Reconsidering Social Movement Unionism in Postcrisis Argentina

A Distinctive Social Movement Union Experience

Social movement unionism is characterized by three fundamental features: union democracy, a broader sociopolitical agenda than that of conventional unionism, and reaching out “beyond the factory gates.” Social movement unions promise organizational democracy and the inclusion of nonunion allies (Moody, 1997; Munck, 2002: 124–125; Waterman, 1999). Borrowing from political process theory, it can be said that the early social movement unions took advantage of certain political opportunities, such as division among elites and a common democratic agenda against authoritarian governments. The South African and Brazilian social movement unions emerged in a period of late industrialization and involved core industrial-sector workers. Gay Seidman’s (1994) comparative analysis demonstrates that under historically specific conditions, militant working-class movements in Brazil and South Africa emerged, reached out to the neighborhood and the community, and called for broader democratic rights and socioeconomic justice. The structural change of late authoritarian industrialization and the emergence of business support for democratization forged the political opportunity structure for these unions. The spatial segregation and peripheralization of working-class neighborhoods facilitated community-based struggles. Labor activism spilling over into the broader community engendered an alliance between militant unions and the community. In exchange for the unions’ support on community problems such as housing and transportation, communities supported unions’ struggles and donated strike funds. In Seidman’s (1994: 261) words, “Broad-based labor movements emerged only as workers and union activists strategically took advantage of new political opportunities, building organizations on the shop-floor and in their communities and gradually challenging the state and dominant classes to recognize and respond to new demands.”

In the contemporary context, social movement union strategies such as coalition building and the creation of alliances with community groups serve as compensation for the absence of the trade union’s traditional sources of power, which are derived from production processes or corporatist systems (Fantasia and Voss, 2004; Lopez, 2004; Turner, Katz, and Hurd, 2001; Voss and Sherman, 2000). The social movement unionism in Argentina was no exception. It was constructed in the context of neoliberalization, deindustrialization, growing unemployment, and the downsizing of the state under Carlos Menem of the Partido Justicialista (Justicialist or Peronist Party—PJ), which had been historically connected to the Argentine working class.

The 1990s neoliberal economic reforms posed a considerable threat to unions and caused internal conflict. Menem’s strategy succeeded in co-opting and gaining the support of the majority of unions by offering concessions and marginalizing dissidents (Cook, 2002: Etchemendy, 2001; Murillo, 2001). The Confederación General de los Trabajadores (General Confederation of Workers—CGT) was divided into two independent confederations. The 1945 Law of Professional Associations and the 1953 Law on Collective Bargaining had established a centralized, hierarchical labor union structure. ³ According to this framework, only public employees were allowed to have multiple unions in the same field of activity. Therefore unions that wanted to compete with others in the same sector or were seeking local autonomy split off from CFT-affiliated unions and joined the CTA. Because the capital-intensive and strategic-sector unions remained outside of it, it was born with little structural power, ⁴ and it was unable to recruit and organize new unions in the subsequent years. This limited its capacity to conduct disruptive strikes, negotiate with the political authorities, and become a leading actor in building resistance to neoliberalism.

To confront these challenges, the CTA adopted three constitutional principles: direct voting of all members, direct/individual membership, and complete autonomy from governments, political parties, and employers. By 2007, however, 51.5 percent of the CTA’s members belonged to the public sector, while the proportion of private-sector workers was as low as 7.5 percent (CTA, 2007a). ⁵ Its limited success in recruiting members was one of the fundamental factors that pushed it toward social movement unionism. When labor has little structural power, it compensates for its weakness through associational power—either innovative organization or political alliances, one of the basic premises of social movement unionism (Behrens, Hamann, and Hurd, 2004; Silver, 2003: 173). The CTA was trying to compensate for its weakness by seeking new nonunion allies when the economic crisis hit Argentine society.

The CTA was different from many other contemporary social movement unions in that its community support took the form of an alliance between two separate bodies, unions and community groups (Almeida, 2008; Lopez, 2004; Turner and Cornfield, 2007). It had great success not only in building alliances with the community but also in organizing the community itself. It established a venue for a stable and productive cooperative alliance not only between unions and social movement organizations but also among those organizations. It managed to bring together a large body of nonunion groups and organizations, including sex workers, people with housing problems, garbage collectors, peasant communities, indigenous groups, self-managed factory workers, activists working with street kids, and unemployed workers. Organizational flexibility, unionists’ networks with community groups, and the professional know-how of the white-collar unions helped it to extend its scope and agenda and carry out campaigns for social justice and equality such as the teachers’ hunger strike and the petition campaign and rally against poverty (Frente Nacional contra la Pobreza, 2001). The petition campaign ended just a few days before the collapse of the economy, however, and this diluted its impact and overshadowed its success.

These distinct groups were united not around political opportunities but against neoliberal economic reforms and lack of access to the governing coalition or any powerful ally. The CTA’s incorporation of one of the leading unemployed workers’ organizations sheds light on the characteristics of threat-generated social movements. The organization, called the Federación de la Tierra, Vivienda y la Habitat (Federation of Land, Housing and Habitat—FTV), was founded in 1997 by unemployed people, many of them former workers or activists (CTA–Instituto de Estudios y Formación, 1997). Community activists working in Greater Buenos Aires since the 1980s worked together with the CTA’s unionists in channeling grievances into mobilization and organization (Auyero, 2000; Gurrera, 2002). The FTV quickly became the most militant and the largest nonunion affiliate of the CTA (CTA, 1999). In 2007 it represented more than half of the CTA’s nonunion membership. ⁶ The motto of FTV-CTA unity, “The new factory is a neighborhood,” characterized the shift of focus from workplace-level struggles to the community level, where daily life and class struggles mixed.

The relationship between the CTA and the FTV was more driven by a favorable political conjuncture than an organic and institutionalized partnership. The Peronist Menem government had been replaced by the Alianza government in 1999, and therefore political authority was divided. The hegemony of the PJ had allowed it, despite having lost the presidential elections in 1983 and 1999, to maintain most local political posts (Calvo and Murillo, 2005). This division provided the piqueteros (unemployed protesters) of Buenos Aires a valuable political opportunity. Competition and lack of communication between the government and local administrations were causing irregularities in practice and prompting activism and mobilization.

At the turn of the millennium, the organized unemployed took the lead in social protests as the long-term effects of deindustrialization, the fiscal crisis of provincial governments, and the breakdown of regional economies became apparent. ⁷ In this context, the piqueteros spread. Protests against neoliberalism emerged as sporadic uprisings (puebladas) in the interior provinces. The impact of the early roadblocks in these provinces encouraged other victims of the structural adjustments to adopt similar methods of resistance. In Salta, Greater Rosario, and Tucumán, conflicts were translated into roadblocks (Benclowicz, 2006). The emergence of this new repertoire of action signaled not only new means of protest but also a new social actor, unemployed workers. The roadblocks that took place in Neuquén and Salta during 1996 and 1997 were a point of departure for “a new identity—piqueteros—, a new form of protest—roadblocks—, a new organizational modality —assembly—, a new type of demand—work” (Svampa and Pereyra, 2003: 23). The consolidation of this new repertoire coincided with the emergence of a new alliance among unions, dissident leftist parties, and unemployed workers under the label “piquetero.”

It was the long-term consequences of neoliberal reforms and the decline of the hegemony of the Menem government that had created an opening for the emergence of this new social phenomenon (Piva, 2006: 80–83). The puebladas had shown that roadblocks were an effective way of demanding work subsidies. Golbert (2004: 21) says, “Whereas workers in [economic] activity can choose different modes of struggle to make their voice heard, the unemployed have only one option—blocking the roads or, in the absence of this, massive eruption in the streets of the city.” Thus blocking roads became the weapon of the weakest. The state’s response, providing aid, contributed to the routinization of roadblocks as a form of social protest. Having failed to stop the protests through violence, it began to distribute more and more subsidies (Lodola, 2005). Gómez (2007: 117) argues that, similar to the social conflict of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the piquetero movement used the most visible methods of action and those farthest from the institutional channels of negotiation.

The distribution of work subsidies necessitated the institutionalization of these groups and formalization of the process. In order to obtain subsidies and to distribute them, the unemployed groups were expected to develop their institutional structure and organize further collective action (Garay, 2007). This encouraged piquetero groups to transform themselves into nongovernmental organizations (Delamata, 2004: 23–24). While institutionalization turned into an advantage for piqueteros in the late 1990s, the CTA’s FTV used its earlier institutionalization vis-à-vis other piqueteros to advantage. The FTV enjoyed the benefits of institutionalization at the national level under the CTA umbrella and the leadership’s inclination to work with the political authorities and therefore managed to receive more subsidies to distribute to its members.

The FTV-CTA roadblocks during 2000 and 2001 reached their peak on the eve of the economic collapse of December 2001. The general strikes, accompanied by roadblocks, called by the CTA to support the piqueteros reached higher levels of participation than in the 1990s and for the first time were even supported by the CGT. It was in this period that the CTA also organized the Frente Nacional contra la Pobreza (National Front against Poverty— FRENAPO), which embraced social organizations, universities, and the public and involved a rally against unemployment and poverty.

In short, the CTA-FTV partnership achieved the capacity to carry out successive mobilizations and various types of innovative activism by taking advantage of balanced political opportunities. (I underline the fact that these opportunities were “balanced.”) The growing ambiguity of the leadership of the piquetero movement coincided with a unique context in Argentine history. November and December 2001 turned out to be a period of turmoil that ended in the economic collapse of December 19 and 20, 2001. When the insurrection occurred, the union was far from consolidated. It had demonstrated its mobilizational capacity, but it still lacked a clearly defined political direction and had no control over the various piquetero groups. Most of the piquetero organizations considered the FTV-CTA reformist and moderate (Bidaseca, 2006; Oviedo, 2004). The CTA unions and the piqueteros were not sufficiently well integrated to offer a consistent and coherent response to the economic breakdown, social crisis, and political vacuum. The extraordinary conditions of the economic collapse thus functioned as a test for the integrity of the social movement union that had been built in the preceding few years.

Explaining the Challenges of Social Movement Unionism in Argentina

In the interviews I conducted in Buenos Aires, many CTA unionists quoted Jorge Luis Borges—“No nos une el amore sino el espanto” (Not love but fear unites us)—to explain why their alliance with the FTV had lost its momentum. Their use of this phrase indicated that this alliance was built around a threat and a temporary agenda more than around deeply shared concerns. CTA leaders said that during the 1990s the enemy—the neoliberal reforms and hostile governments—had been so powerful and so obvious that to defeat it they had sought to build alliances bringing together a broad range of groups. The course of events in the subsequent years revealed that the CTA leadership faced underlying divisions that were overshadowed by the gravity of the threat.

According to political process theory, political opportunity structures include both incentives or openings and threats or constraints (Koopmans, 1999). A “threat” is defined as “the costs that a social group will incur from protest, or that it expects to suffer if it does not take action” (Goldstone and Tilly, 2001: 183). ⁸ Almeida’s (2008) historical analysis of political protest in El Salvador provides a crucial contribution to the understanding of the types of threats to social movements that might be at work in Argentina. He argues that when a move from political opportunity to threat takes place, opportunity “holdovers” such as organizational infrastructure developed while opportunities were expanding become radicalized and produce threat-induced collective action. He suggests that only when there is well-established infrastructure and organization is a movement likely to take such action. His theoretical framework suggests that we might expect a social movement union to be threat-induced rather than a result of political opportunities and that in Argentina it was structural economic changes and the loss of political influence that provoked dissident unions to take more radical positions. The CTA may therefore be explained as threat-induced. It was established by dissident unionists who felt threatened by neoliberalization, a hostile political environment, restrictive labor codes, and an alliance between the PJ government and the CGT. The unity achieved under that threat was later challenged by emerging political opportunities. Particularly after 2003, a new political context offered selective political opportunities to some of the union’s components. The CTA had little structural power and was constrained by rigid labor codes and was therefore unable to take advantage of some of the political opportunities available in its last years. The reconfiguration of the political context changed the nature of the threat that had stimulated the union in the past. The political opening not only fragmented the FTV-CTA alliance but also divided the CTA’s top leadership.

For many analysts the breakdown of the Argentine economy in December 2001 marked a watershed for the country’s social movements (Dinerstein, 2002; Kohan, 2002; Oviedo, 2004). Until May 2003 the interim Eduardo Duhalde government was challenged by social unrest. Middle-class activism and support for the piqueteros characterized social protests in this period, and the CTA benefited from this new temporary ally. The emergence of neighborhood assemblies, barter clubs, and cacerolazos (pot-banging protests) gave shape to multisector groups, protests, and activism that remained promising throughout 2002 (Página/12, January 29, 2002). These new forms of social movement were acknowledged as signs of an emerging political alternative (Dinerstein, 2002, Oviedo, 2004). The aftermath of the crisis was the beginning of the union’s decline, a process that generated some limited political opportunities and some challenges. Despite the growing number of conflicts and a qualitative change in the protests, this postcrisis period sowed the seeds of fragmentation within the union. Not only did conflicts among some of the CTA’s affiliates come to the surface but also the CTA leadership was challenged by a lack of a political power.

The insurrection of December 19 and 20 was a test for the CTA, an “event” or concentrated moment of political cultural creativity (McAdam and Sewell, 2001) that had long-term structural effects on the movement. The collapse of political authority was symbolized by the rallying cry “Throw them all out!” During the violent suppression of the protests, 22 were killed and hundreds wounded by the police. The relative silence of the CTA and particularly the FTV on those days caused internal debate and criticism from left-wing groups (Kohan, 2002: 97; Zamora, 2002). The insurrection caught them unprepared, and they failed to take advantage of the political vacuum that unexpectedly emerged. A second crisis within the CTA took place with regard to how to respond to the killing of two young piqueteros by police in June 2002. Dinerstein (2002: 13) says that this divided the CTA-FTV, with the FTV leadership unwilling to risk “institutional relations or the power of an important amount of employment programs.” These two conjunctures revealed certain significant flaws of the social movement union mainly driven by the FTV-CTA partnership. Despite the increase in social protests and the promising presence of the middle classes in grassroots social organizations, the union began to fragment.

The material and political incentives granted by the postcrisis governments to the FTV piqueteros, who appeared willing to cooperate with them, divided the movement. The distribution of work subsidies in particular created a channel for co-opting some of the piquetero organizations. Approximately 10 percent of the subsidies were distributed through the piquetero organizations and the rest through municipalities. The FTV was the piquetero organization that received the largest number of subsidies. ⁹ Néstor Kirchner’s election in May 2003 also offered a political opening to some of the piquetero groups, first and foremost to the FTV. Having compensated for its weakness with political backing, the FTV no longer needed the CTA’s organizational shelter. Painless and easy access to work subsidies suddenly reduced the FTV’s militancy. As it gained access to resources and its leader became a well-known supporter of the president, the FTV joined the government’s close circle. The FTV leader was appointed undersecretary of land for social habitat. Svampa and Pereyra (2003: 212) argued that the government used various methods to “integrate, co-opt, discipline or isolate” piquetero groups, privileging some and marginalizing the rest.

In this way, what looks like an opportunity—access to political authority—functioned as a means of co-optation that robbed the movement of its autonomy. The FTV’s weakness in terms of resources moved it toward an overt alliance with the political authorities. The CTA leadership, which in the past had privileged the FTV over other community-based organizations and relied on it, was challenged by its loss (Carlos Chile, interview, Buenos Aires, February 19, 2008). The deterioration of the FTV leadership’s relation with the CTA ended up with the FTV leader’s Luis D’Elia’s exclusion from the list of candidates for the 2006 CTA national elections. For the FTV, the crisis was one of political unity within the CTA against those who preferred to confront the government. D’Elia considered the Kirchner government different from previous ones in being open to dialogue (interview, Buenos Aires, February 27, 2008). Armelino (2004: 14) said that the tactical relationships that the CTA leadership had built frequently contradicted its long-term objectives.

The decline of the threat not only paralyzed the CTA’s alliance with the FTV but also shattered the unity achieved at the leadership level. The CTA was challenged to adapt to a new political context, no longer an open threat but a new condition that we might frame as an opportunity. The leadership was divided with regard to how to situate the organization vis-à-vis the two Kirchner governments. The return of Peronist political hegemony froze its potential political project. Throughout 2002 and 2003, rumors about the CTA’s political opening circulated widely (Página/12, February 2, 2003; December 13, 2002; Clarín, November 3, 2002; Tumini, 2003). ¹⁰ Its national congress in December 2002 was the peak of its multisectoral strength and optimism (CTA, 2002). Drawing lessons from the insurrection, the leadership came up with the idea of a political opening. Interestingly, the FTV was the component of the CTA most eager for a political path, its leader declaring that they needed to construct “their own PT [Partido dos Trabalhadores]” (Página/12, April 8, 2003). The CTA leadership remained indecisive. Later some prominent figures chose to join various leftist parties, and the union never achieved unity in terms of party politics.

The return of Peronist hegemony in the post-2003 period was partially linked to the long-term effects of the party’s incorporation of labor. The political success of Brazil’s Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party—PT), whose head, Lula da Silva, was a union leader, had inspired some CTA leaders to follow a similar path, but the prolonged hegemony of the PJ had left little room for autonomous political action by the labor movement. Whereas Brazil’s party pluralism had allowed an opening for the PT, in Argentina, as Collier and Collier (1991) pointed out, the incorporation of labor by the Perón administration had left an enduring legacy of party hegemony over workers’ movements. Interestingly, the CTA leader Víctor de Gennaro was apparently aware of the limits of political space in Argentina compared with Brazil (Página/12, October 19, 2003). ¹¹

The consolidation of political authority after 2003 seriously challenged the CTA’s autonomy and damaged its integrity. It froze its political project and discouraged other major groups of the center left (Grugel and Riggirozzi, 2007; Levitsky and Murillo, 2008: 17) and led to growing tension within the CTA, preventing it from taking a unified and consistent position vis-à-vis the government. In the 2006 elections, when de Gennaro chose not to run for the leadership, Hugo Yasky, the former leader of the Confederación de la Trabajadores de la Educación (Education Workers Federation—CTERA), became president. ¹² Although he was the common candidate of two leading blocks within the CTA, differing and incompatible views on the government were slowly accumulating. According to Yasky, until the 2009 elections the CTA leadership tried to represent the internal debate as a sign of democratic organization (interview, Buenos Aires, April 21, 2008). He said that while during the 1990s the CTA had vigorously opposed the economic model, now it had to be open to dialogue and negotiation and, of course, to a participatory process (Página/12, September 14, 2008). He claimed that autonomy did not mean neutrality with regard to the government (Página/12, April 15, 2010). At the same time, the block led by de Gennaro and the Asociación de Trabajadores del Estado (State Workers’ Union—ATE) had already begun to criticize the Kirchner governments (Página/12, April 21, 2006; August 4, 2007).

The pending fragmentation of the CTA came to the surface in 2008. The conflict between the Cristina Kirchner government and farmers over tax increases on agricultural exports led to a nationwide political crisis. Resistance to the tax increase turned into a means of demonstrating discontent with the newly elected president. Thus, beyond taking a position on the bill in question, supporting the farmers meant protesting the government, while opposing it meant aligning oneself with the government. The CTA’s open division confirmed the deep fragmentation at the leadership level. Yasky and his former union supported the government (Página/12, May 8, 2008) while de Gennaro and his former union were critical of it for what they considered a gradual approach to right-wing Peronism (Página/12, April 29, 2008; July 7, 2008).

In addition to the transformations in the political sphere, the economic recovery in the post-2003 period altered the fundamentals of the CTA’s strategy. The government’s unorthodox and “neodevelopmentalist” economic policies, oriented toward exports and the control of imports through a competitive exchange rate (the very opposite of the convertibility plan), gradually reduced unemployment from 20 percent in 2002 to 9 percent in 2007 and people living under the poverty line from 52 percent to 17 percent (Levitsky and Murillo, 2008: 17). Given that the CTA unions had no significant workplace or marketplace power, they had difficulty taking advantage of the new economic conditions. Despite its continuous efforts, the CTA remained weak in the private sector. More than half of the CTA’s members were public workers concentrated in two major unions, the ATE and the CTERA (CTA, 2007a). ¹³ The CTA failed to organize new unions in private or in strategically important sectors. Restrictions on the right to unionize had limited its ability to organize and recruit new unions from the beginning.

In contrast, the CGT had the structural power and the legal protection to take advantage of the economic recovery and political consolidation. Despite having suffered internal divisions between moderate and conservative wings, it managed to protect its privileges within the organized working class. It strategically used the general strike and preserved its good relations with Peronist governments. Particularly in the post-2003 period, it recovered both economically and politically and overcame its leadership conflict. Some major CGT unions benefited from the recovery economically (Svampa, 2007). Etchemendy and Collier (2007: 382) explain this recovery in terms of the tightening of the labor market, the presence of a prolabor government, the neoliberal transformation, and the union’s associational power. In this way, the CGT gained neocorporatist bargaining power without harming its alliance with the Peronist Kirchner governments. In contrast to the CTA, it represented economically strategic sectors and benefited from laws that gave it a monopoly. Although the Kirchners came from the leftist Peronist tradition as did prominent CTA leaders and Néstor Kirchner was sympathetic to them, their two administrations chose to let the CGT retain its legal and political privileges. They did not reform the Law of Professional Associations, which had repeatedly been criticized by the International Labor Organization for discriminating against minority or less representative unions. ¹⁴ The CTA had never been granted recognition by the government, but the CGT had that recognition. Particularly after 2005, the CGT returned to the political field with a stronger hand, sectoral advantages, advanced political leverage, and legal privileges.

Discussion and Conclusion

What does the experience of the CTA tell us with regard to social movements and contemporary social movement unions? Its structural weakness made it vulnerable to changing political dynamics. Unlike the early generation of social movement unions, such as those of Brazil and South Africa. the CTA unions were based in nonstrategic economic sectors and had few legal privileges. This weakness limited the CTA’s capacity to maintain its integrity and autonomy in the changing political context. The Brazilian and South African social movement unions were originally concentrated in economically strategic sectors and thus enjoyed significant structural power; their militancy rested on their being at the center of industrial production. Drawing on this power, they reached out to broader community groups. Nevertheless, they too were challenged by changes in political and economic conditions. The African National Congress (ANC) and the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) had developed a strong alliance in their struggle to dismantle apartheid, but when the ANC gained power the alliance began to curb the labor movement’s militancy and autonomy (Adler and Webster, 2007; Lier and Stokke, 2006; Von Holdt, 2002). The neoliberal reforms implemented by the ANC also changed the structural bargaining power of labor unions and their relationship with their political ally. All this moved the COSATU to a more ambivalent political position (Barchiesi, 2007; Donnelly and Dunn, 2007). The cases of the PT and the Central Única de Trabalhadores in Brazil (Sader, 2005) and the ANC and the COSATU in South Africa demonstrate that the relationship between labor unions, including social movement unions, and their party allies is complicated and it is difficult for unions to maintain their autonomy. In the Argentine case, the legacy of the PJ further hindered the CTA’s autonomous political opening.

The CTA was distinctive among social movement unions. Whereas many other such unions succeeded at the local level or galvanized community support for labor union causes (Fantasia and Voss, 2004; Greer, 2008; Lopez, 2004; Turner, Katz, and Hurd, 2001), it reached out to various nonunion organizations at the national level and incorporated labor union and nonunion affiliates into the same umbrella organization. Public employees, workers, the unemployed, social movement activists, and indigenous people built a militant solidarity for both their shared and their individual concerns. In this sense, the CTA was a success. At the same time, it was challenged by changes in the economic and political situation at the national level. Because of its structural weakness, it was driven by threat and challenged by political opportunities.

In the 2010 national elections for officers of the CTA, there were candidates representing two different wings of the founding unionists. While the progovernment candidate, Hugo Yasky, ran for reelection, Pablo Micheli of the ATE, supported by de Gennaro, represented the antigovernment wing. The elections were disputed (Página/12, September 24, 2010; La Nación, September 25, 2010), with Micheli claiming that he had won by a margin of 11,500 votes while Yasky claimed that there had been fraud in nine provinces. The two blocks accused each other, and efforts to resolve the dispute through recourse to the the Board of Elections or the Labor Court failed. The split was obvious and indeed desired by both blocks (La Nación, November 20, 2010; Página/12, November 19, 2010; December 31, 2010). Since then, the dispute has been about which block would be allowed to claim the CTA’s legal entitlements (Página/12, July 13, 2011). This conflict influenced its nonunion affiliates as well. The leading indigenous people’s organization, Tupac Aparu, withdrew from the CTA (Página/12, September 29, 2010; October 1, 2010), while the FTV, which had been excluded for several years because of its overt support for the government, announced its return to the CTA (La Nación, February 24, 2011).

The CTA’s internal integrity and stability of alliances were challenged by conjunctural shifts in the political context and by the economic recovery. Its structural weakness was initially compensated for by alliances with various groups and partisan pluralism. This analysis indicates that the potential strength and resilience of social movement unions is conditioned by unions’ structural power, which may protect alliances confronting changing political configurations, and that social movement unions are likely to stagnate if their main unions lack that power. Furthermore, the presence of a hegemonic political party complicated the CTA’s political autonomy and its ability to create a brand-new political path in Argentina. While the economic situation improved after 2003, the CTA’s persistent weakness in the private sector enhanced the rival CGT’s dominant position, and the decline in unemployment changed the nature of social conflicts and demobilized the CTA’s most powerful community-based organization. The political opening offered to the unemployed piqueteros of the FTV completely disarmed it. Later some union affiliates of the CTA also chose to ally themselves with the government in pursuit of power. The incompatible views with regard to the government led to a de facto splitting of the CTA that is still awaiting a final legal resolution. In the light of this, it appears that subsequent political opportunities may weaken a social movement that was initially driven by threat. Beyond a short-term political conflict between national and local administrations, the Argentine social movement union failed to take advantage of expanding political opportunities. It was caught unprepared by the insurrection that provided a political opening in the system. The CTA and its allies succeeded in gathering 3 million votes for a referendum only days before the collapse of the economy, but they lacked the capacity to take a principal position upon the breakdown of political hegemony. One of the fundamental factors behind this failure was the nature of the alliance and the way it was formed, which were again directly related to the persistent structural weakness of the CTA in both economic and organizational terms.