Subway Workers Rising!

In relatively short time here in Argentina I have come to find a huge variety of labor struggles. In the past few months there have been actions taken by tire factory workers, casino workers, hospital workers, agricultural workers, subway workers, and more in Buenos Aires. To find a particular place of business on strike at any given moment is a common site. While talking to people about these struggles, what I’ve found hasn’t been very surprising. Those unions that fight are more likely to win. But what is definitely different from so many actions I have seen in the US is that those fights are so often led by worker assemblies. The power of a particular union can be measured by the activity, support, and sustainability of the rank and file assemblies within that union.

Privatization

The best example of an assembly that has sustained constant activity in Buenos Aires is clearly the subte workers. The subte (Buenos Aires’ subway system) was privatized in 1994 and sold to the company Metrovias. This privatization brought about some massive immediate changes. The system went from 4,600 employees to 1,500 – 800 of which were new hires with no previous experience. Wages were lowered and arbitrary firings became common place. At the same time, during the presidency of Carlos Menem, unemployment was growing. After the economic crisis of 2001, unemployment would rise to over 20%, as the policy of privatization of all services grew.


Worker Democracy in Action

With daily exploitation of workers growing and constant arbitrary firings, workers began to organize. Their early demands included recognition of their assembly delegates and an end to all firings. In these early fights, they built the worker assembly, and began to develop a sense of unity between workers. The subte system has a number of different types of workers on 5 different lines. Different sections of workers would often have no contact at all with one another. But today there is constant mobilization by workers. Each line has its own assembly, electing delegates to represent them. Those delegates have weekly coordinating meetings, in the Hotel Bauen (an expropriated hotel in central Buenos Aires). These assemblies and delegates organize negotiations, media, cultural events, strikes, and other worker actions.

Through these mechanisms of self organization, the Subte workers union has consistently been one of the most active and militant of unions in the nation. They have held numerous work stoppages from 1 hour to 2 days long in what they see as an ongoing labor struggle for all workers. In the January of 2005 these methods of organizing saw their true test. After police attacked a rally of workers, an indefinite strike was called by the assembly. In what many here consider to be a prime example of worker organizing, the strike maintained consistent actions. They held numerous marches, built community support, and kept control in the hands of the rank and file. In the end they won a 44% increase in wages and benefits and the 6-hour work day.

Solidarity Struggles

With power in such a clearly strategic industry – transportation, the Subte workers have since organized in solidarity with a number of movements. They are often one of the first unions to take action in regional struggles. Along with the recuperated factory and unemployed worker movements, the Subte workers have called for a national 6-hour work day. The 6-hour day will help to end the crippling unemployment faced by Argentine workers. It will also help to end the exploitative and precarious working conditions of those working; conditions that so often destroy the capacity of labor movements to fight.

They are also working with a number of organizations in Buenos Aires to call for public control of Line H, the subway line currently under construction. These actions are demonstrating the common ground between workers, demanding better employment conditions, and riders, calling for lower fares and community regulatory powers.

As a part of these struggles, or in relation to their own demands, the Subte workers have taken on a number of workplace direct actions. They organize everything from press events and rallies, to short term strikes, and free fare days as methods of their ongoing struggle with the company Metrovías.


The Subte workers have come to represent the real potential of a rank and file led worker movement to many in Argentina. On any given day, delegates from the assembly are on the news talking about a current action or campaign. Their actions have taken a meaning much greater than simply their on the job complaints, they are a beacon of the power that the worker movement can demonstrate in building a different world.