Atzeni_Book.pdf

8/10/2019 Atzeni_Book.pdf

1/168

1

1An Introduction to TheoreticalApproaches in the Study ofWorkers Collective Action

The historical and theoretical importanceof workers struggles

This book contributes to the debate over the nature of collectiveaction and the dynamics of workplace conflict by presenting the his-tory of a cycle of workers resistance, set in Argentina. The forms,time, sequence and outcomes of cases of conflict are highly influ-enced by different factors, related to the socio-political context andto the organizational power of the actors involved. Notwithstandingthese contingencies, studies of workplace resistance can go beyondthe detailed description of the specific case once it is placed withina broader framework.

Here Silvers (2003) comparative historical analysis of world labourunrest has helped to locate workers struggles in a transhistoricaldimension and to show the interconnections existing between thehistorical development of the capitalist mode of production andworkers resistance to it. Whether following the Polanyian pendu-lum swing of social resistance or the Marxian view of workplace-based resistance, the capitalist drive for profitability is time and

again put under pressure by workers struggles, forcing employersto devise new strategies to reduce costs and maintain profitability.In this attempt, four dynamics can be identified: spatial, techno-logical/organizational, product and financial. The first involves therelocation of production activities to countries and regions with low

Atzeni_Ch01 indd 1Atzeni_Ch01.indd 1 3/30/2010 3:58:12 PM3/30/2010 3:58:12 PM

PROOF


2/168

2 Workplace Conflict

labour costs. The second points to the transformation of the workprocess by the introduction of new technology. The third con sidersthe possibility for capital to invest in new industrial sectors and, thefourth, that of shifting altogether from industrial production tofinancial speculation.

Silvers reconstruction of the dynamics of worldwide labour resist-ance is important in many ways for workplace studies like the onepresented in this book. First of all it is a reminder that labour move-ment action is crucial not just to defend and improve the conditionsof specific groups of subaltern workers but also to generate, throughexample, social change and the progressive emancipation of societies.Second, the fact that labour unrest is a constant within the historyof the capitalist system of production and a source for its perpetualinnovation is a guarantee against pessimist discourses that dominatein the mainstream IR/HRM of the Global North about the demise ofcollective action and workers self-organizing. As Silver rightly put it:

... revolutions in the organisation of production and social relationsmay disorganise some elements of the working class, even turning someinto endangered species as the transformations associated with con-temporary globalization have doubtless done. But new agencies and

sites of conflict emerge along with new demands and forms of struggle,reflecting the shifting terrain on which labor-capital relations develop (Silver 2003, p. 19).

Third, the use of the four dynamics mentioned above as a frameworkfor analysis, helps to establish connections between factors that havea real transnational dimension and thus to look at worker mobiliza-tions in a more comparative perspective, which is less dependent onnational and/or contextual explanations.

In this sense the context in which the cases of mobilization pre-sented in this book are located is paradigmatic of the pattern ofcapitalist development in the global era, being based on two of thedynamics indicated by Silver: the geographical relocation of trans-national capital and the change to new working practices. The 1990ssaw in Argentina, as in many developing countries dependent oncredit from international financial institutions, the large-scaleintroduction of neo-liberal economic policies. These included work-ers being made redundant as a result of the privatization of public


PROOF


3/168

Framing Workers Collective Action 3

companies, fiscal incentives for transnational capital investmentand, most importantly, reforms of the labour law system directed atlegitimizing flexibility in both the workplace and the labour marketand curbing workers organizations financial and bargaining power.Workers have reacted to this situation by defending their rights andsalaries and trying to avoid turning into an endangered species. Theresponses have been different depending on the bargaining positionof each group of workers. Groups of jobless workers became the driv-ing force of the movement of the unemployed, using the roadblockas a weapon of struggle (Dinerstein 2001); workers in the formal sec-tor of the economy used the workplace as a site of conflict, with tradeunion- or grassroots-led actions (Atzeni and Ghigliani 2007b).

A second important contribution to assessing the theoreticalimportance of workers resistance within capitalism comes fromthe Marxist tradition of Industrial Relations (IR) and from the workof Hyman (1971; 1975; 1984; 1989; 2006) in particular. Crucial tounderstanding why workers periodically contest the set of rules andconditions that regulate their employment is a consideration of therole of workers within capitalism and of the power relations existingwithin this system.

Contrary to ideas of social stratification and a tendency to class

homogenization, a profound class division exists in capitalist soci-eties, not just in terms of access to consumer goods but also in termsof the power position that the possession of material wealth brings.Thus, if inequality of wealth pervades the system, inequality ofopportunities will reproduce the same unbalanced society, in whichthe interests of those who depend on a salary to live will always be atodds with the business imperative for profit.

While inequality and the class divide are important to framethe social environment of worker resistance, the fact that labour istreated as a commodity produces conflicts over income distributionand job security. As to the first aspect, the wages and conditions whichthe worker naturally seeks as a means to a decent life are a cost to theemployer, cutting into his profits, and he will equally naturally resist pres-sure for improvements . As regards job security, because the employermust regard labour as a cost to be minimised, it is in his interest to retaina worker in employment only while it is profitable to do so. This meansthat workers jobs are always at the mercy of economic and technologicalvagaries (Hyman 1975, pp. 1920).


PROOF


4/168


There is, thus, a permanent asymmetry in the labour-capitalexchange relation. While free wage labourers depend on the joband are often constrained to sell their labour under externallyimposed conditions, employers are often free to choose the workersthey want and to establish the conditions of work. Most important isthe fictitious nature of the labour as a commodity the fact that theemployer is buying the ability to work, not work in itself, implies hisright to exert control over the labour process and the working day inorder to maximize workers efforts. The time during which the workerworks is the time during which the capitalist consumes the labour powerhe has bought from him. If the worker consumes his disposable time forhimself, he robs the capitalist (Marx 1976, p. 342).

The exercise of managerial control, depending as it does on prof-itability rather than on humanity, might in itself be perceived asauthoritarian and coercive, and thus be a potential source of con-flict. But once this is combined with workers parallel loss of controland autonomy in the labour process, and separation from the fruitsof their work, then alienation, too, contributes to increasing thepotential for conflict. Work, instead of being a purposeful consciousactivity that the worker enjoys as the free play of his own physical andmental powers (Marx 1976, p. 284) , transforms itself into an unpleas-

ant, exhausting and dehumanizing activity.Once we consider the number of potential areas in which the inter-ests of workers and employers differ, it should not come as a surpriseto see the employment relationship as a field of struggle in which aninvisible frontier of control is defined and redefined in a continuous pro-cess of pressure and counter pressure, conflict and accommodation, overtand tacit struggle (Hyman 1975, p. 26).

The idea of a basic opposition is also shared by a materialist per-spective that, trying to overcome Marxists paradigms, sustains theview that capitalism is exploitative in that surplus value is generated underthe constraints of the accumulation process (Edwards 1986, p. 321) andthus that structured antagonism, a notion that avoids the view thatcapitalists and workers are always opposing classes supporting totallydifferent interests, is the term that refers to the basic split between cap-ital and labour (Edwards 1986, p. 55). It cannot be denied that conflictis not always open, that workers and managers often find forms ofcoexistence and mutual adaptation and that their concrete aims canalso overlap. Moreover, even from a statistical point of view, conflict


PROOF


5/168


is not something that happens daily, and nor is exploitation in termsof surplus value extraction for workers a self-evident concept.

Thus, the existence of a structured antagonism or of a conflictof interests between labour and capital makes workers resistance arational action, although it remains just a potentiality. Its transhis-toricity, however, should lead us to consider the different forms inwhich it appears, the degree of strength and collective organizationrequired and the institutional and ideological limits imposed on it.

Forms of collective actions: spontaneous or organized?

Strikes have often been considered as almost synonymous withcollective action, and this is certainly with good reason as strikesundoubtedly represent the most evident sign of the strength andpower exerted by workers in defence of their r ights. The actual use of,or, more often, the threat to use, the strike weapon is almost a neces-sary condition for the existence of trade unions. Strikes, in disrupt-ing production, do not just produce di rect harm to the employer, butoften also to other members of society. Hence, the idea that strikesrepresent anti-social behaviour and should be repressed has oftenfound space in political debate and legislative systems. Thus strikes

operate at two levels. On the one hand, they are the most evidentsign of workers lack of satisfaction with their salaries and workingconditions, and are part of the power struggle at the frontier of con-trol. On the other, because societies depend on workers willingnessto work, strikes have often also been used both symbolically to rep-resent opposing class interests in societies and strategically as a keyto social revolution (as with Rosa Luxemburgs mass strike thesis).Moreover, because of their importance for both workplace relationsand politics, strikes have been documented and registered by stat-istical analysis and thus have been the object of measurement andlongitudinal studies (see for instance Franzosi 1995; Kelly 1998; Vander Velden et al. 2007).

Compared to other forms of collective action like collective sab-otage, working to rule or boycotts, strikes are normally more costly,and involve complex issues of group collective identity and respectfor formal rules and procedures. Because of this, strikes normallyrequire a consistent level of organization and, as an implicit corol-lary of this, the existence of formal representative trade unions. The

AQ1


PROOF


6/168


logical association and sequence industrial conflict, strikes, tradeunions may certainly represent an important pattern in the con-struction of collective action, but it applies mainly to workers in theformal sector in countries with an established system of industrialrelations where conflict and trade unions have been institutional-ized to a very high degree. The use of this model, which we can callinstitutionalized collective action, is, however, unsatisfactory; first,because it leaves outside the focus of analysis the majority of workersin the world who are employed in the informal sector of the eco-nomy where association by workers is difficult or forbidden; second,because it does not take into account unofficial walkouts in sectorswhere workers are formally represented, and third, by focusing ontrade unions as organizers of collective action, it misses out the theor-etical importance of workers own capacity for mobilization.

In the third edition of his famous book Strikes, Richard Hymanrightly pointed to the fact that the untold story is that the typical

British strike is both unoff icial and unconstitutional and this is becauseworkers are unlikely to feel a moral obligation to a procedure which theyconsider discriminatory or obsolete ... workers consent ought not to betaken for granted, by managers or trade union officers and thus that Amore fundamental reason for unconstitutional stoppages is inherent in the

employment relationship itself (Hyman 1984, pp. 3940).The relevance of these forms of collective action in which workersmobilising power is initially expressed in a spontaneous and unco-ordinated manner is both historical and theoretical. Cyclically butrelentlessly, grassroots movements and spontaneous workers protestshave appeared in many countries and at different times. From theRussian revolutionary soviets to the consigli di fabbrica in Italy duringthe so-called Biennio Rosso 191921, from the Resistencia Peronista(195557) to the Marxist-oriented clasista rank and file struggles inthe 1970s in Argentina, from the Pilkingtons strike in 1970 to therecent refiner workers walk-out in the UK, from Caterpillars workersin France kidnapping their managers to the reappearance of factoryoccupations and sit-ins in Argentina, Italy and the UK, workers col-lective action has often followed patterns different from institution-alized collective action.

Moreover, the frontier between spontaneity and organization isnot always clear. An action born extemporaneously among a groupof workers needs to reach a minimum level of organization if it aims


PROOF


7/168


to be sustained over a certain length of time. By contrast, a plannedaction can spontaneously take a different direction in the course ofthe struggle. Specific workplace dynamics, different conditions ofthe labour process and workers more or less favourable positions in theeconomic system may all be factors that contribute further to thedetermination of the type of collective action available to workers.

The recurrent historical appearance of cases of spontaneous,grassroots-based mobilization and the different forms in which col-lective action, following the shifting terrain of the labour-capitalrelation, takes place are important in two ways. On the one hand,they clearly indicate that a solid basis for the theoretical understand-ing of collective action lies in emphasizing the structural conditionsthat generate it. On the other, there is a long-standing need to envis-age and develop those workers representative organizations that canbuild on this system-generated resistance.

While this book will contribute to the theoretical aspects of col-lective action and will aim with this to foster a militant approachto workers organizing themselves, it will not be in the direct scopeof this work to participate in the wider debate about strategies forrenewal or revitalization of the labour movement. However, asregards the historical role of trade unions as organizers of the work-

ing class and as political actors, and the resilience and adaptability ofthis form of association to changes in production and societies, the-oretical discussions about workers collective action are necessarilyassociated with different approaches to the issue of trade unionism.In the next section I will thus reconsider some of these approaches,particularly, by looking at the pendulum swings of trade unionsbetween institutionalisation and worker emancipation.

The function of trade unionism and collective action

Trade unions are profoundly contradictory and complex organiza-tions whose nature and function are highly debated. On the onehand, they have historically been the channel through which work-ers grievances find expression, thus representing and defendingworkers interests at workplace and political levels. On the other,because this defence has always implied negotiations over the priceof labour, trade unions are necessarily invested with an intermediaryrole in the labour-capital relationship.


PROOF


8/168


Revolutionary Marxists views of trade unions have often focusedon the contradictions generated by this intermediary role, movingfrom pessimism to optimism, depending on the different historicaltime and context, seeing trade unions function either as inexorablylimited to negotiations over the price of labour or as central to organ-izing workers resistance (Hyman 1971). From Lenins thesis of thelimits of trade unions economic struggles in generating a revolution-ary consciousness to Trotskys attack on bureaucratic leaderships,from Luxemburgs emphasis on rank and file militancy and thespontaneity of struggle vis--vis the centralization of trade unions toGramscis critique of trade unions as capitalist institutions, what allthese revolutionary Marxists views evidence is probably the tensionand duality existing in the nature of trade unions: an expression ofboth working class power and the search for compromise.

Among the revolutionary Marxists, Gramscis (1969) analysis ofthe complex nature of t rade unionism is probably the most compre-hensive, not just because it establishes direct links between struc-tural and ideological determinations but also because it envisagesin the factory council an alternative working class organization.Starting f rom the consideration that trade unions, as organizationswhose main aim is to negotiate the price of labour, are imbued with

capitalist ideology, he then explains the conservatism and bureau-cracy dominant in them as a function of the structural conditionsbelonging to their daily operation, rather than just depending onthe material benefits of specific individuals. From this perspective,employers recognition of trade unions as bargaining agents, invol-ving elements of trust and respect for agreement, created the condi-tions for imposing discipline on the workforce and thus for reducingthe room for democratic participation. Further evidence of thistop-down decision-making tendency was also to be found in theincreased specialized role required for negotiating at the collectivebargaining table. Overall, in Gramscis view, by accepting the role ofnegotiating over the price of labour, trade unions were also accept-ing the imposition of a system of rules created in a way functionalto bourgeois ideology. In this sense, the structure of a trade unionembodied certain ideas about democracy, authority and bureaucracy; themachinery of collective bargaining embodied the idea of two sides whoregularly met to exchange bids and demands, and who normally reachedan agreement (Kelly 1988, p. 64).


PROOF


9/168


Thus the logic of the employment relation as a market exchangebetween parts, with the trade unions acceptance of the bargain-ing system, is not just ideologically reinforced but, more concretely,imposed by binding workers to a respect for rules and discipline.

Gramscis emphasis on the factory councils as alternative work-ers organizations may be criticised for not considering the extent towhich institutionalization can penetrate even these class-orientedorganizations (Kelly 1988, p. 67). However two aspects here inter-est us: Gramscis vision of the factory councils as workplace-basedorganizations that transcend skill and sector divisions to includerepresentation from the whole workforce and the need to contestcapitalists control of the labour process.

The first aspect, talking of a class-based, horizontal, open anddemocratic organization, should be reconsidered in any reformula-tion of trade union renewal, especially in labour market contextsthat generate fragmentation and division among workers. The focuson the labour process as workers day to day field of struggle is, atthe same time, an antidote to institutionalization a necessary strat-egy for trade unions to go beyond the logic of employment relationsand the basis for developing workers collective identity. I would saythat the importance of these aspects lies in the counter-hegemonic

discourse that they help to frame: identifying both an alternativeand a strategy to follow. This seems particularly important when weconsider that even grassroots forms of organizations, often forgedby conflict and more prone actively to contest the status quo, havehistorically been trapped by contradictions similar to those experi-enced by traditional trade unions.

In this sense, following Darlington (1994) and his frameworkfor shop stewards actions, three contradictory tendencies may beidentified: resistance/accommodation in relation to management,democracy/bureaucracy in relation to members and dependence/independence in relation to full-time union officials. However,each of these polar oppositions must be understood not as a fixed pro-

position in terms of an either/or logic but constantly in motion reflectingand at the same time changing the social conditions of which it is part(Darlington 1994, p. 33). This motion and dynamism reflect not justof the shifting balance of power at the workplace but also the gen-eral opposition between classes at the level of society. As a result,the contradictory tendencies identified above will always appear in


PROOF


10/168


different combinations in relation to both general and specific con-ditions. However, in a system that reproduces conditions that favourand strengthen the power of capital:

... the most important factor pushing the balance of class forces in favourof the working class is their self-activity, organization and independentinitiative through collective struggle in the workplace. It follows that thedevelopment of cohesive and self-confident shop steward organizations,able to apply pressure directly at the point of production, is a crucialfactor in shifting the balance of workplace power and permitting furtherinroads into the prerogatives of capital (Darlington 1994, p. 34).

This emphasis on workplace structures as vehicles for the betterdefence of workers interests, while not rejecting the necessity to usethe institutional power of trade unions to gain advantages, is clearlya contribution to the existing debate on trade union renewal thatgoes in the same counter-hegemonic direction used by Gramsci inthe idea of the factory councils. As recently argued by Cohen (2006)in her call to rebuild labour movement power, we do not need tolook at a from above vision of social movement unionism but ratherat ways of strengthening the layer of militant activists born out of

that grass-roots resistance [that] is almost always forthcoming at differenttime, in different sections, even in the most discouraging circumstances (Cohen 2006, p. 2). In this perspective, what is required, then, is ademocratically led organization that could develop horizontal struc-tures, a class awareness and independence from capital union as amovement rather than an institution.

While this vision of workers organization and representation playsan important part in setting a counter-hegemonic discourse and prac-tice, especially with respect to pluralist approaches to trade unionismand labour movement renewal, the contradictory tendencies in whicheven grassroots organizations are often trapped impose further reflec-tions on the role, meaning and concrete possibility of forms of direct,democratic workplace unionism. What formal instruments should beused to guarantee participation in a context that constantly tends todivide workers in terms of skills and salary conditions? How to avoidthe shift from militancy to bureaucracy in union leaderships? Whilegrassroots-led mobilizations and the experience of struggle clearlylead to consciousness, how can this be maintained and the spaces

AQ2


PROOF


11/168


for worker participation widened? Can there be a strategy for workeraction that aims to go beyond capital, promotes workers control of thelabour process and proposes alternative forms of work organization?

The construct ion of workers representative organizations is fraughtwith difficulties and open to multiple determinants and opposingforces, with workers bargaining power influenced by companiesactive mobilization, by the role of the state or the level of techno-logical development and labour market segmentation. Reformistor revolutionary approaches to trade unionism that in turn reflectsocio-political visions may add further complexity.

Because of all these complexities and the conflicting context of thecapital-labour relationship, the history of workers organizing them-selves has always been characterized by a pendulum swing betweeninstitutionalisation and worker emancipation, between a search forcompromise and recognition on the one hand and direct action onthe other, reflecting power relations at the workplace and in society.This is nothing new, at least not for all those who see changes at workand improvements in labour conditions in dialectical terms along withworking peoples struggles. But paradoxically, what all these struggleshave produced, by strengthening the organizational and institutionalpower of their representative organizations too, is the transformation

of trade unions in a fetish. Thus, in terms of collective action, the mul-tiple expressions of workers opposition to the rule of capital disappearand leave room only for trade unions organized strikes. Discourseson workers self-activity and self- management are normally dismissed.Participation in internal decision-making processes is reduced to rep-resentative democracy. Workers power is built not on active opposi-tion and mobilization but in lobbying political parties.

The corollary to this situation, in which everything starts andfinishes with a trade union, is the mixed sense of impotence andpessimism produced on the moderate left by sharp declines in tradeunions in the biggest industrial countries. Unfortunately, this hasproduced a further reformist approach, of which increased flexibilityand precariousness for workers are just two aspects.

The approach of the research and the plan of the book

The debates presented in this introductory chapter set the broad the-oretical context in which studies of workers struggles and collective


PROOF


12/168


action should be located. I have first considered the historical andtheoretical determinations of workers struggles. The structuralantagonism and conflict of interests existing between capital andlabour have in themselves the potentiality to produce spontaneousresistance. While this is a natural outcome of workplace relations,workers collective action can have different forms and degrees ofstrength, depending, too, on the articulation of geographical, his-torical, technological and financial dynamics. This resistance oftenresults in the constitution of collective organizations representingworkers. Following from this, I have then considered the historicaltendency of conflating all forms of collective action into the strikeand consequently of establishing a model of institutionalized collect-ive action based on the logical association and sequence of indus-trial conflict, strikes and trade unions. In contrast to this, however,different geographical and historical experiences of workers resist-ance point to their own capacities for mobilization and self-activity.In the third section of the chapter, I reconsidered this differentapproach to workers collective action, by looking at the contradict-ory role of trade unions in alternately promoting and controllingbottom-up mobilization.

Overall, the approach used in this book rehabilitates a vision of

collective action as a structurally determined and grassroots-basedexpression of workers power. While the importance of leaders,established workers organizations and political parties in buildingand strengthening workers actions is often fundamental in coun-teracting capitals tendency to create divisions among workers, therepeated, spontaneous explosions of workers resistance are testi-mony of their powers of self-organization.

Consequent with this approach, the second chapter presents whatI have defined as a Marxist perspective on workers collective action.There are three ways in which, I think, a Marxist perspective canbe different from others: it aims to avoid subjective and individu-ally based explanations, it focuses on the centrality of the capitalistlabour processs contradictions in order to explain the nature of col-lective action and it gives the solidarity generated by cooperation inthe labour process a key function in collectivizing workers griev-ances. Following from this the chapter is organized into three sec-tions. The first is a critique of Kellys (1998) mobilization theory forthe role he assigns to injustice, a leaders framed subjective concept


PROOF


13/168


considered as the basis of any mobilization. The second, startingfrom this, explores Marxs insights into the nature of the capitalistlabour process, in order to show how the latter internal dynamicsproduces both opportunities and constraints for collective action.In the third and final section, the chapter reconsiders the import-ance of solidarity in the light of its centrality in the labour process.Overall, through this reconstruction, the chapter intends to contrib-ute to a Marxist perspective a theory of collective action that is boththeoretically solid and organizationally useful.

Chapter 3 presents an historical analysis of labour and socialmobilization in Argentina during the period from the Second WorldWar to the present with the idea of identifying trends that may haveinfluenced the cases researched. Starting with the data collectedduring the fieldwork, three issues are considered, each in a differentsection of the chapter: military repression and its effects on workermobilization, the workers attitude toward trade unionism and thesocio-political context at the time of mobilization. The three sec-tions give evidence of how in the history of the Argentine labourmovement, in a context of politicization and class confrontations,workers self-activity and organization have often produced spontan-eous and leaderless mobilizations similar to one of the case studies

presented later in the book. The recurrence of this type of collectiveaction in the history of Argentina helps to establish an ideal linkbetween the theoretical considerations presented in Chapter 2 andthe empirical analysis of the cases of collective action studied in thisresearch in Chapters 4 and 5.

Chapter 4 reconstructs in detail two different events of workermobilization, looking at the dynamics that provoked the workersspontaneous occupation of FIATs Ferreyra plant and the trade union-led occupation of CIADEA-Renaults Santa Isabel plant, both of whichare located in the city of Crdoba. The two cases are compared notwith the aim of establishing a best model for collective action, but toexamine the roles of injustice and solidarity in the construction ofcollective action. Cases of spontaneous action evidence the differentmeanings that can be associated with the term injustice even withinthe same workplace and, most importantly, how flawed the conceptis in theorizing collective action. Evidence is also provided to showhow in the two cases different factors alternatively favoured and hin-dered the process of forming solidarity.


PROOF


14/168


Following from this, Chapter 5 concentrates on an analysis of theevents that occurred at FIAT in the year after the first occupation.In this case, considering an entire cycle of conflict and resistancefrom the perspectives of both the company and the workers, we canidentify both the role of leadership and organization in strengthen-ing solidarity and in the accompanying radicalization of workers andthe companys repressive practices aimed at dividing workers andbreaking solidarity.

In Chapter 6 I then reconsider the main findings and assumptionsof the research to emphasize two aspects, in particular, that are bothmethodologically and theoretically important: the needs to look atcollective action as a process and to approach it through a radicalperspective. The fact that, empirically, many factors can potentiallyinfluence workers potentialities for action does not necessarily implythat this is contingent in nature. Rather on the contrary, collectiveaction develops, and this can be empirically proven, as a process thatfollows the contradictory dynamics of the capitalist labour process.Thus, from this perspective radical means both to go to the roots ofthe problem by using Marxists insights into the nature of the labourprocess and to express a view of workers self-organization that goesbeyond trade unions as institutions.


PROOF


15/168

15

2A Marxist Perspective on WorkersCollective Action

Introduction

What drives workers periodically to contest their surrounding realityand how do they structure their protests? Providing answers to thesecrucial questions has always been at the centre of Marxist thinkingand workplace research. Within this tradition there are key debatesaround structure and agency, and between subjective and objectiveconditions in the mobilizations of workers. This chapter aims toadd to the theoretical debate and to militant action by proposingthe reconstruction of a theory of workers collective action rootedaround four main pillars: the need to avoid subjective and individu-ally based explanations, the centrality of the capitalist labour pro-cess contradictions, the need to constantly demystify capital andthe rediscovery of solidarity.

With this background in mind and drawing on previous work(Atzeni 2009), the chapter starts with a critique of Kellys (1998)mobilization theory because of the role played in it by the concept ofinjustice a subjective, individually framed concept considered thebasis of any mobilization. The next section returns to the capitalistlabour process that, in so far as it is the site of both capital valoriza-tion and worker cooperation, and constantly creates contradictions,with consequences in terms of workers opportunities and constrainson collective action. The final section make a point for reconsideringsolidarity as theoretically central, for being the social relation thatexpresses the collective nature of the labour process, and relevant asa tool for action and in workers organizing.


PROOF


16/168


Mobilization theory: a critique

After a decade of a research agenda dominated by human resourcemanagement (HRM) and assessments of work under it embedded inthis ideologically driven paradigm, and in a context of labour andtrade unions retreat, the publication in 1998 of John Kellys book,

Rethinking Industrial Relations: Mobilization, Collectivism and LongWaves , represented a watershed in the field of industrial relationsand labour studies.

For those approaching industrial relations in the tradition of the1970s ethnographic workplace studies and the sociology of industrialaction and trade unions, Kellys work was important for two mainreasons. First, it offered a theoretical framework for the study of themicrodynamics of workplace conflict and for the understanding ofwaves of mobilization and counter-mobilization in a historical per-spective. Second, by putting labour back to the centre stage, basinghis analysis in the Marxist vision of society and arguing for the resili-ence of collectivism in a period of proclaimed individualism, it was apolitical call to counter-balance HRM dominated studies of work.

Because of its wide ranging perspective and critical approach, overthe last decade the book became a must-read for all those interested in

the study of labour organizing and collective action and in the oftencited Marxist-radical reference in the pluralist-dominated HRM.Kellys main argument, codified in what he calls mobilization

theory, is that workplace social relations can be explored and collect-ive action explained and fostered by studying the interrelations ofa set of analytical categories: injustice, leadership, opportunity andorganization. In the model, collective action is reconstructed as thefinal outcome of a process in which workers generic feelings of injust-ice are transformed and made explicit by existing or natural leaderswho attribute the causes of the injustice to the employer and, in pres-ence of both a minimum of organizational structure and a strategicopportunity, call on workers to take action.

Each category and the overall model represent a powerful tool anddeparture point for empirical research in the analysis of the organ-izing strategies adopted by workers in cases of both mobilizationand countermobilization. In recent years this has been reflected ina number of works that have used Kellys framework in relation toleadership (Darlington 2007; 2001; 2002; Green, Black and Ackers


PROOF


17/168

A Marxist Perspective on Workers Collective Action 17

2000; Metochi 2002), unions organizing (Gall 2000b; 2003; Kellyand Badigannavar 2005), injustice (Brown Johnson and Jarley 2004)and gender (Cox et al. 2007). Although these researchers haveextended and tested empirically the theory, their conclusions do notput into question Kellys main assumptions: that mobilization the-ory is based on injustice and that leaders are pivotal in framing thissense of injustice into a collective action.

Kellys work has been already commented on in full detail (Gall1999; 2000a), from different perspectives (for a review see Gall2000a) and at different times (the most recent is Fairbrother 2005).In the following pages I am going to deal particularly with injustice,as I believe that it is crucial to uncover the subjectivity and individu-ality attached to the concept and thus its unsuitability for explainingcollective phenomena. 1

Despite Kellys intellectual background and work in the Marxist tra-dition of industrial relations pervading his mobilization theory con-stituting in itself a good theoretical antidote to any type of explanationpurely based on subjective experiences the centrality he assigns toinjustice within the theory ( the sine qua non of collective action , Kelly1998, p. 27 and what should form the core intellectual agenda for indus-trial relations Kelly 1998, p. 126) and particularly in framing workers

interests ( perceived injustice is the origin of workers collective definitionof interests , Kelly 1998, p. 64) is contradictory. On the one hand, itis made clear that workplace conflict is a feature of the antagonisticrelations existing between workers and employers in the capitalist sys-tem and that because of this, two sets of diverging, often conflicting,interests emerge (Hyman 1975). On the other, it is giving theoreticalrelevance to a concept like that of injustice that is flawed both for itsappeal to moral and ethical values and for its own indeterminacy.

As Gramsci argued, the concepts of equity and justice are merelyformal ... in a conf lict each moral judgement is absurd because it can be based

just on the same existing data that conflict tends to modify (Gramsci 1991p. 179, authors translation from Italian). Thus just or unjust are moraljudgements and as such depend on the value and meaning each partyin a conflict attaches to them. The concepts will reflect beliefs, realitiesand the power hegemonic relations of a specific society in a particularhistorical epoch. There will always be injustice; people will always feelaggrieved, exploited and unrewarded but the form of their injusticewill never be the same. It is fair enough and common sense to think


PROOF


18/168


that people need a motivation to act but the problem will always be todetermine the content of their feelings, if a link needs to be establishedwith their mobilization. The moral value attached to injustice and itsdependence on hegemonic ideology necessarily involves a definitionof the concept not in absolute but in relative terms.

The use of concepts based on morality is always problematic, espe-cially within a system, like that of capitalism, that appears to be foundedon freedom while in reality generating coercion and that sees employerand worker relations in terms of mutual rights and obligations, whileobscuring how unequal power struggles constantly change this reality.But this mystification is so strong that even workers engaged in strug-gle are trapped by the pervasiveness of morality. As Cohen argues,

Clear-eyed awareness of capital as an unscrupulous class enemy is for-eign to workers caught up in a passionate struggle in which they seeright, and thus ultimately might, on their side. The notion that injust-ice per se propels workers into struggle is put into question by most ofthe strike accounts in this book. (Cohen 2006, p. 206)

From this perspective, once we think about the unquestioned moral-ity of workplace relations, assumptions taken for granted (manage-

ments right to manage, capitalist justifications for efficiency andproductivity, redistribution of losses but centralization of profits andmarket logics overwhelming presence) occupy the stage, makingquestions of justice/injustice almost senseless. Here in the workplaceis indeed where that change in the dramatis personae to which Marxreferred finally occurs and where the worker is timid and holds back,like someone who has brought his own hide to the market and now hasnothing else to expect but a tanning (Marx 1976, p. 280).

It is worth asking then, within a system that constantly mystifies,how many times workers, everywhere in the world, have had to toler-ate some form of injustice? Did they always mobilize or we have tothink, as Moore (1978) argued, that they accepted the inevitable? 2 What is the link between their individual feelings of injustice andcollective mobilization? Clearly, a theory that wants to explain col-lective phenomena starting from a subjectively determined, morallygrounded, basis is deeply flawed.

This problem remains, and is probably reinforced, exactly becausereal life very often confronts us with collective grievances framed


PROOF


19/168


within injustice. Thus injustice appears as the flag of new socialmovements and labour alliances (Waterman and Wills 2001); it isconsidered functional to a renewal of trade unionism in the organ-ising unionism perspective (Heery 2002), is a valid target for NGO/trade unions joint campaigns (Ellis 2004) and, more in general, iscertainly useful as concept for framing grievances. It is fair to thinkthat, together with a mobilization, there should be a cognitive moment,a communication and an exchange of ideas among workers withinwhich injustice is framed. As Gall (2000a) suggests, workers shouldfeel confident, and there should be a surrounding context favourablefor action. Yet these are factors that may influence a mobilization butare not the necessary conditions.

In the sphere of political proposal and organization, injustice main-tains a catalysing function in summarizing in one single powerful wordthe anger of many. It is in this sense very useful as a concept used byleaders in unifying the discontented. But this perspective may be easilysubstituted by other moral value-based concepts performing a sim ilarcohesive function (e.g. dignity, inequality or fairness) or by leadersappeals to local traditions of labour antagonism and cultural diversity/opposition to the employer. Thus the problem it is not to deny theexistence of injustice in the everyday discourse of labour and political

leaders or to deny that workers may really feel a situation is unjust, butrather, that the focus on injustice as the conceptual basis for mobiliza-tion, for the argument that we have developed so far, is theoreticallyflawed and reinforces the idea that collective action in the workplace isall about contesting rights instead of power and class relations.

The simultaneous obscuration of class relations and concep-tual upgrading of injustice to being the basis for mobilization doesnot produce a general theory of collective action but a theoreticalframework for action functional to unions organizing of workers.Although injustice is considered as the conditio sine qua non of mobil-ization, leaders, indeed, are pivotal: they are in charge of mouldinginjustice, attributing this to the employer and convincing workers toorganize and take action.

It cannot be denied that mobilization often follows this sequenceand that leaders always play a central role in it, but we should alsoaccount for those cases of spontaneous, all-of-a-sudden, mobiliza-tions in which no preconditions could be detected and where leadersdo not play any fundamental role. The recent experience of factory


PROOF


20/168


occupations in post-crisis Argentina (Atzeni and Ghigliani 2007a) isa good example of this trend. Workers occupied their factories spon-taneously, without any previous organization or militant activity,because no other options were available in the market. Structuralconditions forced them to react and, surprisingly for any vanguardtheory, they did it without any conscious preparatory work but in avery revolutionary way: by challenging property rights, producinggoods under worker control and redistributing income equally.

Furthermore, how many times we have witnessed mobilizationsoutside union channels or with bureaucratic leaderships forced bythe mass to take action? How many times do these types of mobiliza-tions go unnoticed? How many times do systems of industrial rela-tions impose rules that divide workers and transform the exercise ofcollective action into a never-ending fulfilment of procedures?

A theory of workers collective action within the Marxist traditionwould never be a definitive account, as new forms, times and condi-tions for action will constantly be reinvented, often in the course ofthe same struggle. But it should be able to identify the structural con-ditions that both promote and repress worker action and with thisdemystify the overall system of assumptions that governs labour-capital relations. This means in turn a need to return to the labour

process, as that is the site where both the opposition of labour tocapital and, yet, its dependence on it are constantly reproduced andsolidarity linkages are established.

A return to the labour process

Marx was clear in showing that the particular nature of the commoditylabour, its inseparability from the worker, imposed a first, natural,obstacle to its free consumption by capitalists. In order to benefitfully from what they bought in the market and to ensure that labourpower was transformed into concrete productive labour, capit alistshad to find methods to control, direct and discipline workers.

Through the co-operation of numerous wage-labourers, the commandof capital develops into a requirement for carrying on the labour pro-cess itself, into a real condition of production. That a capitalist shouldcommand in the field of production is now as indispensable as that a

general should command on the field of battle. (Marx 1976, p. 448)


PROOF


21/168


But, just as generals in a war need to strengthen their control andimpose tougher discipline on their troops, so capitalists have toengage in a constant struggle to increase the surplus value generatedby the workers through the production process.

The driving motive and determining purpose of capitalist productionis the self-valorization of capital to the greatest possible extent, i.e. the

greatest possible production of surplus-value, hence the greatest possibleexploitation of labour power by the capitalist. (Marx 1976, p. 449)

Further, because the drive to valorization will be completed oncethe product of labour is sold on the market and because under freecompetition, the immanent law of capitalist production confrontsthe individual capitalist as a coercive force external to him (Marx1976, p. 381), capitalists will need to organize production and cap-ture surplus labour in a way that can make them more efficient andthus more profitable than their competitors.

Thus, from the point of view of our employer, the labour process iscontemporaneously a process of production and valorization drivenby competition and, as such, imposes on him first the need to findmethods, through the organization of the production process and

the control of it, to capture and embody in commodities the highestpossible amount of surplus labour produced by workers, and then totransform this into surplus value through exchange on the market.Considering that the full realization of capital, and the possibilityof its reproduction, requires both production and exchange, the twolevels will always be interconnected, with direct consequences forworkers. Crises of profitability generated in the market are indeedimmediately solved by individual employers restructuring theirproduction processes either by introducing new technology, intensi-fying and rationalizing the use of workers time or simply by cuttinglabour costs through reducing wages, introducing flexibility, usingor threatening outsourcing and moving production or making peo-ple redundant.

Because the nature of capitals imperative is valorization and com-petition acts on individual capitalists as an immanent and coercivelaw, the interests of the employers, individually and as a class, willalways tend to conflict with those of the workers. In fact no mat-ter how good or bad the employer, how short- or long-term his/


PROOF


22/168


her business perspective, workers will be confronted by a systemof rules, control, discipline and time management at the pointof production and structured around the need to guarantee profit-ability that sooner or later will appear and act coercively on them.At the same time, due to their dependence on a wage to live, anychanges to their standard of living, through di rect wage reduction,unemployment or an increase in the price of basic commodities,will be evidence of their interests not being satisfied within theexisting system.

This perspective on interests evidences once again, the inter-connectedness of production and valorization within the capital-ist labour process and the need to look at it as a unity. As Cohenargues:

the issues of valorization and exploitation the structuring of theorganization of labour by the objective of valorization, with its accom-

panying pressure for reduction of socially necessary labour time, and thecontradictions centring on exploitation to which this give rise surfaceroutinely at the point of production as conflicts of interests betweenworkers and management. (Cohen 1987, p. 7)

For our understanding of workers mobilization, the contradictoryand conflicting nature of the capitalist labour process, as an organ-ization of production driven by valorization, is crucial. Spontaneous,unexpected, unorganized forms of resistance, the sudden mobili-zations of previously loyal workers and the transformation ofapparently economistic types of conflict into political ones are allforms of mobilization that can be explained just by reference tothe existence of a structure that constantly produces conditions forconflict. The same structure that has justified the historical appear-ance of trade unions as organizations representing workers inter-ests explains the existence of daily routine struggles at the point ofproduction between workers and management. In this latter con-text, workers may have been forced to accept a part icular system ofauthority and control, and may have found ways of accommodatingand even cooperating with it (Burawoy 1979). 3 But it is not controland authority per se that generates resistance; it is a companys con-stant drive for profitability within a competitive system that every-day jeopardizes the scope for consensus, transforming previously


PROOF


23/168


accepted practices of management control into an unbearable inva-sion into workers lives.

The control exercised by the capitalist is not only a special functionarising from the nature of the social labour process, and peculiar tothat process, but it is at the same time a function of the exploitationof a social labour process, and is consequently conditioned by theun avoidable antagonism between the exploiter and the raw material ofhis exploitation. (Marx 1976, p. 449)

Workers potential for resistance and the structuring of theirinterests, as opposed to those of their employers, can be placed,from a theoretical perspective, within the dynamics of production- valorization-competition. But this does not guarantee the imman-ence of conflict in real social life, rather the contrary. For workers,living in a capitalist society means not just confrontation and clasheswith capitals imperative at the point of production, not simplyengagement in struggles at the workplace over the frontier of con-trol, over the labour-wage bargaining, but also being forced to selltheir own labour in a labour market that individuals cannot controland being dependent on wages to live. These coercive conditions are

natural, taken for granted, and exploitation in terms of extractionof surplus value is not part of the workers daily vocabulary. Capitalcreates a society that appears to be based on freedom and equality.Workers exchange their labour for an average wage; they exchangecommodities for commodities in the market. The capitalists buy theright to consume the commodity, labour, put the workers togetherto work, add the means of production to the production process andthus legally appropriate the fruits of social labour, returning themto the market for the final realization of profit. Every improvementin society is then attributable to capital; exploitation disappears,society depends on capital and workers depend on capital, until thepoint at which:

workers are not simply dependent upon the state of capital in generalfor their jobs and thus their ability to satisfy their needs; they aredependent on particular capitals! Precisely because capital exists in theform of many capitals, and those capitals compete against each otherto expand, there is a basis for groups of workers to link their ability


PROOF


24/168


to satisfy their needs to the success of those particular capitals thatemploy them. In short, even without talking about the conscious effortof capital to divide, we can say that there exists a basis for the separa-tion of workers in different firms both inside and between countries. (Lebowitz 2004, p. 4)

Our analysis of the structural conditions promoting mobiliza-tion could stop at this point. Workers do not only appear to be, butreally are dependent on capital to survive and they tend to find waysof accommodating themselves to it. More than this, their depend-ence on particular capitals, which operate in constant competition,creates the conditions for a permanent separation and division ofworkers. However, at different times and places, but continuously,they engage in struggles against the system that is exploiting them.Why? Because the capitalist labour process, simultaneously a produc-tion and valorization process, is inherently contradictory. When theimpelling need of capitalists for profitability breaks even the illusionof an equal exchange relation, exploitation is revealed. Changes inworkers everyday working conditions (longer hours, harder work orgreater danger), despotic managerial control (less freedom of move-ment, tighter definition of tasks or separation of workers), reduc-

tion of wages and redundancies are some of the forms in which thisexploitation is represented.But considering workers mobilization as a simple reaction to cap-

itals logic would reduce all conflicts to a matter of wage negotiationand consequently would overemphasize the economistic function,and consciousness, of trade unions. It is certainly true that in themajority of cases conflicts find a temporary solution in a monetaryagreement and that systems of industrial relations find in collectivebargaining about wages the key for a compromise between capitaland labour. But workers struggle not just about money but also abouttheir conditions as human beings.

It is quite unrealistic to suppose that because a worker works only formoney he accordingly shuts off his mind to his daily experiences at thefactory. If he treats his labour as a commodity it does not follow that heexpects himself, as a person, to be treated as a commodity. Neither doesit follow that he will be prepared to put up with anything if the moneyis right. (Lane and Roberts 1971, p. 228)


PROOF


25/168


It is a question of freedom as against control and authority, the creat-ivity of each individual as against the dehumanization producedby machines and the existence of fully developed human beings asagainst alienation.

The arrangements of technology and authority require unthinkingobedience. Little wonder then that wildcat strikers sometimes talk asif they have done something big for the first time in their lives. Such

people are proclaiming their humanity and protesting that their work

situation denies it. (Lane and Roberts 1971, p. 232)

The contradictions of the capitalist labour process create then twodifferent but converging and overlapping sets of motivations for work-ers to struggle. The first, more evident, set aims to reforms workersmaterial conditions within the existing system. The importance ofthese struggles should not be underestimated. First of all, as has beenempirically proven the research in this book representing a furtherexample of this that the workers who have passed thorough a processof struggle and mobilization return to normal life as different, moreconscious persons. Second, conflict that begins over typical bread andbutter issues may easily grow in intensity and extend to more radicalones in a context of increasing social and political relevance. Third,these struggles help the formation and establishment of new grass-roots forms of organization and more democratically oriented leader-ship, thus promoting a more militant and more active participation.The second set of motivations refers more to what Lebowitz (2003)calls the workers own need for development. Within a system thatconstantly creates new, unfulfilled, needs for workers,

workers are engaged in a constant struggle against capital struggles toreabsorb those alien and independent products of their activity, strug-

gles to f ind time and energy for themselves, struggle propelled by theirown need for development. (Lebowitz 2003, p. 204)

Thus workers are not just the passive subjects of capitals imperativefor profit, but have an active role in transforming the system thatexploits them:

no worker known to historians ever had surplus value taken out of hishide without finding some way of fighting back (there are plenty of ways


PROOF


26/168


of going slow); and paradoxically, by his fighting back the tendencieswere diverted and the forms of development were themselves developedin unexpected ways. (Thompson 1978, pp. 34546, cited in Harvey2006, p. 115)

Reconsidering the workers side in explaining their resistance tocapitalism has important consequences. First it moves us away from adeterministic reconstruction of the social reality and toward a possib-ility for social change direct ly interrelated with the Marxist concept

of praxis. Workers practical activities and experiences gained in thestruggle for material benefits are thus essential because through thesestruggles, while changing their conditions, they change themselves.Second, and a corollary to this, a theory of workers collective actioncannot be reduced either to strategies or to a social psychologicalaccount, but should, first of all, reveal and communicate the innernature of the mystification of capital. Third, it talks about changesin technology and the organization of the production process asbeing driven by both the law of competition and workers pressure.It is because workers depend on capital to survive, but capital alsodepends on workers for profitability that management and workerswill alternate moments of compromise and peace with resistance.

This introduces a dynamic element into the understanding of work-ers resistance and the historical formation of the working class andhelps to reject a trade union-based pessimistic view regarding thepossibility for social change.

We have started this section by highlighting how the contradic-tions inherent in the capitalist labour process constantly gener-ate exploitation, recreating the structure from which conflict canemerge. But the capitalist labour process, like any other labourpro cess intended as creative human activity, is not just the site ofexploita tion per se, but also the site of cooperation. In fact, despitethe tendency to divide workers, to segment work and to separatemental from manual work, the production process imposes at least aminimum level of cooperation. If on the one hand this cooperationbecomes functional to capitals valorization, on the other it repres-ents a first associational moment among the collective of workers,upon which solidarity links may be created. Thus in a search for atheory of collective action, the relations between cooperation, solid-arity and workers collective action need to be explored further.


PROOF


27/168


Cooperation, solidarity and workers collective action

The cooperation that necessarily takes place in the capitalist labourprocess is inherently contradictory. On the one hand, the workersas co-operators, as members of a working organism, they merely forma particular mode of existence of capital. Hence the productive powerdeveloped by the worker socially is the productive power of capital (Marx1976, p. 451). But on the other, As the number of the co-operatingworkers increases, so too does their resistance to the domination of capital,

and, necessarily, the pressure put on by capital to overcome this resistance (Marx 1976, p. 449).

How could workers, whose cooperation is a funct ion of capital andwho depend on capital to survive, develop a resistance to it? Andin contrast, why should managerial strategies always tend to divideworkers and create competition among them? Key to these answers isworkers change of consciousness. Through cooperation at work theindividual worker starts to develop a consciousness of her/himselfnot just as individual but also as part of a group who share similarworking conditions, who demand better salaries and job protectionand whose interests are overall opposed to those of the employer.The collective labourer, in Marxs term, takes then the scene, reshap-ing the individuality attached to the labour-wage exchange relationinto the collective nature of the labour process.

For the collective labourer, while cooperation at work is the mater ialcondition, creating room for communication and exchange amongworkers, solidarity is the social relation that expresses the collectivenature of the labour process. Any fruitful attempts to explain workersresistance must thus depart from the centrality that solidarity hasboth theoretically and in the practical, militant discourse.

Stressing this point is even more important when the social sci-ences, as the overall of society, are invaded by commonsense perspect-ives like the one that considers a minimum level of solidarity as abasic condition for any collective action. As an implicit consequenceof taking solidarity for granted, the attention of researchers has beenfocused on the identification of preconditions for collective actionon which solidarity can develop. As a result solidarity is explained asa function, for instance, of social networks, of a powerful leadership,of the organizational strength of trade unionism, generally confus-ing cause with effect.

AQ1


PROOF


28/168


29/168


leaders actions, despite their importance in collective action, donot represent a conditio sine qua non of this solidarity. Instead, theyshould be understood as vehicles for the circulation and confirmationof it, as elements able to activate a pre-existing embryonic form ofsolidarity.

By assuming that solidarity is a social relation expressed by thecollective nature of the labour process and thus the objective basisof mobilization, we are identifying an abstract, but nonetheless real,concrete minimum for its definition and can observe how dominantsocial relations produce conditions that alter and modify this basicexperience and thus the possibility for solidarity to reach its secondlevel of development, or its active form.

These assumptions have an almost natural corollary in the meth-ods we should use to identify solidarity empir ically, and in its concep-tualization. What I propose here is to think of solidarity as a conceptthat can best be perceived as a dynamic process and should be ana-lysed in progress. We cannot simply measure, detect and searchfor preconditions of solidarity. This does not necessarily imply theempirical identification of it. There may be preconditions that areconsidered good indicators of an already developed form of solidarity(class consciousness, previous struggles and organization), but these

are by no means a guarantee of future mobilizations. On the contrary,we may have mobilizations born out of situations that did not showon the surface any positive indicator of solidarity. Questions such aswhen and why solidarity occurs, or what are the reasons/agents forits development into an active form, can be addressed only throughan analysis of solidarity in different moments of its development.

By insisting on searching for solidarity as a static reality we willend up in a vicious circle pretending to offer concrete, objectivesigns of its existence (because without it we cannot even think ofcollective action) but without considering how structural condi-tions affect it. The implicit consequence of this mechanism is toconsider solidarity almost like a transcendental, evanescent conceptthat exists but is difficult to investigate empirically (for instanceFantasia 1995; Portelli 1991) and is, however, easily adaptable to awide variety of studies: labour process (Beynon 1984; Edwards andScullion 1982), class consciousness (Fantasia 1988; Rosendhal 1985)and cultural and historical accounts of the working class (Bruno1999, Hanagan 1980).

AQ2


PROOF


30/168


31/168


Putting solidarity back at the centre stage of our understanding ofcollective action is to contribute to a theoretical, as well as a polit-ical, debate. The concept of solidarity has been distorted by decadesof ideological and rhetorical use. Yet, once we reframe this conceptwithin the structural contradictions generated by labour-capital rela-tions in the workplace and the overwhelming dominance of capitalin society, we are contributing to its demystification and contestingtaken-for-granted assumptions about work and modern ways of life.Once put in this context, the emphasis on solidarity may be ableto provide workers with a clearer understanding of their potentialstrength and rank and file organizations with a more concrete, every-day, basis for militant discourse and action.

Conclusions and implications for empirical analysis

This chapters overall aim has been to offer a reconstruction ofworkers collective action from a Marxist perspective. Withoutpretending to be exhaustive and exegetic in its approach, thechapter has been developed by using Marxs insights into the natureof the capitalist labour process and into the hidden truths of thedominant conceptions of work and the political economy. Four main

assumptions follow from this background, influencing the chaptersoverall reconstruction of collective action. First, attempts to look atworkers collective action as the sum of individuals and as driven bysubjective determinations of social reality, like the one associatedwith injustice, are theoretically wrong and misleading and do notexplain the variety and complexity of workers actions. Injusticemay be a useful tool for trade unions organizing and revitalizationbut it is framed within capitals fetishism. Second and consequentto this, a demystification of the system governing the overalllabour-capital relations in the workplace and society is fundamen-tal. Third, through this demystification it is possible to discover theinherent contradictions of the capitalist labour process generatingboth resistance and accommodation. Fourth, a theory that aims tocommunicate and strengthen knowledge among workers and theirrank and file organizations of the constraints and opportunities forcollective action needs, once the reality of the capitalist labour proc-ess is unveiled, to reconsider the role of solidarity and its potenti-alities in framing organizational strategies. Conscious rank and file


PROOF


32/168


militants and intellectuals supporting the labour movement shouldthen constantly find ways of breaking capitals rule by demystifyingit. In this sense, the emphasis on solidarity is fundamental, for boththeory and organizational practice.

Can we use the theoretical insights developed in this chapter forthe analysis of concrete cases of worker mobilization? How can weaccount for the complexity and multiple determinants of collec-tive actions by emphasizing just the contradictions of the capitalistlabour process and the solidarity built into worker cooperation? Howcan we explain the role of leaders and organizations, for instance, inbuilding and strengthening worker mobilization?

The answer to these questions is not straightforward and impliesdecisions about our methods and approach to research. We maybe interested in proposing a theory for analysis and for action thatresponds to specific categories and is sequential like the one proposedby Kelly in his mobilization theory, rooted in the injustice-leadership-collective action framework. In this, it is taken for granted that thecapitalist labour process generates conflict and that necessary condi-tions for workers mobilization are already set within the system. Thetheory thus offers a clear set of conditions for action that researcherscan use and test and activists may consider in the reorientation and

rethinking of their strategies. Another approach is to enter into thecomplexity of the social dynamics that produce worker mobilizationby starting from a reformulation and reproposition of the conditionsthat constantly generate the basic antagonism between capital andlabour. This approach, while reusing and reformulating Marxs con-cepts, is at the same time intellectually fundamental to demystifyingthe system of appearances produced by capitalism and methodo-logically valid for explaining the complexity of workers collectiveactions. Empirically, the combination of many different factors, eachimportant on its own, can contribute to explaining why workers havemobilized in a specific case. From favourable external socio-politicalconditions to internal organizational strength, from managementviolation of rules to workers explicit confrontational strategy, fromcharismatic leadership to political parties guiding mobilization, fromgrassroots to bureaucracy-led mobilization, from mobilization underthe banner of injustice to action in solidarity with other organizations,from planned mobilizations to spontaneous ones, all these are justexamples of some of the factors that either alone or in combination


PROOF


33/168


34/168

34

3The Roots of Mobilization andWorkplace and Social Conflictin Argentina in an Historical

Perspective

Introduction

This chapter presents an historical background for the analysis ofmobilization. Consequently, attention is drawn to those aspectsof Argentine social history and trade unionism that could help toexplain the cases of mobilization in this research. Can we identifyrecurring trends and how do these influence our interpretationof events? The analysis, starting from the data collected duringthe fieldwork, looks, in particular, at those historical or context-ual factors that the workers interviewed have indicated in theinterviews as being main obstacles in the process of mobilizationand/or in the radicalization of it. Three thematic and recurrentissues have been identified: military repression and its effects onworker mobilization, the workers attitude toward trade union-ism and the socio-political context at the time of mobilization.In line with this the chapter has been organized into three mainsections. The first reconsiders how the use of repressive practices,adopted systematically by military governments in Argentina until1983, affected workers potential for mobilization. Although thesepractices have clearly produced a loss in terms of organizationalstructure, increased by the large-scale assassination of delegates


PROOF


35/168

Workplace Conflict in Argentina: 19432008 35

and activists as under the last military dictatorship, workers havenonetheless mobilized, often in spontaneous, unorganized ways.The second investigates the complexity and contradictions withinthe Argentine trade union movement, simultaneously the polit-ical backbone of the Peronist movement, an institutional actorand the representative of working class interests. These multipleidentities have often been in conflict, giving room, within a rigid,state controlled system of workers representation, for spontan-eous grassroots types of worker mobilization and intra-union con-flicts expressions of workers opposition to both employers andtrade unions rigid bureaucratic structure. The third section putsthe case studies in the socio-political context that dominated inthe 1990s, the time of the events considered. During that decade,the adoption of the neo-liberal model promoted by Menem, aPeronist president, had devastating effects for workers, with ris-ing unemployment, worsening working conditions, increased pro-ductivity with the use of flexibility and a reduction of real wages.Trade unions, pressed between the need to offer answers to work-ers discontent and their loyalty to a Peronist government offeredweak and late reactions, once more creating the conditions forworkers struggles outside the union channel.

We could argue that in the history of the Argentine labour move-ment, in a highly politicized context of strong class conflict, thistype of non-union, often spontaneous, leaderless mobilization, hasbeen very important, and we can find examples of this in the casestudies analysed in the following chapters. Although statisticallyuncounted, less frequent and overall numerically inferior to tradi-tional trade union-led mobilizations, workers collective strugglescan assume spontaneous, unorganized forms whose importancetranscends simple empirical considerations. Those cases of directaction that occur in the absence of an organizational agent arethose that most powerfully show the structural conditions ofworkers collective action in the terms presented in the theoreticalchapter.

The three sections in which the chapter is organized are precededby a chronological table (Table 3.1) that lays out key events/trendsin the social and industrial relations history of Argentina. Table 3.1aims to introduce readers to the specific issues treated in more detailall through the chapter and it is thus not exhaustive.

AQ1


PROOF


36/168


37/168


Military repression and worker mobilization

Those who were militants and who had a voice among us areall gone, they have disappeared, they have been killed, theywere simply not there anymore. Unfortunately all those, like me,who remained, now I can say, for cowardice, for necessity, forthe family, for whatever reason, we never had the strength, thecapability [ ... ] we disagreed but we did not act, we disagreed

but at the end we did all it was ordered to do by bending thehead [ ... ] an entire generation has grown without those lead-ers able to unify people, leaders respected by the rest. When thenew fellows came to work they could just see our examples andthis meant for them to see people always nodding the head andsaying yes.

(Renault white collar worker) 4

Table 3.1 Continued

Year Major events

19831989 Civil government under Alfonsn, attempts to reform tradeunion representation and introduce unpopular economicpolicies opposed by the CGT, 13 general strikes

19891995 Hyperinflation and full implementation of neo-liberaleconomic policies, privatizations, labour flexibility, tradeunion fragmentation creation of CTA, MTA, attempts todecentralize collective bargaining

19951999 Rising unemployment and informal sector, four generalstrikes against flexibility, trade union action scatteredand dispersed, weakened workplace organizations,radicalization of social conflict at national and local level

19992001 New president, de la Ra (radical), follows similar economicpolicies, deep recession, increased importance of socialmobilization and the movement of the unemployed, tradeunions play a secondary role

20012002 Economic and social turmoil, de la Ra resigns, widespreadsocial mobilization, experiences of workers self-management in 200 recovered factories

20032008 Economy starts to grow again, government promotestripartite agreements and collective bargaining for socialcohesion, reunification of CGT, new labour conflicts forwages increases, emergence of grassroots mobilizationsinitially tolerated and then repressed by Kirchnergovernment


PROOF


38/168


39/168


40/168


In June and July 1975 another wave of mobilizations and generalstrikes affected the country. At that time the armed forces were notdirectly involved in the government, but the repression and physicaldisappearance of militant workers and the takeover by the authoritiesof independent unions were common features. 9 The state of fear andterror created by the activities of the AAA 10 (Argentine AnticommunistAlliance) and the obstacles to mobilization imposed on workers bythe central union bureaucracies, did not prevent collective action,and worker mobilizations were often part of a broader political con-frontation between left and right sectors within Peronism and in thewhole of Argentine society (Thompson 1982). At that time Peronistunions were an important part of the government. Although theConfederacin General del Trabajo (henceforth CGT) controlled theMinistry of Labour and with it a developed apparatus of control ongrassroots organizations and local branches, they could not blockworker mobilizations and the new forms of grassroots organizationthat started to emerge, the coordinadoras .

The military regime that took power in Argentina with the 1976coup represented, with respect to previous authoritarian and repress-ive governments, a quantitative and qualitative change in the formsof repression and ways in which it was implemented. The military

intervention was officially justified by the state of anarchy, insurrec-tion and guerrilla action, by the necessity to recover from an acuteeconomic crisis and by a general state of sickness that the virus ofsubversion and corruption had provoked in the body of the nation (toparaphrase the generals). On the basis of this diagnosis, the militarycall for a Process of National Reorganisation was in reality not justplanned with the idea of enforcing order in the country but ratherwith the aim of proceeding to a complete refoundation of the stateand of society under the headings of discipline, Catholicism and thefree market. Considering the scope of this operation, the elimina-tion of resistance and rebellion had to be carried out in all spheres ofsociety: at the workplace, in the universities, in the trade unions andin community associations, not just with regard to militant guer-rilla organizations (Godio 2000). 11 The military junta was convincedthat to stop waves of mobilization, strikes and the political power ofthe trade unions, decisive action had to be taken against the wholelabour movement, both in its militant and independent forms and inthe more centralized and bureaucratic union confederations. On the


PROOF


41/168


one hand, repression had to be exercised against the more militant,independent expressions of unionism of that time. The experienceof clasismo and of anti-bureaucratic unionism was still fresh. Thistype of grassroots movement, fostering a democratic participationin union affairs and promoting the effective protection of workersrights in the plants, was the first target for the military. In their wordsthese unions were performing a subversive activity and had to bephysically destroyed since they were considered a form of guerrilla,a workplace guerrilla (guerrilla fabril) . On the other hand, the centralconfederation could represent a channel for future mobilization andthe centre of a political opposition to the dictatorship. The CGT, andthe 62 Peronist Organisations that represented its backbone, werea threat to the military and the anti-labour project they wanted toimplement, and were at the same time the symbol and reality of thepower of the Labour Movement and Peronism. In the very first daysof the coup the CGT and the major national union federations wereput under direct government control, many leaders were arrestedand military administrators were appointed to replace them. At thesame time shop-floor delegates and internal commissions literallydisappeared, were forbidden or made ineffective by both militarytakeover of local trade unions branches and companies anti-union

campaigns. In many cases the companies willingly participated inmilitary repression, providing lists of activists and militants to thepolice forces, erasing entire shop-floor commissions, extending con-trol over workers private lives and increasing the pace of production.These actions transformed the plant into a jail in which the aim wasto break all forms of resistance and opposition (Falcn 1982). Abs(1984) refers to the unlimited use of the police forces that were calledin by companies to intimidate the workers and convince them thatprotest was counterproductive and often too risky. In the absence ofany form of protection, workers had little option then but to acceptthe rules and regulations imposed by their employers.

When we consider the per iod 1976/1979 we have to take into considera-tion the terrible charge that was attached to each industrial conflict:the worker who challenged management authority, no matter if to alesser or greater extent, could risk his employm

Atzeni_Book.pdf

Documents

Transcript of Atzeni_Book.pdf