnifying the given tasks in imagination, not of taking flight from their solution in reality; of finding once more the spirit of revolution, not of making its ghost walk again” (Marx, 1978: 596).

Footnotes

Notes

Fernando Leiva is an economist and an associate professor in the Department of Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies at the University of Albany. He is the author of Latin American Neostructuralism: The Contradictions of Post-Neoliberal Development (1998). The main ideas of this essay were first presented at the conference “A New World of Work,” organized by the Cultural Studies Program of George Mason University, on April 15, 2004. Subsequently they were presented to trade unionists at the January 13–14, 2005, colloquium “¿Hacia un nuevo sindicalismo en Chile? Obstáculos y desafios,” jointly organized by the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT)–Concepción, the Confederación de Trabajadores Metalúrgicos, and the Fundación Educación Popular en Salud (EPES) in Concepción, Chile. A third version was presented to the panel “Inequality and Social Protest in Contemporary Chile” at the Latin American Studies Association Congress in Montreal in 2007. The author thanks Lautaro López of the Fundación EPES and Ana María González of the CUT’s regional Departamento Femenino in Concepción for organizing the 2005 meetings and the LAP editors for their helpful comments and suggestions. He dedicates this essay to the memory of Fernando Iribarren G. (“Coco”), a member of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left killed in Santiago on February 7, 1983, when he was 26 years old.

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