Rationalisation and Working Class Response: The Context and Limits of Factory Floor Activity in Argentina Daniel James

Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2. (Nov., 1981), pp. 375-402.
Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-216X%28198111%2913%3A2%3C375%3ARAWCRT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-E Journal of Latin American Studies is currently published by Cambridge University Press.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/about/terms.html. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/journals/cup.html. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission.

The JSTOR Archive is a trusted digital repository providing for long-term preservation and access to leading academic journals and scholarly literature from around the world. The Archive is supported by libraries, scholarly societies, publishers, and foundations. It is an initiative of JSTOR, a not-for-profit organization with a mission to help the scholarly community take advantage of advances in technology. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

http://www.jstor.org Thu Nov 15 13:28:28 2007

1.Lat. Amer. Stud. 13, 2, 375-402

375

Rationalisation and Working Class Response: the Context and Limits of Factory Floor Activity in Argentina*
by D A N I E L J A M E S

Introduction Elisabeth Jelin, in an important recent work,l has criticized the overconcern in studies of the Latin American working class with the structural determinants of class relations and class activity. As she pointed out, this has tended to lead to a deterministic approach on the part of the social sciences, emphasizing the lack of autonomy of the working class in terms of its failure to construct a comprehensive, radical challenge to the dominant system on the political level and its domination by, and acceptance of, demobilizing, bureaucratic leaderships on the trade union level. Explanations of this phenomenon have been sought in structural factors ranging from the rural origins of the urban proletariat to the specific nature of the capital intensive industralization in Latin America in the last decades. The dominance of this approach centred on the integration of the working class on a political and trade union level, and on the bureaucratization of working class organizations, has meant that the social sciences have been unprepared to deal with, and incapable of explaining, the emergence of ruptures in the integrating process, the crises which challenge the status quo and which mark the reemergence of spontaneity, rank and file democracy and new forms of struggle outside the 'accepted' rules of the game. This shift in emphasis towards the study of factors leading to radical shifts in conscio~isness, to the breaking of the mould of customary and routine practices and forms of organization is undoubtedly salutary. It enables us to escape from the tyranny of deterministic structural models and
A first version of this article was presented to the workshop on the Latin American Working Class at the University of Liverpool, 19-20 April, 1979. The final version benefitted considerably from the comments of the participants, especially those of Juan Carlos Torre. 1 Elisabeth Jelin, 'Espontaneidad y Organizaci6n en el Movimento Obrero', Revista Latinoamericana de Sociologia (nueva serie) No. a (1975). A shorter version also appeared in Sociologie du Travail, No. 2 (1976). 0022-2 16x18I IJLAS-1326 $02.00 @ 198 I Cambridge University Press

376 Dnniel lames

to appreciate that working class consciousness and forms of activity are not directly reducible to general structural factors, and that phenomena such as union bureaucratization, working class apathy and integration are relative, socially created and conditioned phenomena which always coexist, at least potentially, with their opposites. However, the fact remains, as Jelin herself recognizes, that the study of structural factors influencing and limiting the forms of class activity and mobilization remains a necessary part of any analysis of the moments of crisis, the qualitative leaps in consciousness. In this context there is a danger - that this recent shift in interest towards the study of periods of rupture and challenge to the dominant system may leave unchallenged traditional explanations concerning periods of 'normality'. Potentially at least, the implication may be drawn that periods of accommodation and integration are unproblematic simply because they are the 'normal' state of affairs and may be safely left to the explanatory cares of structural factors whether of an economic or psycho-sociological nature. Yet 'normality' . is problematic; working class quiescence, the acceptance of bureaucratic leaderships in trade unions, the failure to organize effective rank and file opposition to such leaderships needs to be analysed without resort to traditional (overtly) deterministic models. Structural factors need to be examined which, at the same time as they are seen as defining the general parameters within which class activity develops, are also understood as part of, and resulting from, a dynamic historical process. This paper is intended as a specific contribution to the study of structural factors which define the possibilities, the limits and the forms of working class activity. The context is that of Argentine capitalism in the 1950s and 1960s; in particular the change which took place from the mid-1950s on in the model of capital accumulation as that based on highly protectionist import substitution increasingly reached the limits of its viability. The economic implications of the new development project have received considerable attention with particular emphasis being placed on the development of new industries, the importation of new machinery and the role of foreign capital. One author, surveying the shifts brought about by this new project, has gone so far as to describe the periods before and after the mid-1950s as belonging to different technological epoch^.^ Much less attention has been paid, however, to some of the social consequences of this economic process and in particular the implications for the working class. The fundamental goal of this article is to analyse a crucial, although
2

Jorge Katz, Productive Functions, Foreign Investment and Grotuth ( N . Holland Publishing Co., Amsterdam), quoted i n R. Mallon, Economic Policy Mating in a Conflict Society (Harvard University Press, 1g75), p. 72.

377 generally underestimated part of the new development project - namely the attempts made by employers and governments from the early 1950s on to 'rationalize' production arrangements within Argentine industry and to restructure the balance of forces on the factory floor. The first part of the paper will examine the origins of this rationalization drive in the second Peronist government; the second will deal with the attitude of the military government to this question between 1956 and 1958 and the third with the culmination of this process in the early 1960s. Finally, the implications of this rationalization drive for issues such as the extent and possibilities of autonomous rank and file activity, the position of the trade union bureaucracy and, most fundamentally, the relationship between the two will be considered.
A. T h e Productivity Ogensiue under Perdn The new development project undertaken during Per6n's second government involved two interrelated aspects. First, it aimed at a shift away from an emphasis on the production of light consumer goods to the production of intermediate durables and the construction of a capital goods sector. Secondly, it aimed at the renovation of the capital equipment employed already in Argentine industry. This had become a pressing necessity by the early 1950s and had become a major preoccupation of government and employers. Jost Gelbard, the head of the employers' confederation, the CGE, spoke at the Congress of Productivity and Social Welfare in March, 1955 of the crucial 'need to renovate outworn production material' employed in Argentine industry.$ The capital accumulation necessary for this economic shift would come partly from foreign investment and partly it would be generated internally from traditional export earnings and from increased labour productivity. Increased labour productivity in its turn could be generated partly by the introduction of new machinery but there was a clear limit to the extent to which this was feasible in the short term. Given the decline in the prices for raw materials in the world market, the increasing intensity of competition in that market and the general stagnation of Argentine agricultural production, the possibilities of large-scale importation of capital goods were limited. In terms of increasing labour productivity, this left only the solution of increasing output per man from existing equipment. Gelbard was quite frank about both the problem and the solution:
' T h e private Argentine economy cannot hope, therefore, to achieve high levels of output basing itself exclusively on the massive importation of the most modern
3

Rationalisation and Working Class Response

Report of the proceedings of the Congress of Productivity and Social Welfare,

Hechos e Ideas (1955), p. 282.

378 Daniel James

capital goods. . if it is not possible to base increased production on modern mechanisation and automatisation, the problem will have to be solved on the basis of the existing plant, progressively renewed according to the country's possibilities. That is to say that we have to take as our starting point that which exists now, what we have at the moment, and improve and increase the output and productivity of each machine, each man and each pro~ess.'~ T o state the need for greater productivity was easy; to achieve it within the limits set out by Gelbard was, however, to become the major concern and problem of Argentine employers and State in the last years of Per6n's government. What, precisely, was the problem, and what were the obstacles to the achievement of this higher labour productivity? T h e problem from the employers' point of view lay fundamentally in the unsatisfactory balance of forces engendered on the factory floor by a self-confident working class and a strong, state-backed labour movement. More concretely, this was manifested in three interrelated ways: ( I ) the lack of any adequate definition of production targets and work effort; ( 2 ) the existence in the collective contracts of a series of clauses which, while regarded by the workers as crucial gains in terms of regulating working conditions, were viewed by the employers as obstacles to increasing productivity; ( 3 ) the power of the internal commissions of shop floor delegates. (I) Production levels, 'eflort bargain' and worker resistance Let us look, first, at the question of production levels and work effort. That they were unsatisfactory was a constant theme of employer propaganda in the early 1950s. At the Congress of the Confindus~riu in 1953, the Commission on Industrial Rationalization began its deliberations by asserting that: 'while the worker has a right to receive a minimum salary compatible with his needs and his dignity he also has a duty to achieve a minimum level of output for his day of work.'5 The report went on to recommend that workers who did not meet such an obligation should be fired without right of compensation. Similarly, Gelbard in 1955 echoed the same concern with his demand at the Congress of Productivity for a 'fair day's work for a fair day's pay '.' Now behind all such appeals for the respecting of minimum output levels, 'a fair day's work' etc., there lies the notion of an implicity accepted ratio of pay to effort which in industrial relations parlance is known as an 'effort bargain', that is, so much pay for so much effort. The obligations assumed
4
6

Ibid.

Report of Commission of Industrial Rationalisation, Proceedings of Congreso General de la Confederacidn de la Industrin (Buenos Aires, 1966),p. 3. Heckos e Ideas, op. cit., p. 279.

Rationalisation a n d Working Class Response

379

by the worker as part of this bargain are, almost by definition, indeterminate. As Hyman and Brough have pointed out, 'this effort bargain is in most industrial situations implicit and imprecise resting on largely intuitive norms of a "fair day's ~ o r k " ' .Normally, ~ industry operates on a generally-agreed compromise definition of the effort bargain acceptable to both management and labour. It is clear from the employer & . concern noted above that such a compromise definition was no longer shared by the early 1950s by management and labour in Argentina; the effort bargain had broken down. T o understand the implications of this we need to ask why. Apart from longer term factors such as culturally determined notions of what constitutes a 'fair day's work', it is clear that mutually-accepted definitions of what are adequate output levels in any specific case also depend considerably on conjunctural factors such as labour market conditions, generally favourable or unfavourable market conditions, and the balance of class forces at a particular time. Thus a particularly lax definition which workers advocate and management are prepared to accept in one context may become totally unacceptable to management when that conjuncture changes. This, I would maintain, was the case in Argentina during the Peronist period. Given full employment, an expanding state-backed union movement and a high degree of self-confidence in their own power to mobilize, workers not unnaturally tended to a more liberal definition of legitimate work intensity than had hitherto p r e ~ a i l e d . ~ This was all the more so given the contrast with the stark repression which had existed within the factories during the 1930s and early 1940s. A corollary of this was an at least implicit challenge to employers' previously unquestioned control of the labour process. Workers were prepared to use the new labour contracts and the internal commissions to contest what they now considered to be illegitimate assertions of management authority in this area. In addition, the relatively high basic wage rates together with the fringe benefits built into the new contracts considerably reduced the traditional economic compulsion on workers to intensify work effort and to follow 'healthy' work habit^.^ This was noticeable even in those
7

Richard Hyman and Ian Brough, Social Values and Industrial Relations (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1975), p. 12. Hyman and Brough have noted a general tendency for workers to reinterpret the 'effort bargain' in favourable circumstances: 'In a context of relatively full employment and of extensive trade union membership the indeterminacy of work obligations is no longer so evident an advantage to the employer.. . the growth of collective organization at the work place. . . permits the situation to be exploited to the benefit of employees.' Hyman and Brough, op. cit., p. 24. In this context it should be noted that absenteeism was a major complaint of the employers, particularly what they called 'lunes de huelga', and was used by them to

380 Daniel James cases where incentive schemes - generally some form of piece rate - were in operation. Piece rates in these cases would seem to have been slack, with mutuality a commonly accepted practice.1 Employers acquiesced in this for a number of reasons. With the exceptionally favourable immediate post war conditions, based on an expanding internal market and relative protection from foreign competition, as well as a favourable international situation for Argentine exports, priority was given to maintaining consistency of production to tale advantage of these favourable conditions rather than to tackling the potentially thorny problem of labour productivity. This assessment was strengthened by their perception of the new strength of organized labour exemplified by the strike wave of 1946 and 1948 which amply demonstratcd the capacity of the working class to mobilize, given a favourable labour market and the sympathetically neutral attitude of the state to this mobilization.ll The risk of taking on organized labour over the issue of production levels was simply not worth the cost in terms of the lost production and political consequences which would have resulted. Nor, it must be said, did employers generally see fit to tackle the question from the other end and invest in modernization of their plant. , a The result, as we noted above, was that by the early I ~ ~ O Swith deteriorating internal and international economic context and the need to reorient the model of capital accumulation to meet this new development and ensure future expansion, the issue of labour productivity could no longer be avoided. The options open to the employers and state in dealing with this problem were extremely limited as Gelbard's speech quoted above made clear. They consisted basically in increasing workers' output from existing machinery. There were two principle prongs of the strategy as it developed in the last years of the Peronist regime. One was a revision of existing incentive schemes; the tightening up of slack piece rates by lowering fulfilment times, resetting
exemplify the problems they were facing in terms of labour discipline within the factories. 1 0 Mutuality refers to the general principle whereby workers and their immediate representatives can insist on joint consultation with management in determining factors such as time allowed for a job and quality required. Often mutuality arose initially as a management tactic to deal individually with the isolated worker on the shop floor, by-passing the union. However, given strong shop floor organization, it was a device which could be turned to the advantage of the workers. This was certainly the case in many parts of British industry, and, I would suggest, in Argentina during the Peronist period. For the British case, see Andrew L. Friedman, Industry and Labour (Macmillan, London, 1977), p. 219. 1 1 For strikes of 1946-8 period, see Louise M. Doyon, Conpitos opernrios durnnte o regime peronistn, 1946-55, Estudos CEBRAP, No. 13 (July-Sept. 1975).

38 I bonus rates with the aid of work study, and undermining mutuality. The other was the fixing of minimum output levels for a day's work and the introduction of incentive payment schemes based on these levels where they did not already exist. The report of the Commission on Industrial Rationalization of the .~onfindzistria Congress had recommended, 'the introduction of bonuses in proportion to increased output achieved. This will require the prior determining of normal output levels to make possible the achievement of the bonus.'12 At the Congress of Productivity the same point was reiterated only now in far more Tayloristic language. Under the rubric, 'Concrete measures to improve productivity', the introductory document of the Congress advised 'the use of modern techniques of rationalization which include: work study, job evaluation and payment by results. . . '13 This insistence of the enlployers on tightening up existing schemes and fixing minimum output levels where none had existed implies clearly both the lack of adequate formal definitions of work effort prior to this and the consequent advantage taken by the workers of this indefinition, and the employers' determination to fix henceforth by 'modern techniques of rationalization' the precise nature of the workers' obligations in the 'effort bargain' which had become dangerously imprecise and lax in the immediate post-war conjuncture. What success did the employers have in implementing this strategy? It is clear from even the partial evidence I have that they, in fact, encountered considerable difficulties and resistance. Indeed, it was this resistance, which rarely surfaces in official documents or the press, which led employers to enlist both the state and the union hierarchy in the official productivity The resistance was focused on two levels. One was a campaign of 1 g 5 5 . l ~ response to the concrete effects of either introducing new incentive schemes or tightening up of old ones; increased work loads, lowering of fulfilment times or speed up. Thus, for example, one finds in the Buenos Aires metalworking company CEMAC, worker opposition to the company's adoption of a new incentive scheme. The company wanted a 7 per cent lowering of fulfilment times which in future they alone would fix through work study; previously time allowed had been subject to mutual negotiation between workers and management.15 Or, again, one finds resistance in the SIAM di Tella plants, where the company had for several years operated an incentive
12
19

Rationalisation and Working Class Response

Proceedings of the Congreso General de la Confindustria, op. cit., p. 4. Hechos e Ideas, op. cit., p. 30.
My own information on this issue is derived mainly from the non-Peronist workingclass press, generally associated with various neo-Trotskyist groups who adopted a sympathetic though critical attitude to Peronism. La Verdad, 5 January 1954.

14

16

382 Daniel lames scheme whereby workers were divided into two groups, productive and unproductive. Both groups did the same work but the productive group worked under a bonus system based on a straightforward time saved to time allowed basis. In late 1954 tro~~ble arose when SIAM unilaterally lowered the times allowed in the bonus system.16 Similarly, at about the same time, Johnson and Johnson introduced-a device designed to make their machines run at a constant speed whereas previously the workers had been able to graduate the speed according to their own rhythm.17 Such resistance to management attempts to redefine what had come to be accepted as legitimate work effort and production levels when new economic pressures arose is not, of course, unusual. Hyman and Brough have noted that, 'a major source of conflict and instability in industrial relations (lies) in externally generated pressures towards continually increasing productivity and the resulting disruption of established relationships between pay and effort.18 In the Argentine case it seems clear that worker opposition generally
Ibid., 11-24 September 1954.It is interesting to note that this incentive scheme with its division of productive and non-productive workers was a faithful copy of classic Taylorist incentive schemes. Also, it is interesting to note the divisive cffects such schemes could have on work force unity. SIAM, in fact, in their battle to get 'productive' workers to accept the lowering of time rates, promised the 'unproductive~'a wage increase if those working in the incentive scheme accepted the new rates. l 7 La Verdad, 11-24 September 1954.It should be emphasized that we lack adequate description of the nature and extent of different work and payment systems in Argentine industry during the Peronist period. My own feeling is that those incenpiece tive schemes which did exist were essentially what Friedman calls 'money . work', i.e., where workers are paid at a pride per piece produced. Management's basic concern was to transform these into more 'rational' systems of 'time piece work' where workers are paid a bonus in relation to the time saved against the time allowed for a job. As Friedman notes, the latter system involves far greater direct control by management of the labour process. See Friedman, op. cit., p. 219. Hyman and Brough, op. cit., p. 219.Gouldner's classic analysis of the origins of an unofficial strike is also relevant. H e showed that the crucial issue was management's withdrawal of a traditionally 'indulgent' definition of work intensity which workers had come to regard as the legitimate definition of the 'effort bargain'. See Alvin Gouldner, Wildcat Strike (Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1955). The widespread working-class opposition to the scientific management movement in various countries is, of course, also relevant here. For an analysis of such opposition in the United States, see David Montgomery, 'Quel standards? Les ouvriers et la rtorganisation de la production aux Etats Unis, 1900-~gzo',Le Mouuement Social, No. 102 (Jan.-Mar., 1978). Of course, generally speaking, skilled workers were the most effected by the rationalization drives and were the spearhead of working-class resistance to Taylorism. I have no concrete information on this aspect although my impression is that the issue of craft working was less important in Argentina. Certainly I did not encounter explicit opinion on this issue. Also one should remember, as Montgomery notes, that in the classic period of struggle against Taylorism the working-class definition of legitimate work practices and work

Rationalisation and Working Class Response

383

took the form of a refusal to co-operate rather than overt strike action certainly this was the case in the specific instances we mentioned above. However, there was an important exception: the largest strike of the second Peronist government, the 1954 national metalworkers' strike. While it has generally been assumed that the strike, like others at this time, was essentially motivated by salary demands, it would appear that the issue of tightening up existing incentive schemes through things such as work study also played an important role.lg The fourth article of the agreement ending the strike went out of its way to emphasize that 'the UniOn Obrera Metaltirgicn agrees that its representatives in the different plants will not present obstacles to the justified readjustment of the rates or bases of bonuses in those cases where such rates are proved to be anti-econorni~'.~~ It seems not unreasonable to deduce from this that factory delegates had been obstructing such readjustments and that employer attempts to push through such a policy had been one of the factors leading to the strike.21 The second area of resistance to the employers' strategy was a more general one; it lay simply in the rejection by large sectors of the working class of the legitimacy of any form of payment by result incentive schemes. The almost obsessive insistence by the employers at both the Confindustria conference and the Congress of Productivity on the basic need to accept such schemes indicates their concern to assert, over and above the validity of the specific mechanisms involved in rationalization, the legitimacy of the idea of incentive schemes as the basis for establishing the relationship between pay and work. While it is true that incentive schemes were increasingly attractive as a means of gaining wage increases in a period of inflation and government controlled wage policy, the constant pleas of the employers for the acceptance of payment by result schemes indicates that they were still a minority phenomenon in Argentine industry. Moreover, it is also clear that Argentine workers considered the best way
intensity was a general ethic shared by many sectors of the working class, not just craftsmen. The two most comprehensive studies of the relationship between labour and the Peronist government are Walter Little, 'Political Integration in Peronist Argentina' (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, 1971) and Louise M. Doyon, op. cit. Neither mentions this issue in connection with the 1954 metalworkers' strike. Ministerio de Trabajo y Previsi6n, Registro General de Convenios Colectivos y Laudos, Acta 12 (Buenos Aires, June 1954). It is possible that other of the major strikes in the first half of 1954 also involved this issue. Doyon, op. cit., mentions that work to rule became the most common means of labour p-oiest in 1954, there being an enormous increase in the number of workers involved in such actions. Again, she relates this to the wages issue though, following the logic of the argument I am presenting here, it would also represent the refusal of workers to cooperate in the employers' productivity plans.

19

20

21

384 Daniel James

to increase their living standards to be the adequate updating of the basic hourly rates contained in the contracts, many of which had been frozen since 1951; this, in fact, was the main demand of the 1954 ~trikes.~' Time wages based on good basic hourly rates, together with fringe benefits such as increments for experience, family allowances etc. which had been introduced into the contracts of the 1946 - 1948 period, were considered a crucial gain by the working class. They were a concrete expression of what 'justicia social' represented for Argentine workers; the ability to earn a good wage without being subjected to inhuman pressures within the production process - an ability which the introduction of new payment by result schemes now threatened to undercut.

to productivity a?zd the ideological nature of worker resistance This more generalized resistance was carried over into another area of management strategy: their call for the revision of the clauses in the contracts regulating working conditions. While, for management, these clauses represented a major obstacle to effective rationalization, for workers the work practices and provisions enshrined in them provided a vital safeguard in terms of the quality of life in the factories. The introductory document of the Congress of Productivity counselled that in future contract negotiations 'there will be special reference to those situations which impede, limit and harm the possibilities of greater productivity. . .examples of these situations are those which hinder the movement of personnel from one section to another; those which prevent the carrying out of a job made up of different types of work. . . ' 2 V n addition to their objections to clauses limiting mobility and establishing job demarcation, management also called for the revision of clauses guaranteeing sick leave with pay. Now, these clauses embodied what workers had come to regard as a rightful and essential regulation on their part of the functioning of the labour process and as such there was a tendency to regard them as simply not open to negotiation. The opposition of the workers to many of the assumptions of the productivity campaign was clearly echoed in the contributions of the Secretary General of the General Confederation of Labour (CGT), Eduardo Vuletich, to the Congress of Productivity. In his speech at the opening of the campaign in January, 1955 he warned that, while the C G T was wholly in favour of increased productivity, this was not to be achieved 'by an uncontrolled increase in worliload, but rather through increasing the efficiency of work, that is to say with less expenditure of physical effort'.24 In his speech to the
22

( 2 )Hindrances

See Louise M. Doyon, op. cit.

2s

Hechos e Ideas, op. cit., p. 32.

24

Ibid., p. 17.

385 inaugural session of the actual congress in March, he returned to the theme, recalling that 'it has been said by many employers. . .that the only way to raise productivity is through greater human effort. . . '.25 In contrast to this, he placed the main burden of responsibility on the employers, listing other factors, such as modernization of machinery, which also had to be considered. I l e also went on to warn employers that 'we are not disposed to give up for this cause (greater productivity) a single one of the conquests we have p i n e d . . . '.2'jNow, this was evidently considering the issue on basis of fundamentally different criteria from those of the employers.27For all their talk of respecting the dignity of labour and maintaining the basic labour conquests, the entire drift of the employers' strategy, with its call for setting adequate effort levels and resetting existing production levels, implied increased work intensity and a radical limitation of certain of these conquests. As for plant modernization, Gelbard, as we have already seen, deliberately excluded it from playing an immediate role in greater productivity. It is important to be clear about the ideological limits and ambiguity of this worker resistance. On the one hand it was never generalized into a critique of the criteria underlying capitalist production relations.28 Thus, the general context within which Vuletich's warnings were made was one which sang the praises of increased productivity based on class harmony and mutual respect, and an equitable distribution of the benefits of such' an increase. In the same way, the opposition to rationalization was never extended to a general challenge to 'management's right to manage its plants.' We find, for example, no demands for workers' control emerging out of the battle against
26

Rationa1i;ation a n d Working Class Response

20 27

Ibid., p. 27. Ibid.,p. 275.

This conflict of criteria between workers and employers concerning productivity is inherent in any labour process in a class divided society. As Andre Gorz has noted: 'From the point of view of the worker the productivity of labour only increases when it can produce more without increasing fatigue, from the point of view of capital the productivity of labour increases every time that it can impose on the worker an increase in the expenditure of labour power without a proportional increase in salary.' Gorz goes on to specify that 'only the first definition is rigorous; it measures an increase of output without corresponding increase of input, therefore it is a "technical progress". On the other hand the second definition is manifestly false since it considers only an increase in output without taking into account an increase in input, to the extent that this input is human energy.' See Andre Gorz, 'Technique, techniciens et lutte de classes', Les Temps Modernes, August-September, 197' Much less was the opposition directed against the regime itself. As Doyon points out with relation to the strikes of 1954: '. . . they did not represent a definitive rupture between the regime and the workers' movement because the majority of workers chose very moderate channels to show their dissatisfaction and did not direct their protest against the government.' See Doyon, op. cit.

28

3 86 Daniel James Taylorism as was the case in other c o u n t r i e ~ .Evidently, ~~ the general acceptance of the legitimacy of capitalist ~roduction relations and the authority relations contained within them was itself a reflection of certain of the basic tenets of Peronist ideology. Peronism, for example, contained a strong 'productivist' strain; identifying industrialization and industrial production with genuine national development and sovereignty, it stressed the identity of the working - classes' interests with those of such a nationai development project, carried out in conjunction with a nationally-minded industrial bourgeoisie. This general interest of the working class in achieving a high level of independent development - which was the essence of its nationalism - was taken as overriding the more specific conflicts of interest arising out of the production process. O n the other hand, however, it is clear that, despite this general endorsement in everyday practice within the factories, worker resistance on these issues did represent an implicit challenge to fundamental aspects of capitalist organization of p r o d u ~ t i o n .Despite ~~ the lack of an explicit challenge to managerial control, the concrete effect of the workers' insistence on their reinterpretation of acceptable effort levels and their defence of this 'effort bargain' when management attempted to re-define, it was an inevitable challenge to employers' authority within the factories. Employers, in fact, clearly perceived this and their complaints are testimony to the reality of such a challenge. One of the principal themes of Gelbard's speech to the Congress of Productivity was precisely this. H e called for the 'maintenance of discipline and a hierarchical order without which no human association is possible.' H e went on to 'reaffirm for the employers the right to the direction and organization of the enterprise without interferences which limit their freedom of movement and j~dgement'.~' Similarly, while Vuletich could not deny the legitimacy of the productivity campaign involving some worker sacrifices he, nevertheless, insisted on basic criteria for such a campaign which would inevitably restrict management's freedom of manoeuvre when this campaign was put into practice. Moreover, Vuletich, too, could seek authority for his position in Peronist ideology;
29

30

For an analysis of such demands in the US, see David Montgomery, 'The Past and Future of Workers' Control', Radiccll America, Vol. 13, No. 6 (Nov.-Dec., 1979). Hyman and Brough quote Baldamus who notes in this respect that workers are generally socialized into accepting a notion of work obligations but that 'however powerful their content is too diffuse to control behaviour effectively in any concrete situation. Such notions of obligation support the institution of capitalist employment but do not control the specific activities within the institution'. See Hyman and Brough, op. cit., p. 17.

81

Hechos e Ideas, op. cit., p. 281.

Rationalisation and Working Class Response

387

notably such concepts as 'just' and 'unjust' profits, socially responsible, humane capital and exploitative capital, and the notion of 'bienestar social' as determining criteria of the validity of social and economic policy. All this was a reflection of the crucial ambiguity of Peronist ideology and of Peronism as a social movement; a basic contradiction incapable of resolution within a poly-class governing coalition. The internal commissions of shop floor delegates The symbol of the new balance of forces on the factory floor and the resistance to employer attempts to redress it was the comisidn interna. For the employers the shop floor delegates came to personify the basic problems they faced in their productivity campaign. The commissions had sprung up and had been consolidated in the immediate post-1946 period. The contracts signed at this time contained clauses guaranteeing management recognition of the commissions and assuring delegates stability of employment both during and after their term of Apart from these general clauses, however, there was no detailed specification in the contracts concerning the nature of union representation, its forms or its powers. It would seem that these aspects had initially been regarded as part of the internal union affairs and of no concern in negotiations between union and management. While it was generally accepted that their basic task was to oversee the daily implementation of the contract provisions, it is clear that they had taken advantage of the lack of formal definition of their powers and by the early 1950s had come to assume a wider role of articulating working class confidence and limiting management prerogatives in the production sphere. This was clearly perceived by the employers as a major obstacle to effective rationalization and the imposition of labour discipline. Thus, Gelbard at the Congress of Productivity complained of the position 'which the internal commissions assume in many factories where they alter the concept which holds that the mission of the worker is to do a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. . .neither is it acceptable that for no motive the delegate blows his whistle in a factory and paralyses it.'$$ Echoing this sentiment, the Ca'mera de Industrias Metalhrgicas, in its report to the Congress, complained of 'the extreme liberty enjoyed by the internal factory commissions ' .34 It is clear that the employers regarded the effective limitation of the powers
(2)
32

35 84

See Doyon, op. cit. She mentions that the issue of enforcing employer compliance with such regulations was an important element in the strikes of 1946-8. Hechos e Ideas, op. cit., p. 280. La Verdad, g April, 1955.

388 Daniel James

of the commissions as the sine qua non for any general advance in their rationalization strategy. Their concern is easily understood. Effectively they perceived that only such a limitation could guarantee the translation of formal agreements on rationalization into concrete practice on the factory floor. Any formal agreement allowing the introduction of incentive schemes, the tightening up of time rates, the limitation of mutuality and the guaranteeing of labour mobility could be potentially rendered meaningless in practice by a determined work force and its internal commission. It is important to note here, too, that the direction of management's attack, both at the Confindzistriu conference and the Congress of Productivity, was not aimed at the existence per se of the commissions. What they complained of fundamentally was the lack of formal definitions concerning the limits of legitimate areas of activity of the commissions. Thus, the report of the Confi~zdtistria conference spoke of the 'lack in labour relations of a legal instrument which fixes the norms and proceedings and delimits the rights and obligations of both parts. . .this situation leaves open to the arbitrariness of personal agreements a matter of the greatest social importance.' The proposed solution was 'a code which normalizes the working relations between internal commissions and employers - expressing signalling the rights and obligations of each part'.36 There were few positive results for employers in these years in terms of nationally enforceable agreements between themselves and the unions on these issues. The union leadership, aware of their membership's hostility, signed the National Agreement on Productivity at the end of the Congress of Productivity but this was largely a symbolic declaration of intent, the rninimum they could do, given the amount of personal political capital Per6n had invested in the campaign, and scarcely represented the concrete advance the employers had been looking f ~ r . ~ W of ne the last resolutions agreed to at the Congress had specified, in fact, that the existing contracts would not be aiTected by any further agreements on prod~~ctivity and that both sides had
35

36

Proceedings of Congreso General de la Confi?zdustria, op. cit., p. 250. The reluctance of the CGT leadenhip to acquiesce wholeheartedly in the employers' rationalization plans can be seen partly as a reflection of their awareness of the strength of feeling amongst their membership on this issue. This, of course, implies a more complex picture of the Pcronist trade union leadership in this period and its relationship with its members and the state than is usually found in the literature. Louise M. Doyon, op. c i t , provides a convincing analysis in this direction: 'While it is certain that the workers' leaders were fully aware that they could not keep their positions without the regime's consent they were equally aware that they could not survive as leaders of their unions without, a t thc minimum, the tacit acquiescence of the mass of their members.' Indeed, the metalworkers' strike of Igjq was a clear indication of the dangers for both the regime and union leadership of a leadership which had lost its standing with its membership.

Rationalisation and Working Class Response

389

to achieve increases in productivity which maintained existing working class social gains. The one potentially important concession the employers won was a clause in the National Agreement confirming that practical recommendations for higher productivity would be put into effect through special productivity agreements signed over and above existing contracts.37N o such agreements were signed, however, in the remaining six months of the Peronist regime. The reasons for the paucity of concrete results for the employers on this fundamental issue are various. Given the extent of s h 1 o~ floor resistance to outright attack in the major areas of employer concern, and given Per6n's growing dependence on the working class and the unions in the face of the disintegration of the original Peronist coalition, there was a limit on how far the state could exert overt pressure on behalf of the employers. On the other hand there was also an ideological iimit as tc how far Peronism could officially espouse the rationalization offensive. Within a general notion of industrial harmony, Peronism conceived of the company as a community of interests where capital and labour each played a necessary functional role in achieving a shared goal. Management and managerial authority in this schema were generally conceived of as 'technical functions', not the coercive exercise of power and sanctions within the productive process. Indeed, there were important elements of Peronist ideology which explicitly denied the validity of such coercion.3RNow, in the first period of the Peronist regime, as was argued above, reality within the factories and official ideology more or less corresponded. It was precisely this correspondance which the productivity campaign now threatened to destroy. Whatever the official efforts to project the campaign as a joint venture to the mutual advantage of both sides, actual working class experience spoke differently. Nor was management too concerned on its part to maintain official fictions and to hide this reality. The official speeches at the Congress of Productivity, for example, while generally couched within the harmonistic tenets of official ideology, still managed to convey the basic message of a need for sacrifices and a radical change of power within the factories. For the Peronist government to have actively and completely identified itself with these logical implications of the campaign would have inevitably undermined the coherence of some of its basic ideological tenets. Not only would this have implied a recognition of the partisan nature of the state but also, within the
37

La Nacidn, I April, 1955.

This is not, of course, a phenomenon peculiar to Peronism. Hyman and Brough provide a general analysis of the ambiguous role of such values in capitalism and the general problems of ideological legitimation relative to the structure of power in capitalist industry. Hyman and Brough, op. cir., p. 210.

38

390 Daniel lames factories, the unmasking - of the fundamentally coercive nature of the social relations therein which Peronism as an ideology firmly denied.3g

B. The rationalixation policy of the military governmelzt, 1955-1958 Under the military government of General Aramburu an attempt was made to deal unequivocally with the entire rationalization and productivity question. Captain Patr6n Laplacette, the military overseer of the CGT, boasted that 'the government proposes to carry out in practice the conclusions arrived at by the Congress of Productivity, which Per6n's government limited itself to enunciating without taking any appropriate measures to ensure their realization. '40 The strategy adopted by the government was twofold. On the one hand there was the use of force by the state and the employers to weaken the union movement generally and the internal commissions in particular. Especially in the year following Aramburu's November coup, there were widespread dismissals of thousands of Peronist activists and the arrest of many under the national security provisions. In addition, Decree 7x07 of April, 1956 banned all those who had exercised leadership or representative posts in the C G T or its member unions from holding any position in the
O n the other hand, the government armed itself with the legal means with which to effect many of the changes for which the employers had been clamouring. The crucial measure was Decree 2739 of February, 1956. Article 8 of the decree authorized labour mobility arising from production reorientation, the implementation of incentive schemes, the right of employers to sign individual productivity agreements with their workers and, finally, the removal of 'those conditions, classifications and clauses which directly or indirectly act against the national necessity to increase prod~ctivity.'~~ What were the concrete effects of the military government's strategy in this area? It is clear that, on one level, the radical shift in the balance of power at the national, political level could not help but be reflected in a change of the balance of forces within the factories. In particular one finds an extensive attack on many of the clauses in the contracts dealing with working
IQ

40 41

42

Juan Carlos Torre has argued that this ambiguity with relation to the productivity campaign was one of the factors contributing to the September I955 COLIP against Peronism. See Juan Carlos Torre, 'The Meaning of Current Workers' Struggles', Latin American Perspectives, Vol. I , No. 3 (1974). La Nacion, 20 February, 1956. For a detailed analysis of this process, see Daniel James, 'Unions and Politics: the development of Peronist trade unionism, 1955-66' (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, . Ch. 3. University of London, 1 ~ 7 9 )Especially Ministerio de Trabajo y Previsi6n; Nuevo Regimen de Remuneraciones y de las Conuenciones Colectivas de Trahajo (Buenos Aires, 1956).

Rationalisalion and TVorking Class Response 39 I conditions which were considered 'hindrances to productivity.' The issue of labour mobility within the factories was, for instance, in the forefront of employer concern since the contracts contained clauses providing certain safeguards for the workers in terms of job classifications and salaries. The award made by the Arbitration Tribunal in the dispute between frigorifiro workers and employers in late 1956 was typical of the way this issue was dealt with by government and employers. It stated that 'the norms concerning the transferring of workers contained in the existing contract limit the possibility of displacing personnel within an establishment which Article 8 of Decree 2739 has authorized.. . .in consequence these norms must be eliminated.'43Similarly one finds the employer concern with absenteeism which had been manifested at the Congress of Productivity now translated into a tightening up of the norms concerning sick leave. However, it is also necessary to recognize that, to a far greater extent than has been commonly realized, the effective changes resulting from this strategy were less clear cut than the employers wished. Thus, while there were extensive removals of many of the 'hindrances to productivity', there was no all embracing, across the board implementation of rationalization schemes, no extensive renewal of the contracts in an overall sense which would have legally enshrined new production arrangements on a national, industry-wide level. This was due to several factors. Partly it may be suggested that the military government tended to share the sympathies and concerns of the rural elite rather than of the industrialists and, although indulging in the rhetoric of the need to reassert managerial control and to increase productivity, they were often ambiguous in practice. This ambiguity was, in fact, present in the very text of Article 8 of Decree 2739. While labour mobility was authorized, providing it did not affect the 'stability, remuneration and category of the worker', the succeeding paragraphs stipulated the removal of all those 'conditions, classifications and clauses' which directly or indirectly hindered productivity; that is, precisely the classifications and clauses which had previously been used by workers to limit the effects of mobility and thus to guarantee their stability, remunerations and categories. Faced with this ambiguity and confusion, much depended on the interpretation given the law by the Arbitration Tribunal and Ministry of Labour officials. There is evidence that their interpretations were less favourable to employers7 desires than might have been expected. One finds, for example, that, faced with the refusal of workers to sign the plant productivity agreements authorized by the Decree, employers
43

Ministerio de Trabajo y Previsi6n Social, Laudo del Tribunal Arbitral, hTo. 6311956, (Buenos Aires, 1 ~ 5 6 ) .

392

Daniel James

tried to get a series of new clauses concerning production arrangements inscribed into the existing contracts. The Arbitration Tribunal seems to have adhered rigidly, however, to the text of the decree which stated that 'the general conditions of work and the classifications of jobs contained in the present contracts are to be reproduced integrally.' Specific clauses and classifications which hindered productivity could thus be removed but no new clauses added. The other factor which much be taken into account in explaining the limited successs in practice of this strategy is simply the degree of workingclass resistance it provoked. The very crudity of the initial attack on working conditions and work place organization provoked a backlash. After an initial period of demoralization following the November coup, one finds by the middle of 1956 the emergence of a network of semi-clandestine internal commissions now led by a new generation of militants with little or no formal union experience prior to 1955. The issues around which these commissions organized were the defence of union organization in the factories and the resistance to attacks on working conditions. Throughout 1956 and 1957 they led a stubborn and bitter defensive action against management's rationalization plans; indeed, the material basis of what is known as the Peronist Resistance of these years was centred precisely on these issues. Moreover, with the official intervention of the formal union structure, the role of organizing and expressing this resistance had, perforce, fallen to the internal commissions. With no other organizational option open to them, workers had relied even more than usual on the commissions. They thus emerged as the basic organism of the working class resistance to both the concrete attack on shop floor conditions and the general anti-Peronist offensive ~ u r s u e dby the g ~ v e r n m e n t Faced . ~ ~ with this disquieting reality and plain evidence by 1957 that the frontal attack on conditions and organization was in fact proving counter-productive, the government's resolve on issues like rationalization inevitably wavered.

C. Rationalization and internal control in the early 1960s It was with the Frondizi government of 1958 to 1962 that we find the most
systematic and successful attempt to resolve this problem for Argentine capitalism. The modernization of Argentine industry, based on the creation of an adequate capital goods sector, the production of intermediate consumer durables and the rationalization of existing light manufacture required the introduction of new production arrangements which would enable the efficient use of much of the new machinery being imported under the 'desar4 4 See Daniel James, op. cit., for analysis of the Resistance.

Rutionalisation and Working Class Response 393 rollista' economic plans of Frondizi and the intensification of output from existing older plant. Thus, we find a concerted attempt by management to shift the balance of forces on the shop floor by dealing with the three main areas of management concern analysed above.45 The concrete measure of managerial and government success in these areas was the introduction of new clauses in the labour contracts signed from 1960 onwards. The new clauses touched on three crucial areas: (I) the introduction of rationalization and incentive schemes, (2) the removal of specific 'hindrances to productivity' particularly in relation to issues such as labour mobility, flexibility and job demarcation, and (3) the definition and limitation of the powers of the internal commissions. The ability of management and state to push through these new contract provisions was itself a product of class struggle in these years at both the factory level and the national level. The general context within which the employers' and government's offensive was pushed through cannot be even outlined within the limits of this article. It must suffice to say that it was carried out, and its provisions embodied in the new contracts, in the wake of a profound working class defeat in 1959 and 1960. Consequent on this defeat was the use of combined state and managerial repression to break the back of the militancy which had done so much to hinder the plans of employers and state under the previous government. With draconian national security provisions at the state's disposal on the one hand and the blacklist ever present on the other, a whole sector of militants were eliminated from the fact~ries.'~
(I) T h e introduction of clauses concerning new production arrangements In the contracts signed in these years we find a series of general clauses dealing with this issue. In the textile industry, after a long and bitter fight in 1959, centred on the workers' refusal to accept management's insistence on tying any wage increase to an acceptance of productivity clauses, union opposition to such conditions was broken. In the new contract, Article 3 stated that
'the norms contained in this article applicable to productivity plans with new work systems shall not be interpreted as hindering or limiting the employers in the exercise of their powers of leadership and organisation which are entirely their own. . . . T h e employers shall direct and organise work in their establishments in
45

46

It would seem probable that the urgency of the matter was increased by the crucial role of foreign capital in desarrollista economic projects. A precondition for the attraction of foreign capital was the establishment of a 'reasonable' balance of power on the factory floor. See Daniel James, op. cit., for an analysis of this process, especially Ch. 4.

394 Daniel James the form which they consider best suits the necessary co-ordination of material elements and labour power with the goal of obtaining optimum levels of prod~ction.'~? In the metalworking industry we find a similar process at work. The contract signed in 1959 after a month-long strike had simply been an emergency increase in wage rates. But, in this industry, too, with constant state and employer attack and a consequent demoralization amongst rank and file and activists, there was a de facto introduction by many employers of the new arrangements. This was initially met by considerable resistance, and by early 1960 there was something like a mass abandonment of incentive schemes by the workforce. The employers retaliated by large scale dismissals and lock-outs which successfully undermined the opposition. By July 1960 the union lendership was in a position to sign a new contract negotiated in a matter of days without a single strike. Its concessions concerning new production arrangements were considerable. Article 83 simply stated: 'The system of bonuses and other forms of incentive schemes do not form a proper matter for this contract. . .the UOM and/or its delegates in the different establishments cannot oppose the revision of existing schemes whan it has become clear that failure to adapt wage systems, methods of work and to renew machinery will detract from the higher goal of giving incentives to optimize p r o d ~ c t i o n . 'Contracts ~~ containing very similar clauses were signed in most other industries in the following years. The implications of such cla~~ses were clear: their very generality implied carte blanche for management in the field of production relations inside the factories. The definition of adequate production standards and effort levels was now effectively the sole prerogative of management. Another related implication is also clear - the undermining of the practice and principle of mutuality. This was of crucial importance for employers since any formal right to set time rates and incentive schemes would be limited in practice if workers and their representatives could insist on joint consultation on these issues. This was, indeed, an area where the workers clearly perceived the impact of management's strategy. As we have seen, it had been a basic issue of contention since the early 1950s. It was also the centre of the last ditch resistance of the metal workers to management's growing rationalization pressure in late 1959 and early 1960. The metalworkers' strike of March 1960 was basically a rejection by the workers of employer attempts to alter
47

48

Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad Social, Convencio'n Colectiva de Trabajo, No. 155/60 (Buenos Aires, 1960). Ministerio de Trabajo y Seguridad Social, Convencidn Colectiva de Trabajo, No. 55/60 (Buenos Aires, 1960).

Rationalisation and Working Class Response

395

unilaterally rates for the job. The metalworkers claimed that any rate above the normal had to be agreed to by the workers and they instituted an abandonment of incentive schemes and a return to 'normal' work to press their case." Their defeat on this issue was formalized and perpetuated in clause 83 of the contract signed a few months later.
(2)

T h e introduction of clauses removing 'hindrances t o productivity.'

The most important employer gains in this field were those concerning labour mobility within the plants. T o cite two examples: Article 1 1 of the frigorifico workers' contract now stated that 'when the circumstances make it necessary the companies will arrange loans and transfers of personnel to any other section or task.'50 Similarly Article 2 of the textile contract referring to the Tintorerias Industriales, Estamperins branch of the industry authorized 'the displacement of the workforce within the factory, originating from the reorganization of work in order to obtain greater productivity. It must be understood that permanent displacement must be in accord with the principle of industrial rationali~ation.'~~ Now, the importance of labour mobility for the employers must be understood within the general context of the detailed job classifications built into Argentine labour contracts since 1946. Wage scales were related nationally in these contracts to the different levels of classification and job description contained in the contracts. Of course, there was a tendency for these classifications to be continuously modified or outdated by new technology which generally tended to lower skill levels and, therefore, de facto, change a job's classification. However, the de jure classifications in the contracts still determined wage levels and, given clauses providing wage stability guarantees in case of job changes and generally limiting mobility, this evidently acted against one of the main incentives for management to introduce new technology - the lowering of labour costs. Similarly, the existing job classifications and mobility safeguards could be used by workers to maintain existing manning levels when one of the main aims of new technology and production arrangements was precisely to lower such levels. Finally, the existence of the job categories could be the basis for costly demarcation disputes as workers used the existing job descriptions to oppose new production arrangements. It was primarily in this context that mobility was important to employers since increased labour mobility was an effective way of overcoming workers'
49

50 61

Documentacidn y Informacidn Laboral, No. I , March 10 1960. Conuencidn Colectiua de Trabajo, No. 41/64, op. cit. Convencidn Colectiva de Trabajo, No. 155160, op. cit.

396

Daniel lames

defences based on the fixed job categories in the contracts. The other major alternative would have been a frontal, national assault on these formal categories. This would, however, have been unwieldy and expensive in terms of the opposition it would have provoked and also of doubtful efficacy. Mobility, on the other hand, enabled employers to bypass existing job categories and in practice create new ones on a plant by plant, ad hoc basis as fitted their individual needs, without any formal nationally-negotiated modification of job descriptions and categories. It is clear that this issue presented itself as a problem fundamentally for companies in the more traditional areas of industry - Textiles, Meatpacking, Food Processing, much of the Metalworking industry. In the new, more dynamic sectors of the economy established in the late 1950s and early 1g6os, employers starting from scratch could install job classifications and general work arrangements which corresponded to the new technology. The government aided them in this endeavour by authorizing, an increasing number of individual plant or company contracts, signed outside the national industry wide contracts. Technically advanced companies could thus establish classification and work systems adequate to their needs." In the traditional industries, where the problem of outdated equipment was most crucial, renovation and rationalization had to take place within the framework of existing traditional norms and already established categories. It was here that labour mobility could be used most advantageously by employers. The process of removing more minor 'hindrances to productivity' which had started under the military government also proceeded apace. This involved the removal, as we have seen, of many clauses in the contracts establishing what might be called the general conditions of employment and which, while apparently minor, in fact represented a considerable cumulative, worsening of work conditions.

( 3 ) T h e definition and limitation of the potvers of the shop floor delegates Management and government concern with the scope and power of the internal commissions had not diminished since the Congress of P r o d u c t i ~ i t y . ~ ~
52

63

This was the case not only in the new dynamic sectors. T h e most modern sectors within traditional areas of manufacturing also adopted this tactic. Thus many of the major companies i n the Textile industry, such as Alpargatas and Ducilo, signed individual company contracts with the union from 1960 on. While we lack detailed figures as to the precise extent of the internal commissions within Argentine industry, it is clear that they were a widespread phenomenon, particularly in traditional manufacturing industries with a high rate of unionization. Elections were, theoretically, open to all union members and candidates were usually grouped in rival 'lists' representing the different tendencies into which the Argentine union movement was divided at a national level. Thus, a typical contest

397 Galileo Puente, Frondizi's sub-secretary of labour, in a speech which almost exactly mirrored Gelbard's of five years earlier, defined the situation in the following terms: 'When I took over the problem of labour relations I found anarchy, abuses and outrages of all sorts from the workers. The employers had lost control of the factories; the internal commissions ran everything; those who should obey were in fact giving the orders. . .the employers must therefore re-take control of the f a c t ~ r i e s . ~ ~ It was in the wake of the defeats of 1959 that formal limitations on, and control of, shop floor organization were accepted by the unions and built into the contracts. As with the rationalization clauses, this was largely a question of putting a formal stamp of recognition on a process that was increasingly a reality inside the factories. Internal commissions were already in considerable disarray owing to both management and government repression, the growth of unemployment and general working class demoralization. The metalworking industry set the pace in this process. Although not touched on in the emergency contract that ended the strike of 1959, it seems highly probable that the subject was broached in the negotiations. A week before the end of the strike, the employers' organization the Federacidn Argentina de la Zndustria Metalhrgica, made public its own project for the regulation of the commissions. The nature and extent of management concern on this issue is clearly evidenced in these proposals. The main employer suggestions were that: a delegate should not present any problem to management if he had not previously gone first to his supervisor and then waited 5 days; a delegate should be at least 25 years of age, with 2 years experience in the factory and four in the union, together with a good conduct record; delegates were not to be allowed to oppose the orders of management concerning the arrangement of production; shop floor meetings were not to take place within work hours, and delegates were not to be allowed out of their section without written permission from the head of their section.55
in the 19Gos would see a list supported by the national Peronist leadership, a rival dissident Peronist list and perhaps one supported by Communists. T h e list which won the majority of shop delegates and therefore controlled the 'cuerpo de delegados' for the factory as a whole went on to control the 'comisidn interna de reclamos' - the internal commission. Although it is clear that shop floor elections were by no means immune to the sort of undemocratic practices often associated with national union elections in Argentina, it would seem reasonable to maintain that membership participation in these elections was generally considerably greater than in the national union elections. Speech of Galileo Puente to the Circulo Argentina de Estudios sobre Organizacidn Industrial, included in Documentos del Plenario Nacional de las 62 Organizaciones, 2 0 May, 1960, Buenos Aires, in mimeo. Palabra Obrera, 22 October, 1959.

Rationalisation and W o r k i n g Class Response

64

66

398 Daniel lames

The contract signed in July rgGo included many of the points of the original management proposal, although some of their suggestions had been watered down. Article 82 of the contract laid down in detail the proportion of delegates to workers in a plant, the requirements a delegate needed to meet in terms of age and experience, the procedure an internal commission had to use in dealing with employers, the specific areas of appropriate concern for a delegate. Finally, strict limits were placed on a delegate's ability to move around a factory - written permission stating the exact purpose had to be obtained from a superior in order to move out of his own shop. Again, similar restrictions were to be found in most of the other contracts signed in other industries in the following years. The strictness of control varied somewhat from contract to contract. While the definitions of legitimate areas of delegates' intervention were fairly consistent, the stipulations concerning the ratio of delegates to workers varied considerably. At one extreme one finds the reasonably liberal provisions of the metalworkers' contract which provided for one delegate for every 30 workers when there were more than 50 workers in a plant. At the other extreme one has the meat packing industry where article 19 of the contract stated that the number of delegates should not exceed one for every 150 workers, or portion greater than 75. The impact of these clauses was not solely in the concrete limitations contained in the text, though these were important. Clauses like that of the meatpacking industry cited above effectively meant, for instance, that many sections within a frigorifico would have no delegate, subdelegate or commission per section. Previously each section and subsection within the industry had elected its own delegate. An idea of the effect of this clause on the representative structure of a union within a Irigorifico can be gained if one bears in mind that that a moderate to large size frigorifico of 1,300 workers would be entitled to 8 delegates according to the new contract. In addition, however, the very fact that the legitimate constituency and mode of functioning of the delegates were now defined formally was itself a limitation of their powers. As noted above, it was precisely the lack of any formal definition of their powers or nature which had so irked employers before. Now they had formal, legal criteria against which to measure, and control, delegate activity.

D.Conclusion
What can the preceding analysis teIl us in terms of the concerns outlined in the introduction? \SThat, concretely, were the implications of the process we have described for issues such as the possibilities for effective autonomous

399 rank and file activity, the creation of organizational structures to express this activity and the consequent possibility of effectively challenging oligarchic union leadership control ? It is clear, on one level, that the clauses specifically defining the functions and limiting the areas of concern of the shop floor delegates restricted the possibility of effective rank and file activity. There was, however, also a less obvious but more fundamental result of the productivity campaign as far as the prospects for real rank and file activity were concerned. The new clauses introduced in the contracts from the early 1960s on gave the employers a free hand concerning production arrangements and work systems. In doing this, a whole series of issues around which rank and file interest in union activity could have been built were, de jure, precluded from the internal commissions' area of legitimate concern. Shop floor organization to be viable and healthy needs to base itself on areas of immediate concern to the worker. The strength of the commissions during the resistance to the military government after 1955 had been precisely based on their perception by the rank and file as the only viable means of defending shop floor conditions. This whole area of activity was now undercut. Issues on which delegates and/or commissions had previously bargained, and in doing so gained strength, were now removed from the legitimate constituency of the commissions. Grievance procedures formed a fundamental means of enforcing - this situation. Strictly speaking, highly formalized grievance procedure had existed in the contracts since 1946; in practice, however, delegates had often been able to take advantage of their power within a plant and the fact that they were not formally included in such procedures to resolve workers' Now, however, with the new poblems directly at th; point of contracts of the early 1g6os, they were oficially incorporated into the grievance procedure, being the lowest rung of a carefully structured hierarchy of bodies through which a grievance had to pass. The ultimate resolution was placed firmly in the hands of top union officials and employers' representatives in conjunction with the Ministry of Labour." In addition, many contracts also contained clauses specifically committing the workers to working under the new conditions while their complaint went through procedure. Thus, the issue of worker dissatisfaction with new production arrangements, or, in fact, any other aspect of their working conditions, was removed from the hands of their direct, on-the-spot representatives. While this cut down the
-

Rationalisation and Working Class Response

66

Of course, it could well be that, given certain circumstances, it would be in management's interests to resolve grievances directly at the point of production. This would be particularly the case where there was only weak shop floor organization. Conversely, grievance procedure could be used by workers as a protection against management.

400 Daniel James possibility of work place disruption of production, it also greatly limited the scope for the potential activity of the internal commissions. The objective possibilities for the internal commissions to play a dominant role in organizing and expressing working class aspirations and grievances within the factories in the 1960s were generally bleak." Moreover, it may be suggested that this trend was compounded by the very nature of the productivity schemes introduced at this time. Payment by result schemes often some form of piece work - have in some exceptional circumstances become the basis for strong rank and file organization. This was the case, for example, in the British engineering industry after the Second World War.68 In Argentina, however, this potentially positive result of payment by result schemes was largely precluded since the very context within which they were to be implemented was now deemed management's sole concern. Indeed, in many cases, even the setting of bonus rates were considered by management to be their sole prerogative. In the metalworking industry, for example, it seems clear that, in practice, article 83 of the contract, which started by saying that 'systems of bonuses or any other forms of incentives do not constitute a proper concern of this contract', was usually taken as giving the employer the right to unilaterally set the rate for the job. This meant that only the largely divisive, negative aspects of payment by result were felt, which inevitably had a deleterious effect on shop floor organization. Sectional negotiation over the rate for the job, which was, for example, crucial in the development of a strong shop floor organization in Britain in the 1950s and 1g60s, was thus largely absent in important areas of Argentine industry in this period. What was left was often simply the discipline of the piece rate imposed by a victorious management. The use by shop floor representatives of the rate for the job as a bargaining tool with management over changes in production schedules such as speed up, shift arrangements and labour mobility, and the building up of a strong rank and file organization around such bargaining power was simply not possible in Argentina:j"rst, because of the general economic situation and, secondly, because issues such as mobility and the rate for the job were, as we have seen, specifically removed from both national and local union control. The ill effects of productivity agreements on shop floor cohesion in this situation were clearly perceived by many militants. One finds the constantly-voiced concern
It may be argued, too, that the very nature of the collective bargaining system in Argentina - particularly its highly centralized, national emphasis - compounded this situation. See Tony Cliff, The Employers' Offensive (Pluto Press, London, 1970). 6 " e e Huw Beynon, Worrjing for Ford (Penguin, London, 1973).
E7

"

401 by workers in the early 1960sthat rationalization was chiefly a management device to turn worker against worker. The more perceptive also noted that productivity clauses and payment by result also lessened the workers' interest and participation in the union. What are the implications of this sort of analysis for the question of union bureaucracies and their domination over the rank and file? Juan Carlos Torre, in a pioneering article, has argued for a multi-faceted approach to the issue of the sources of union bureaucracy control and domination of its membership. In particular he has argued for 'the need for defining the concept of union bureaucracy, complementing the current concept, which emphasizes unilateral control of political resources (institutional and coercive ones) with another one which analyses the place of a demobilized working class as a vehicle for the subordinate relationship established with the bureau~racy.'~~ ! would argue that the implications of the sort of analysis we have been pursuing lie precisely in the direction of helping to explain this 'subordinate relationship established with the bureaucracy'. There was undoubtedly a large element of quid pro q u o involved in the acceptance by the union leaderships of rationalization. In return for the control of the internal commissions and the acceptance of rationalization, concrete benefits were gained from the leaderships' point of view. Not least was the formal recognition of the functions of responsible trade unionism. The provisions of the contracts underlined this. For the first time since the early 1g5os, the union leadership could be seen to have achieved the comprehensive renovation of the clauses in the contracts. The clauses concerning areas such as maternity benefit, child birth bonuses, additional payments for years of service, all of which had remained frozen since the early 1g5os, were now brought up to date. The bargaining and administrative functions of the unions were not fundamentally weakened by the acceptance of rationalization. Basically, the productivity campaign was aimed at shop floor power, not at the unions per se. In addition the union leadership itself obviously had an interest in controlling this power. The imposition of managerial control and the weakening of delegate power implied a greater facility for the union leadership in the control of its own membership. In fact, by writing the control of the internal commissions into the contracts, the employers succeeded in identifying their interest in the matter with the union leadership. The onus for policing the commissions was placed squarely on the shoulders of the union leadership as executors of the responsibilities assumed by the union side in the contract.
60

Rationalisation and Working Class Response

Juan Carlos Torre, op. cit.

402 Daniel James This does not imply, however, that what was involved was to be explained in terms of leadership 'betrayal'. While the productivity offensive was premised on the destruction of the possibility of autonomous rank and file activity, there was a basic ambiguity even at this level. In many ways, the leaderships' acceptance of rationalization mirrored the rank and file's own perception. It should be borne in mind, too, that the delegates themselves were granted a certain place in the hierarchy by the new contracts. If they were willing to accept the crucial restrictions imposed on their activity, then certain rights and recognition were accorded to them. Similarly, it is clear that, at a time of generally falling real wages, much of the union membership was increasingly willing to accept productivity clauses in return for wage rises. The implication of this analysis for the question of the relationship of rank and file activity and union bureaucracy is, therefore, clear. If we are to achieve a more profound understanding of the interrelationship between leadership and its constituency, we must accept that the working class struggles on terrains and within contexts where there objectively exist possibilities for meaningful action and where its class experience leads it to perceive such possibilities. Our argument has been that the prime result of the rationalization drive which culminated in the early 1960s was radically to shift the balance of forces on the shop floor in favour of employers and to make the objective possibilities for rank and file activity centred on the internal commissions very poor. Naturally enough, the union leadership could and did abet and take full advantage of this process but it was in no sense the prime cause of the malaise which affected the internal commissions for most of the 1960s. Finally, I would suggest that analysis along these lines - partial though my presentation of it has been - has the advantage of moving us away from two metaphysical abstracts which have dominated so much of the debate on Peronist trade unionism and the working class - a working class that always struggles and strives to organize itself independently and a union leadership which always betrays and represses these aspirations.