Union Personality and Collective Conflict in Argentina: the Experience of the Metrodelegates (2015-2019)

Abstract

In this article, we will analyze the correlations, overlaps and disconnections between the legal field and the conflict in claims about working conditions, specifically through the experience of the application for union status by the Metrodelegates of the subway of the autonomous city of Buenos Aires. From the particular history of the union, we will investigate the degree of influence of the collective conflict in the acquisition of labor rights, pointing out the role that the rules adopt in that process.

We will make a brief journey through the history of the union and the regulations applicable to collective relations, based on a qualitative analysis that includes journalistic notes, regulations, statements from leaders of the union and ethnographic records of public events called by the union. Finally, we will take the specific case of asbestos found in the subway formations in early 2018, a highly toxic mineral that is harmful to the health of workers and users. We will use this case as a witness experience of the problems between the legal field and the collective labor conflict. One of the main conclusions we reached is that, in this case, the conflict constitutes an essential tool for obtaining labor rights, regardless of whether or not it has union status. Without prejudice to this, the regulations are appealed and used to consolidate that “real” power, in fact, that it possesses in the underground union.