Argentina 1976–1982: Labour Leadership and Military Government
Argentina's labour leaders make up one of the most powerful social groups in the nation's society. Their power is based on the unions' economic resources as well as on their capacity to mobilise rank-and-file workers. However, the group has developed a tendency towards bureaucratisation. On the one hand they are representative of their fellow-workers which is why they are continuously re-elected. At the same time, they have acquired technical and bureaucratic skills which ease their handling of the trade union structure. ‘As long as permanence at the head of the union becomes prolonged, the labour leader draws further away from the cultural and economic criteria of the workers who form the rank-and-file.’ 1 This tendency towards self-perpetuation in office maintains the acquired social status. In addition, the separation from the rank-and-file increases in order to have a relative autonomy and play the role of intermediary between the worker and the employer. In this sense, the corporativism and verticalism inherent in the Peronist doctrine, as a form of selecting leaders, increases the tendency towards bureaucratisation in the trade union leaders, marking a breach with the historical tendency of the Argentine labour movement previous to 1946–7.