¿GETTING OVER THE FRAGMENTATION? A REVIEW OF THE ARTICULATION STRATEGIES BETWEEN THE CGT AND THE CTEP (2009-2017)

Abstract

In the context of the international crisis of 2008/2009, the organizations rethought their conceptions about work and the organizational modality that they had until then. Which were their discussions about the crisis? In which way did workers organizations think about the representation of the sectors they aspired to represent? Which interorganizational articulation strategies did they create based on their objectives? The objective of the article is to analyze the trajectory of the unions and popular economy workers’ organizations and the articulation between the CGT and the CTEP. For this, we use qualitative techniques such as the analysis of in-depth interviews with leaders of the CGT and the CTEP, journalistic material and other primaries sources. The hypothesis is that both organizations made a retrospective reading of the 2009 crisis, from which they identified limitations regarding the world of work and the industrialist imaginary proposed by Kirchnerism. This process of re-reading led them to rethink the need to recreate a more general representation about the workers, so they tried the unity of action. Although this articulation had a significant deployment with the assumption of the Let’s Change coalition, it was during the last Kirchnerist government that these conditions were generated. Therefore, the period analysed extends between 2009 and 2017. This article shows results of the research project “The end of the left turn in Latin America? New actors and discourses shaping the political arena of the post-transition” funded by the University of Bath, United Kingdom.