State Reforms in Argentina: the role of the Labor Unions

Abstract

This work analyses the presidency of Carlos Menem from 1989 to 1994, explaining how his government was able to introduce the State reforms of the first generation, without the opposition of labor unions. This was possible thanks to the redefinition of the relationship between the Peronist Party and the labor unions, to the threatens to remove their legal status to those labor unions opposed to the policies of their government or to investigate for illegal enrichment to its leaders, to the buying of political will with the offering of public jobs or places in the candidate lists of the elections, to the exemption of debts to the cooperating labor unions and the offering of opportunities for new business (in the reform of the health and the pension system, or as shareholders of the newly-privatized State companies). Furthermore, this government dismantled the potential and existent alliances between the different labor unions. On the other hand, the end of the Cold War and the Washington Consensus gave this government the ideological arguments to support the neoliberal reforms and international legitimacy from the Multilateral Credit Organizations.  and the northern countries (especially the USA). The result was a successful reform plan in a short period of time, and the support of the majority of the labor unions to the candidacy of President Menem to the reelection.