Organizing the “unorganizable”: The case of popular economy workers in Argentina

Abstract

Our article analyzes the emergence of the Confederation of Popular Economy Workers (CTEP). The organization strives to organize workers in what has been historically conceptualized as the “informal economy,” but that CTEP proposes should be understood as the “popular economy.” First, we discuss CTEP's questioning of dominant views about the centrality of standard work in the definition of who is a worker. We argue that CTEP has the potential to contribute to bridging the divides among a deeply fragmented working class. Second, we examine CTEP's understanding of the popular economy and the premise of the existence of a surplus population excluded from labor markets in contemporary capitalism. One of CTEP's key demands has been the institution of a “social salary” that would recognize the social importance of workers in the popular economy and help them overcome poverty. We argue that while this proposed political solution to the problem of poverty may contribute to building a new class awareness among precarious and informal workers, it may, at the same time, also perpetuate the dependence of precarious workers to the state and, therefore, increase the ever‐present dangers of both political manipulation and political isolation from other segments of the working class.

Urban Popular Economies

“…They point not to some overarching social movement that collapses the possibilities of collective "we's" but to alternating expressions of a multiplicity of formations at different times (Castronovo 2018, Felder and Patroni 2018, Filho et al 2018. Sometimes issues particularly pertinent to migrants will take the fore-questions of access to basic rights related to residency or exploitation.…”

Economy and politics in the long argentine crisis (2012-2021)

“…La fractura de la clase obrera entre formales e informales se desarrolló en el seno del Estado a partir de la segmentación de los mecanismos de integración institucional. Por un lado, la integración institucional de los MS mediante la expansión del gasto en programas de asistencia social focalizados (mayormente bajo la forma de proyectos productivos a cargo de cooperativas) y desde 2009 por medio de la Asignación Universal por Hijo (AUH), cuyo ámbito institucional fue el Ministerio de Desarrollo Social (Felder y Patroni, 2018;Bruno, Coelho y Palumbo, 2017). Por otro lado, la revinculación funcional entre sindicatos y Estado a partir de negociaciones tripartitas: negociaciones colectivas a nivel de rama de producción y Consejo del salario mínimo, en la órbita del Ministerio de Trabajo (Etchemendy y Collier, 2008;Marticorena, 2014;Marticorena y D'urso, 2018).…”

Informal Workers and the Politics of Working-class Transformation in the Americas

“…The logical corollary of this formulation was the simplification of legal and bureaucratic systems in line with laissez-faire labour relations (De Soto, 1989;Biles, 2009). Critical for our analysis, the deregulation of labour markets disguised as pro-poor policy became an appealing approach to address the challenge of informality (Felder and Patroni, 2018b). But if the post-war modernisation agendas failed to fully solve the problem of informality and precarity, the structural economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s proved disastrous.…”