Labour informality and political representation. Emergence and consolidation of the Syndicalism of the Popular Economy

Abstract

At the beginning of the 21st century Latin America began to be a land of disputes and resistance against neoliberalism. If we look at the Argentine case, the 2001 cycle of protests was followed by changes in the development model, with positive effects on labour indicators. However, the occupational heterogeneity continued to be a structural feature of the Argentine economy, consolidating a great number of activities and sectors in informal conditions.
In this context, the workforce created and developed new forms of organization and social conflict patterns. This article aims to conceptualize the new union configurations built by the organizations of the so-called Popular Economy, which emerged in recent years in our country, in the light of the argentinian union model. We address this issue through the analysis of secondary sources of the General Confederation of Labour (understood as the most representative organization of the traditional trade union model) and the Confederation of Workers of the Popular Economy (as an emerging organization and in turn preponderant, within the "Popular Economy"). For the analysis, we will consider two axes: the repertoires of action and the types of demands that are built, in the period from December 2015 to December 2017.