In cyclical Argentina, a government that is not Peronist once again targets the internal dynamics of the unions.
Like the radical
Raúl Alfonsín in 1983
, the liberal
Javier Milei
announced a package of
"anti-caste" measures
that includes
a limit on the re-election of union authorities
.
In the summer of 1984 the
"Mucci Law"
fell by only one vote in the Senate and ended with the resignation of the Minister of Labor.
There are similarities and coincidences of dates that for a radical former minister 40 years later are more than a warning.
Last Friday, at a lectern in front of the Legislative Assembly, the president advanced nine proposals that he called "anti-caste."
Two are aimed at the heart of unionism.
"We will force the unions to elect their authorities through periodic, free elections, supervised by the Electoral Justice. The terms of these authorities will be limited to 4 years and a limit of one possible re-election will be established," Milei announced.
And he added: "The specific collective agreements made in free association by the workers of a company or group of companies will take precedence over the collective agreements of the sector. We are going to put an end to this madness of imposing on people the working conditions that are defined behind a desk a man who hasn't worked for 30 years".
These announcements are the complement of the Decree of Necessity and Urgency that Milei published on December 20 of last year and that it explained on its first national channel.
In the recorded message of 15 minutes and 20 seconds she advanced several reforms, including labor reforms, which the justice system stopped two weeks later.
On December 17, 1983, a week after taking office and after a fierce military dictatorship, Raúl Alfonsín sent 22 bills to Congress.
In the electoral context, Alfonsín had denounced a "military union pact" by which he accused union members of having links with dictators.
And among the 22 proposals was the "union reorganization" and an "attached electoral regime", which contemplated the calling of elections in all union associations, from delegates and internal commissions to the general leadership.
The person in charge of developing the project was Antonio Mucci, union member of the Graphic Arts union and member of the National Union Renewal Movement, which Alfonsín appointed as Minister of Labor.
One of the highlighted points, in article 41, stated:
"The maximum term for members of the union leaderships will be three years, with only one possibility of immediate re-election. To be re-elected again, a period of no less than three years must elapse. and the leader must return to work."
Video
The President listed one by one the laws that he will send to Congress.
The bill, which public opinion quickly coined as the
"Mucci Law"
, also promoted the representation of opposition minorities and State oversight in the elections, something similar to what Milei now announced regarding the intervention of the Electoral Justice.
"The workers not only saw their salaries decrease due to an unfair distribution policy, they not only suffered substantial restrictions on the possibility of defending their rights, but they also saw how their unions were intervened
," said Mucci when defending the project and pointed out that The Judiciary would oversee the elections.
On a visit to Venezuela in February 1984, Alfonsín defended the bill:
"The funny thing is that we are accused of some type of interventionism because we believe that in our country, workers prefer a single union. This has been so because that is how it was born. "the organization of unionism. The single union can be compatible with democracy, provided that there is sufficient safeguard for internal democracy and respect for minorities
. "
The "Mucci Law" received the half-sanction of Deputies in the early hours of Saturday, February 11, 1984, in a marathon session that had begun on Friday and in which there was a boxing scene, with deputies pushing and shoving in the middle of the room.
A little more than a month later, on March 14, the law was rejected in the Senate by the Justicialist bloc and the vote of Elías Sapag, of the Neuquén Popular Movement (MPN).
It was Alfonsín's first legislative failure, which on April 24 ended with Mucci's resignation.
Milei had one before, it was on February 6th.
Based on the rejection of several sections of the bill of "Bases and Starting Points for the Freedom of Argentines" - omnibus law -, the ruling party sent the project again to Deputies.
In 1984, Alfonsín appointed the then national deputy of the UCR,
Juan Manuel Casella
, as Minister of Labor .
Today, in response to Clarín
's consultation
, he draws similarities and differences between the "Mucci Law" and Milei's proposal.
The covers of the newspaper Clarín on the treatment of Raúl Alfonsín's "Mucci Law" to "democratize" the unions in 1984.
"The labor reform project, so far, in its enunciation at least, is an attempt to democratize union life. Direct election of authorities with internal jurisdiction, with electoral justice; and secondly, with a single re-election to shorten mandates. That seems good to me, it would be a contribution to making the union model compatible with the democracy in force in the political framework," Casella tells
Clarín
.
"Now, from the point of view of the social situation, that is of little use. If we do not solve the issue of black labor, it is useless to talk about labor reform because it has no social solution. It may have a legal-institutional solution, but not a social solution. "remarks Alfonsín's former Minister of Labor.
"Comparing the situation that Alfonsín faced in 1983 and 1984, when the Mucci law began to be debated until its failure, it was limited by the existence of a very powerful unionism, which had a very intense mobilization force. The current unionism has weakened extraordinarily, in the first place due to the level of black labor and the unions do not represent black workers. And the change in labor techniques has led to the disappearance of large manufacturing units. We are facing a weakened and discredited unionism since the ethical point of view. Those are the substantial differences with 1983," analyzes Casella.
The covers of the newspaper Clarín on the treatment of Raúl Alfonsín's "Mucci Law" to "democratize" the unions in 1984.
─In the summer of '84, the Alfonsín government had not consulted with the unions. Did that make the project fail?
─Indeed, I think there was a negotiation error, a lack of negotiation.
The personalities who promoted the labor reform at that time, two extraordinarily important and very well inspired people who were Germán López (General Secretary of the Presidency) and Gabriel Vázquez (Secretary of Labor) trusted too much in the power of Alfonsín's votes.
But they did not take into account that in front of them there was a union diligence that had a lot of power, that was very used to negotiation and corporate pressure, and that also took on the task of rebuilding Peronism from the electoral and political point of view. political.
The way in which this process began, which was very well inspired and sought important results, was deficient from a tactical point of view.
─The government of Javier Milei did not consult the unions about its proposal. Do you think something similar to Alfonsín could happen with the "Mucci Law"?
─It seems to me that something similar could happen with a union system much weaker than it was in '83.
Now, the Executive Branch has more instruments compared to the union model.
I reiterate, unions have decreased their social representativeness, their social power, because there are fewer registered workers than in proportion to the population.
Secondly, because there is a strong level of discredit, there is too much continuity in the same names, there is too much evidence of very great personal wealth, the origin of which is not understood, there is little flexibility in the union world to get rid of its privileges.
There is little willingness, I am not saying that all union leaders are equal, they are not, but the general tendency is corporate, defending the interests of the sector above general incidents, that weakens the prestige of the union world today.
Juan Manuel Casella, in 2019. Photo: Juan Manuel Foglia
-What would the approval of the "Mucci Law" have meant?
-It would have been a good beginning to try to change Argentine unionism.
The Argentine union model was born armed from the top down, from the imitation of fascist labor laws in Italy, very heavily dependent on the State.
The State has instruments to destroy unions, such as the concept of union status, granted by the Ministry of Labor, on which the existence of the ability to negotiate depends.
A union without union status can exist, but it does not have the capacity to negotiate wages and conflicts, therefore it is powerless vis-à-vis other unions.
(Juan Domingo) Perón thought so, because he thought of it as part of the structure of the authoritarian government as was the first Peronism.
The Mucci Law would have made it possible to begin a process of union transformation that would give a greater democratic feature to the internal organization of the unions and more social representativeness in terms of prestige.
Juan Manuel Casella's criticism of Javier Milei for his comments about Raúl Alfonsín
-How do you feel about Javier Milei's criticism of Raúl Alfonsín?
-I see it as ridiculous.
That Milei tries to criticize Alfonsín is ridiculous.
The difference in intellectual and moral political size between Milei and Alfonsín is galactic
.
When we observe when Alfonsín's growth as a national leader occurred, from 76 to 83, when Alfonsín took on the issue of Human Rights and even had the courage to refuse to get on the bandwagon of glory that for many politicians It meant the taking of the Malvinas.
That Alfonsín was of a dimension, a level of personal conviction and personal intelligence that is absolutely incomparable with Milei.
Former radical president Raúl Alfonsín with Juan Manuel Casella.
-And about the economy?
-Maybe Milei knows about Economics, I don't know if he knows about economics because I am not in a position to qualify the quality of an economist.
But from a political point of view,
his speech is rude, insulting and disqualifying
.
And he works on the resentments of a society that feels that political parties have failed.
And it is true that political parties have failed to solve the issues that concern people.
But from there to think that this failure of the political parties authorizes Milei to criticize Alfonsín as he does, it is absurd, it is a huge lack of proportion.