Precarious Work in Recession and Growth: A New Structural Feature of Labor Markets in Argentina?¹

Abstract

Like several other countries in Latin America, after 2003 Argentina took considerable steps to distance itself from the neoliberal policies it had followed for almost 30 years. Yet there have also been critical continuities from the neoliberal era. Our argument is that these continuities manifest themselves most clearly in the nature of economic growth and in the endurance of some of the most troubling trends in labor markets over the last 30 years. JEL classification: J21, J83, O54

Precarious Work in Argentina, 2003–2017

“…Other policies had a direct impact on employment and capital-labor relations—for example, the reduction of the probation period to three months with no extension and the prominence given to centralized (national) collective bargaining (Marticorena, 2014: 53–62). However, as is pointed out by Felder and Patroni (2016), among others, these measures were limited and, as later developments showed, easily reversible.…”

“…The period after 2003 cannot be understood without taking into account the economic bonanza between 2003 and 2009. Several scholars have pointed out that, despite immediate economic improvements for the working class and the poor, the Kirchners’ 12-year-rule left many of the conditions and legal framework for labor informality untouched (Felder and Patroni, 2016; Marticorena, 2014; Mercatante, 2015; Salvia, Vera, and Poy, 2015). The 2008 global crisis had a limited impact on the Argentine economy thanks to China’s relentless demand for agricultural products.…”

“…Most scholars of the Argentine case use the category “unregistered work” as a proxy for precarious employment (Arakaki, 2015; Di Capua, 2015; Felder and Patroni, 2016). Using this method, the rate of precarious work was 25 percent in 2017, showing a more or less steady decline since 2004, when it had reached 32 percent (Beccaria and Maurizio, 2017).…”

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

“…Initially, the government assumed that unemployment and underemployment and, equally important, high levels of labor informality, were a temporary problem that economic growth would solve. However, levels of labor precarity and informality among waged and self‐employed workers—a reflection of the structural limitations of the Argentinean economy for creating formal employment—remained high even as the economy continued to grow (Felder & Patroni, ). As an indication of the government's awareness of the challenges in labor markets, programs that had been central in responding to unemployment during the administration of Nestor Kirchner—in particular the Program for Unemployed Heads of Households ( Programa Jefes y Jefas de Hogares Desocupados, PJJHD ), a program instituted in 2002 to respond to the employment crisis then affecting the country—gave way to programs aimed at addressing the most tangible needs among poor families, including working families.…”

Labour in changing urban landscapes

“…Regarding the issue of labour flexibilization, relevant research in Europe focused at the regional level is relatively limited (Fritsch and Verwiebe, 2018;. A very active part of it refers to South America, due to a series of recent developments, such as the IMF-backed neoliberal reforms in Argentina (Felder and Patroni, 2018). All these studies, however, do not delve deeper into the intraurban scale.…”