Chilean trade unions since the coming back of democracy

by Tobias Kaphegyi

Chile has returned to democracy since 1989. By the election at the sixth of December 1989, Patricio Aylwin Azocar became the first democratic president after the military government. 55,1% of the Chilean people elected the candidate of the democratic opposition. What does this mean for the relations between trade unions who have been a big piece of opposition in the years of military rule, and the employers who received the most profit in these years.

But if we want to see what has been new for the trade unions in a democratic Chile we first have to look what had been new for the trade unions in the reign of Augusto Pinochet. Does trade unions have some roots in the history of Chile?

Trade unions in the history of Chile

There is a tradition of trade unions in Chile since 1924. Since this time there is a law about working relations which saved the right to build a trade union. The intention of this law was to control and drive back the workers movement. But this law also contented the right of strike, the right of collective wage negotiations, employment contracts and contracts about the wage rate. The wage negotiations had been handled by trade unions which had been organised only on the level of the enterprise they acted in. The membership had been compulsory. The state had always had big possibilities of controlling the trade unions. The employers´ associations has always been free. But this law brought also the official appreciation of the trade unions. They developed good connections to the left parties in Chile and their programmes were highly political. The highest level of this Development had been reached under the government of Allende when the CUT ( the rooforganisation of the trade unions) had been nearly a piece of government. This happened a short time before the military coup brought the development of the trade unions to a powerful social and political actor in Chile to its end. The numbers of membership in the Chilean trade unions had risen from the beginning of the sixties to the year seventy-three from eleven to thirty percent of any employees. In this time, the number of people who took part in strike activities increased from 4.4 ( in the early sixties) to 16.3 % in the year 1973.

New rules after the military coup

The first actions of the military government were to put pressure on their national enemies. They killed and pursued the leaders of trade unions and left parties. More than 3000 people disappeared above all in this time. They forbade and dissolved the trade unions and caught their property. A lot of trade union leaders had to flee to foreign countries.

But the strongest weapon against the workers movement was the new economic policy which had his highpoint ( in the opinion of the trade unions) in the Plan Laboral of 1979. Since 1975 the military government practised a strictly neoliberal "shock-policy", with the central point: Total disarticulation of the power and the activities of the trade unions. The other rules of their economic policy were: The total financial and commercial liberalisation of the economy, the retrench of the state sector which happened hand in hand with a lot of privatisation and a new definition of the role of state. A big change of the financial system ( there had to be more competition everywhere) and a opening for foreign investments as well as a change in the system of the relative costs. After six years without a law dealing with the working relations in Chile, the employers handled everything on their own: wages, employment contracts, discharges and the organisation of production. There had been mainly two reasons to compose a new law about the working relations: First the international pressure initiated by international trade union rooforganisations which had his highpoint in the threatening of an economic embargo against Chile and second, the will of the military government to determine also in the working relations a juristical frame for a neoliberal system of economy. They threw forward to the trade unions that in the time before the reign of military government the trade unions decided about things ( in the collective agreements) which did not lie in their competence. This avoided good relations between workers and employers and the consequence was the reduction of jobs. The military government argued that people who were not organised in a trade union or did not have any job were injured. So they were sure they had to bring democracy into the labour market with the plan laboral.

What did the Plan Laboral mean for the trade unions?

I want to show now the consequences of this law because it were the base on which the trade unions had to start into democracy in the nineties:

First the compulsory membership has been cancelled. Competitive trade unions has been allowed and the plurality had been supported by low level regulation in the case of founding a trade union. On the other side the number of people who could get into a trade union legally had been reduced strongly. For example the employees in little enterprises or people who did not get an employment contract which runs for a long time. So in ninety percent of the enterprises there were no possibility to found a trade union. The collective agreements were done only on the level of the enterprises and the agreements had to be different for different classes of wage. The content of the agreements could have been the question of wage only. The duration of strike was limited on sixty days. After this time, the employment contracts were seen as solved by the workers. Only if it did not injure the function of an enterprise, strike was allowed. The employers had the right to keep the workers out and to employ foreign workers during a strike. The laws about minimum wages and about the sort of wage or about the automatically adoption of wages on the rate of inflation were pinched off. The dismission of workers became easier with the new article 155f. This article made it legal to dismiss everyone without reasons. The employment contracts were not extended automatically anymore after six month. The employers did not have to send copies of the employment contracts to the Inspeccion del Trabajo which is something like a national labour registry office. The help of a arbitration committee could only be used by the help of lawyer. In Chile the help of a lawyer is and was expensive too.

Between illegitimate actions and being insignificant

Under this bad conditions, the trade unions got more and more insignificant. They loosed more and more members ( 60% in the seventies) and they loosed their unity which had never been developed very good. Because of the forbidden rooforganisations and the also forbidden left parties there had been a break between the workers movement and the political system. The sphere of work of the trade unions got more and more complicated and not universal anymore because of the radical flexibilisation of the labormarket by the plan laboral. The transformation of the economic structures and the big change in the strategy of development caused a weakening of the industrial sector and gave more strength to the agricultural sector. This is one more argument to explain the bad constitution of the trade unions at the time of the coming back of democracy in Chile because they had always been better organised in the industrial sector.

The fight against the past

The work of the trade unions in the democratic Chile has been always characterised by their weakening because of the violent neoliberal change in Chile under Augusto Pinochet. The military government had a big influence in the making of a new constitution for the democratic Chile. The new constitution is the modified old one of 1980 with some compromises which had been handled with the opposition. So the groups who supported the military regime saved their big influence and the democratic system with checks and balances did not help to change things against the will of the old forces. On the other hand there were a booming atmosphere and a stable growth in the time of redemocratisation. The were a lot of people in the political elite and in the population who thought that the economic stability was the result of the neoliberal change in Chile. And the political elite of the Concertation ( the parties in government) did not have a strictly ideology against this neoliberalism. So the first political target in this time has been to save the democratic stability of Chile. First the social actors and the government talked in a tripartismo about the new variations of dialogue between the social corporate actors where they agreed in a acknowledge of both sides (acuerdo marco, april 1990).First of all the basic of the neoliberal economy system has been accepted. On the one hand the plan laboral with its injuring working law has been responsible for a competitive economy in some sections but on the other hand the social and democratic costs has ever been to high in the opinion of the trade unions. So in the agreements called acuerdos there were approaches between the social actors but there were no agreements between the new founded CUT and the CPC ( trade unions and employers association) about the reforma of the plan laboral. Because of the failed corporate solution the government presented four law propositions in parliament in the July of 1990. The propositions differed from both positions: From the position of the CUT and the one of the CPC. It dealed with the following themes: the ending of employment contracts, rooforganisations of trade unions and their organisation, the collective wage agreements and the right to strike. Finally the reforma laboral has been bought with big ogligingness to the conservatives and was criticised by CPC and CUT- but they accepted it as the new frame of corporate action. For the trade unions it has been not a big success. They got honoured as a social actor and as a actor in the collective wage agreements and got some little improvement in their own position in the negotiations. But the possibility of a further on going reforma laboral has been saved. This was the first theoretical break with the orthodox neoliberalism which ruled since 1973.

Theory and reality

The new codigo del Trabajo has been coming into force in the January of 1994. With the improvements I mentioned above, this law brought the following improvements for the trade unions: § 155f has been changed to § 161 which is not so extreme like the old one. The national labour office (Dirección del Trabajo) has been made stronger and the members of trade unions are safer now in the enterprises.

In reality the trade unions are still very weak. Only ten percent of the Chilean workers had been reached by collective wage agreements in 1992 and 1993. The frequency of strike has been bigger since 1990 but it were only about 25000 workers per every year who were on strike. Between 1992 and 1995 the grade of organisation of workers declined from 15% to 12%. The number of memberships declined too. The number of trade unions increased and the strength because of the number of members and the amount of property declined.

But it is not only a problem of the bad national conditions for the work of trade unions in Chile. It is the mental enlistment of the workers in a neoliberal economy: It is the fear of loosing your job which is forced by the high unemployment in the eighties. On the other hand there is the change of social values from solidarity to more individual consume and personal career. The higher working time is another cause for the reduced activity of workers in their trade unions. The workers have no advantages of being organised in a trade union because they are political and economical to weak. These are the reasons for the ongoing fourfold syndrome of crisis of the trade unions: On the political level the mechanisms of articulation and communication are not rearranged yet, the ideological socialistic unity has been gone, the unity of organisation has been destroyed and the structures has been weakened by the flexibilisation of the structures of production and work.