Laboring For Unity
Compa, Lance
THE HEADQUARTERS OF CHILE'S NATIONal workers command is a leaky-roofed, one-story converted warehouse on a side street in an aging section of Santiago. Exposed plumbing and wiring conduits...
...During the Frei regime the Communist Party and the Socialists who followed Allende argued for a shift in the Left's political strategy...
...The decades-old dependence of the trade unions on the Left political parties for defense of workers' MARCH/APRIL 1988 25Chile economic interests could not be quickly ended...
...Allende and the Popular Unity won the election with 36.2% of the vote, narrowly ahead of Alessandri's 34.9...
...Their reasoning found converts: in late 1969 the two big Left parties, the MAPU, some independent socialists and a majority within the Radical Party formed the Popular Unity coalition (UP) to confront the 1970 elections...
...The candidate of the Right, Jorge Alessandri, won with 31.6 % of the vote...
...Office vacancies had to be filled by the next senior member, not by election...
...Meanwhile, the Christian Democrats were the third largest force in the CUT, and also the majority opposition party...
...600,000 workers belonged to unions in 1970...
...The Christian Democrats and the Right held a majority in Congress, but not the two-thirds needed to override a presidential veto...
...In its beginning years the FOCH identified itself with the reformist, middle-class dominated Democratic Party...
...The Popular Unity owed much to the CUT for its 1970 victory...
...While the Left coalition obtained just over one-third of the overall vote, some two-thirds of the CUT's rank and file members voted for Allende...
...In Chile, this brand of working class sentiment radiated outward over the decades through the railroads and ports that shipped mineral products, and into the factories where miners and their children found work after pits were exhausted...
...7. Ibid...
...While they had sharp conflicts and often bitter policy fights, union leaders subordinated their political differences to common trade union interests, uniting a fragmented labor movement into a central organization with a single program...
...Today about 400,000 workers, barely 10% of the employed workforce-another million are effectively unemployed-belong to unions in fewer than 3,000 enterprises...
...The name is not important," says Manuel Bustos...
...In 1968 much of the party's progressive youth split off to form the United People's Action Movement (MAPU...
...Seventy workers were fired and four union leaders were sent into exile, but the strike galvanized the rest of the labor movement...
...Communists and Socialists formed the Confederation of Chilean Workers (CTCH) in 1936, though each maintained a separate faction in the new body...
...Military governors could remove union officers deemed "unsuitable...
...Frei won with 56% of the vote, to Allende's 39...
...But the militant posters and upbeat banter among CNT leaders also reflect the spirit and hope that characterize the movement...
...Two years after the coup d'etat, CUT president Luis Figueroa, at a meeting of union leaders in exile in London, conceded that "We made a mistake getting too close to the government . . . The Christian Democrats supported the coup because we didn't know how to work with them in the unions . .. We cannot avoid responsibility...
...The CUT and the FRAP parties, especially the Socialists and Communists (legal again since the last days of the lbafiez regime) fought bitterly against this program, demanding legislative guarantees of wage increases equal to the rise in the cost of living...
...In theory, as a UP representative on the management team of a nationalized textile firm argued: We cannot analyze the functioning of these firms in traditional capitalist terms...
...The constitution provided for a strong execu- tive...
...The sueldo vital, a minimum wage for white collar workers, was instituted...
...And miners were viewed as the "shock troops" of Chilean labor, much like U.S...
...Allende Socialists gained ground, reflecting the president's popularity, from 22% in 1968 to 26% in 1972...
...A national health service was created...
...The Frei regime began with broad support and high hopes, even among workers who had supported Allende and the FRAP coalition of Left parties...
...When the more experienced and at first more recognized Manuel Bustos returned from another period of exile in 1984, he conceded that "Today Seguel is in charge and I'm part of his team...
...CUT leaders ended up trying to take both positions, never reconciling their dilemma...
...Geographically isolated, they took on some attitudes of a labor elite, yet knew that Chilean workers looked to them and their union for leadership...
...The CNS had a broader base in industry than the Group of Ten, especially in blue-collar private employment including textile, metal and construction workers and miners from small and medium-sized copper and coal mines...
...Instead of just a show of strength by workers, plans were laid for successive "days of national protest" involving all sections of the political opposition...
...There was accord on generalities: unions should be "the orienting motor and conductor of the working class" and "the nerve of agitation on political problems...
...But the UP advance in March 1973 also forced the hand of coup planners, since it blocked their "constitutional" road to reverse the UP program...
...Economically weakened by the Depression, workers were forced to seek protection in the political arena...
...The Communists and Socialists formally left the government in 1941 but continued to vote with the majority for reform legislation...
...The October 7, 1987 national strike was a limited success, effective mainly in Santiago...
...Today, however, Bustos stands for unity with the Left, reflecting a CNT goal of rebuilding a broad, representative labor movement...
...Without falling into opportunism, Communists should support the workers' wage demands...
...Three years of social mobilization shook the regime but failed to break it...
...Hundreds of union leaders were jailed, killed or exiled in the months following the coup...
...Rather than an exclusively Left, working class coalition like the FRAP, they called for a broader grouping that would include progressives among the middle class and disaffected small business people...
...Consistent with the broad range of forces allied against fascist Germany and Japan, a climate of widely heralded "social peace" replaced open REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 22class struggle as the hallmark of Chilean political culture...
...It was the first time a sitting government actually gained seats in mid-term congressional elections...
...Together, Las 91, out ofChile more than 35,000 business establishments in Chile, produced 60% of the country's gross national product...
...Salvador Allende, was named minister of health...
...Before the coup, over a million workers in some ten thousand workplaces-more than 40% of Chile's workforce-belonged to the United Workers Central (CUT...
...A massive registration and get-out-thevote drive helped Allende's coalition win an astonishing 44% of the vote...
...three years later 1.1 million were unionized...
...Only months after the coup, labor cadres from the UP parties began meeting as a "clandestine CUT" in a Catholic Church-sponsored education program...
...A loss of just over 3% of its 1970 vote meant the UP would lose its protection against a veto override, while a two-thirds majority for the opposition would allow it to roll back reforms...
...The Group of Ten, the CNS, the 27Chile FUT, CEPCH-even breakaway elements of the government-sponsored union body-formed a new Command for Defense of Trade Union Rights to fight the Labor Plan...
...Memories of Frei's broken promises, however, eroded his credibility...
...In a speech to a CUT rally in July 1972, President Allende insisted "It is imperative to put a stop to the unreasonable demands for wage increases . . . We must rise above the criteria of the past . . . It is indispensable to link wage increases to production and productivity . . . We cannot have new demands after a settlement is reached...
...Its right wing, identified with President Allende, was closest to the Communist position...
...It even found its way into teaching, public employment and professions where the gifted children of working class families found careers...
...REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 26ESPITE SUCH RESTRICTIONS, LABOR ACtivists fought their way back toward their traditional national-level unionism- not, however, without new tensions and divisions...
...In "Participacion es poder," (Santiago: Comit6 Textil CORFO, 1972...
...a young Socialist deputy, Dr...
...There the boss was the class enemy...
...But inside the unions, sharp debates took place...
...It also had a strong, though minority, base among campesino organizations...
...198, December 10, 1973...
...The program called for "the transfer of power from the old dominant groups to the workers, the peasants and the progressive sectors of the middle classes of the city and the countryside...
...Many were intellectuals and middle-class youth radicalized by the experience of the Depression and unhappy with the Radical Party, which was by then the anti-clerical standard bearer of liberalism in Chilean political life...
...But on the ground, events like a joint Left-Right occupation of the Economy Ministry in October 1972 by Miristas and Christian Democrats demanding wage increases above what their Communist and Socialist union leaders were seeking starkly exposed the divisions in the labor movement...
...The first CUT elections resulted in Communist and Socialist Party dominance, but with constitutionally mandated proportional representation, all parties were represented in the federation's leadership councils...
...The government said bombings on the eve of the strike had kept people from reporting for work...
...But in 1912 the FOCH pulled out to create the Socialist Workers Party "because the Democratic Party has never occupied itself with organizing the workers for the defense of their economic interest" and "because the party in its many conventions has refused to establish a program of workers' economic demands...
...Unions were consulted as never before on important government policy and on key management moves in newly nationalized companies...
...Now that workers' parties were in government, union members understandably expected delivery on old promises of a better life...
...CHILEAN WORKERS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN pulled toward opposite poles...
...But Chilean workers exhibited their class loyalties and support for a widened program of social services in poor working class and campesino communities...
...Unions prospered during the three years of UP rule...
...Yet finding that road requires a strong, democratic, united labor movement voicing the aspirations of working people...
...ENSIONS IN THE RULING COALITION AND among its union supporters resulted in mixed, sometimes contradictory policies in government and the labor federation...
...But the infusion of new members, new challenges and new responsibilities also created fresh problems that the unions were struggling to address when the military took over...
...CUT union leaders reflected their party differences despite the federation's unitary program...
...These lunch-time protests called for wage increases-and delayed a return to work after lunch...
...These unionists, mostly Christian Democrats, expected a rapid return to normalcy under their party's rule once "the Left" was wiped out...
...In appearance, the constitutional road to socialism had won three more years...
...T HE 1972 CUT NATIONAL ELECTIONS DEMonstrated the problems faced by established union leadership...
...Police seized dozens of leaders in all sectors-CNS and Group of Ten officials and heads of unions in independent groupings like the FUT, a small federation linked to the Latin American Christian Democratic labor organization, CLAT, and the CEPCH, Chile's major union of white-collar employees in private employment...
...Here the boss is a party comrade...
...To coordinate the new, widened actions, the unions in the Command for Defense created a new National Workers Command (CNT) that included, at the outset, the Copper Workers, the CNS, the Group of Ten (now called the Democratic Workers Union, UDT), FUT, CEPCH and several independent unions...
...By the end of 1976 two distinct union bodies with divergent political perspectives were operating, often competitively...
...But it has always had to contend with a rival tradition of paternalism on the part of many employers and corresponding worker subservience, and an identification with the individual workplace or firm as the place where workers' immediate problems of wages, hours and working conditions are resolved...
...A labor gathering was broken up by police, with five demonstrators killed...
...At the same time Chileans are highly attuned to the notion of struggle between classes...
...A meeting's place, time and agenda had to be delivered in writing to the police two days in advance...
...To achieve that goal Legendary voice of unity: Clotario Brest of the CUT MARCH/APRIL 1988 21Chile Chilean labor leaders have to resolve important tensions in the unions' relationship to political parties, the role of union officials who are also committed political partisans and the balance between political and economic demands...
...Then, a failed assassination attempt in September brought a new sense of despair: first by the botched results, second by the widespread belief that greater repression than 1973 would have followed the death of Pinochet, sure to be replaced by another general...
...Rank and file activists who opposed the government out-organized their puppet leadership and began winning elections to successively higher union posts...
...The Army's move against striking miners took on added significance because of copper's historical importance...
...The number of strikes doubled, too, from 1,800 in 1970 to some 4,000 in 1973.' W HERE EARLIER ADMINISTRATIONS made workers run an obstacle course of paperfiling and formalities to form a union, Allende's Ministry of Labor rapidly approved organizing requests...
...In 1968 the Communist slate won 46% of the vote in CUT national balloting...
...The main copper mines are far from other sectors of industry and trade unionism...
...Allende followed with 29.9...
...2 The core of the UP economic program was creation of an Area Social or state sector including natural resources, banks and major manufacturing enterprises, especially the enormously important copper industry...
...To carry out its program, the UP had to hold on to its sources of voting strength...
...In this modest setting union leaders plan strategies and make decisions that will go far to determine the fate of their country...
...Within a year of the CNT's creation, the UDT left it to form its own Democratic Workers Confederation (CDT...
...Faced with such action, the government relented, releasing most detainees and revoking most of the October decrees...
...He won on a populist-tinged platform with some Socialist support...
...Though there were exceptional cases where workers made bargaining gains, most workers MARCH/APRIL 1988 23 and their unions again found themselves dependent on the political parties rather than their own organizing and bargaining resources for economic protection...
...When it became clear Pinochet was not going to hand over power to the Christian Democrats, however, this "Group of Ten" union federation leaders joined the opposition to the junta...
...Through decades of trade union struggles Chilean workers had succeeded in shaping a dynamic labor movement that played a decisive role in electing Salvador Allende in 1970...
...coal, copper and oil in this century...
...The discovery of a large guerrilla arms cache in a remote northern site in August 1986 frightened the moderate opposition and strengthened Pinochet's "It's me or chaos" card...
...How would the labor movement now balance its trade union activities and its political role under the "workers government" it had put into office...
...The Group of Ten, led by formerly antiUP Christian Democrats, was based in the maritime unions, public employee unions and agricultural workers' organizations...
...But Christian Democrats nearly tripled their representation, going from 10% in 1968 to more than 26% in the 1972 balloting...
...The neardestruction of Indian culture left hegemony to the Spanish heritage...
...Wage and price regulations were extended...
...Influenced and financed by the United States' AFL-CIO, the Group of Ten rejected any cooperation with Marxist unionists from the CUT or the UP parties...
...It would also be a market unionism, where workers in each enterprise would tailor their demands and contract settlements to the profitability of the individual employer rather than seek industry-wide standards...
...Strikes broke out in other industries...
...Before then, Bustos was a rank and file leader in the giant Sumar textile mill, one of the biggest work sites in Chile...
...It's the principles and program that count...
...Pinochet appeared unwilling to budge...
...Since it carried with it automatic union representation in formerly unrepresented workplaces, union membership jumped in sectors with industry-wide bargaining...
...We have to be strong in the provinces," insists CNT president Manuel Bustos on the strike call...
...42, November 1986), p. 67...
...L IKE THE TWO THAT PRECEDED IT, the UP was a minority government, but hardly impotent...
...and 2,347 of October 19, 1978...
...Ironically, these are the issues that most troubled the labor movement under the Popular Unity (UP...
...Report on Human Rights in Chile (Washington, D.C.: Commission on Human Rights, Organization of American States, 1986), p. 226...
...At the same time longshore union head Eduardo Rios led labor leaders who had opposed the Allende coalition in dealing with the military authorities and supporting Pinochet's economic policies...
...In the Area Social the UP was the employer, often through an "intervention" prompted by a strike demanding a government takeover and expulsion of the company owners...
...Until Chilean trade unionists again put common interests ahead of such differences, the labor movement will be unable to lead the Chilean resistance in a return to democracy...
...Colorful posters cover the walls...
...SN MID-1978 COPPER MINERS AT THE CHUquicamata pit launched a new tactic...
...Union meetings after working hours were forbidden...
...LIKE ANY COALITION OF PARTIES WITH strongly held views, the UP was troubled by internal differences...
...But the military left in place many workplace-level unions and local leaders not seen as militants or UP party activists...
...The party's theoretical journal contained articles asserting, on one hand, that "a policy of senseless expropriations, of indifference to the lack of labor discipline and considerations of productivity, and of pushing opportunistic wage demands, is to give ammunition to the enemy," and on the other hand arguing that "Workers should not be prevented from trying to get wage increases from a state that appears to them as the successor of the old boss...
...The attempt to co-opt the copper workers and their union failed...
...In 1933 various independent Marxist groupings formed the Socialist Party of Chile...
...2. Programa de la Unidad Popular, Santiago, 1969...
...F OR A TIME DURING THE 1983-1985 PROtests the future of the Pinochet government was called into question...
...Seguel led massive strikes and protests throughout 1984, 1985 and 1986...
...4. Memoria anual de la direcci6n del trabajo, Ministry of Labor, Santiago, 1970...
...It is July 1987, winter in Santiago, and the leaders of Chile's largest labor grouping are planning two important steps in months to come: an October 7 national protest strike and a 1988 founding convention for a new central labor body...
...A LTERNATIVELY, CNS LEADERS WERE left Christian Democrats and former CUT and Popular Unity activists who agreed on the need to work together...
...Bustos is a 40-year-old textile worker and a battlehardened veteran of the struggle against Pinochet...
...Luis Figueroa, a longtime Communist Party and union leader, was CUT president when the UP came to power...
...But these unifying themes are countered by continuing divisions...
...We are not interested in profiting, but in serving the entire community.' But what if the workers in profitable firms-and unprofitable ones, too, for that matterdemanded more for themselves than for the community...
...Most Chileans agree that Allende would have won were it not for the doomed fifth candidacy of a populist priest who garnered 5% of the vote...
...Earlier presidents had been granted powers of "intervention" and "requisition" of mismanaged or strategically important enterprises...
...This can't just be a Santiago action...
...Frei campaigned on a reformist platform stressing justice and land redistribution...
...This new national union federation grouped Communists, Socialists, Radicals, Christian Democrats and other political tendencies in a unitary body that held together for the next twenty years...
...While it maintained a "national" line opposing government efforts to promote enterprise unionism, the Group of Ten rejected class struggle and a strategy of mass mobilization, calling instead for an orderly return to democracy in which a relatively apolitical labor movement could conduct its trade union business without government or party influence...
...For a brief time the National Command was as broad a labor grouping as the CUT had been in earlier times...
...Laboring for Unity 1. Cited in Jorge Barria, El movimiento obrero en Chile (Santiago, 1971), p. 44...
...Union leaders were elected to parliament from working class areas where the Chilean Workers Federation was active...
...One large work commemorates the one hundredth anniversary of Chicago's Haymarket rally and its hanged martyrs that gave rise to the May 1 workers' holiday...
...Quoted in Gonzalo Falabella, La diversidad sindical en el regimen militar (Santiago: Programa FLACSO No...
...HE UP FORMULATED A PROGRAM THAT aimed to create conditions for a transition to socialism while respecting Chile's constitution...
...In 1976 a new union grouping took shape: the National Union Coordinating Body (CNS) expressed the work of former CUT activists and the expelled leaders of the Group of Ten...
...In fact, Allende and the Popular Unity had six months to live...
...Augusto Pinochet, who overthrew the constitutionally elected government of Salvador Allende in 1973...
...In a poor fourth, with 5.5% of the vote, came Salvador Allende, candidate of a Left coalition barred by law from including Communists...
...THE MILITARY COUP OF 1973 DESTROYED the structure of Chile's national, class-based unionism...
...Sectoral bargaining raised wages for lower paid workers...
...The smashing of Chilean democracy by the military in 1973 carried with it-not as a byproduct of the coup but as a strategic objective-the destruction of organized labor and the imprisonment, torture, exile and murder of thousands of union activists...
...The Communist Party urged a slow, step-by-step reform process rather than precipitous socialization, and attacked "ultra Left" groups outside the UP-mainly the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR)-that pushed for immediate action...
...My job is to call up the boss to tell him 'You've got a union now.' "5 In place of a system of plant-by-plant bargaining that 24retarded industrial unionism and weakened workers' bargaining power, the UP promoted industry-wide bargaining "commissions" to negotiate standard wages and benefits for entire sectors of industry...
...Later Frei measures, including forced savings and anti-inflationary steps like those of Alessandri, further embittered the unions...
...In 1953 Chilean unions healed their rupture to create the United Workers Central (CUT...
...But hopes for a rapid evolution to democracy evaporated by the end of 1986...
...analogy it is as if the Appalachian coal range were one country, with its history of militant unionism and "us-versus-them" attitudes toward mineowners...
...Fearing this result, the Right threw its support to Eduardo Frei in a two-man race...
...Interview conducted by Canadian union representative Osvaldo Nuhez, Santiago, July 1987...
...Under these forces a "national," class struggleoriented unionism has held sway in the Chilean labor movement throughout this century...
...Union leaders had always told their members to vote Communist and Socialist to defend and advance their standard of living through legislative means...
...Seven key federations of the CNS and a number of local public sector unions were dissolved by decrees and new union organizing in state enterprises was barred...
...The Ten" became the public face of Chilean organized labor in the years immediately after the coup...
...Decree No...
...Instead, the junta decided to formulate a new labor policy that would, in its view, create "the bases of a democratic labor union move"ment.'"" HE PINOCHET DICTATORSHIP TOUTED ITS 1979 Plan Laboral as a modernization of labor relations that would win wide union support...
...2 The unions responded with an urgent, united call for international support...
...He has spent nearly three years in prison for trade union and political organizing since the military coup of 1973...
...Some were influenced by Trotsky or anarcho-syndicalists...
...On the other hand, the government, often supported by CUT leaders, called for restraint and sacrifice by workers in formulating and bargaining for their economic demands, especially in the nationalized Area Social...
...Alarmed by growing labor militancy, the dictatorship struck back in October...
...Gonzalo Falabella, Labour in Chile Under the Junta, 1973-1979 (London: University of London, Institute of Latin American Studies, 1981), p. 4 . 5. Author's interview with Ministry of Labor staff, Santiago, 1972...
...In the 1964 elections Allende clearly would have won another three-way contest...
...Mines are spread the entire length of Chile...
...Those workers belonged to the independent Copper Workers Federation (CTC), where the Pinochet MARCHIAPRIL 1988 dictatorship had installed pro-government leaders in months following the coup...
...The government-chosen leadership promoted an isolationist line, arguing that copper workers were better paid than others and should not mix with the rest of the labor movement...
...Now it was the socialists' turn...
...The CUT and the left-wing parties organized the Popular Action Front (FRAP) for the 1958 elections, and almost elected Salvador Allende president...
...Unfortunately the CDT rejects the principles and program implied in recreating the CUT...
...Now, Allende's veto power could block any legislative move to deny him the same power to take control of the 91 companies targeted for nationalization...
...But behind the scenes, former CUT and UP activists were coordinating new organizing moves...
...Partitions separate makeshift offices...
...A Popular Front government led by the Radical Party with Communist and Socialist participation prevailed in the national elections of 1938...
...IMILAR CALLS FOR "DISCIPLINE" AND "restraint" marked public declarations of other UP government leaders and CUT officials...
...Current plans are to call the new body the Unified Workers Central (CUT), evoking the historic significance of the "CUT" and implying a labor movement still based on principles of class struggle...
...FOURTEEN YEARS AFTER THE MILITARY coup the Chilean people are still seeking the road back to democracy...
...There were 4,000 local unions in 1970 and 10,000 by 1973...
...Left-wing Socialists and MAPUcistas-UP party membersjoined critics from the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) and the Christian Democratic Party in attacking the Communists and Allende Socialists for betraying the workers they were supposed to defend...
...Many were disillusioned by the calls for sacrifice from CUT and UP leaders...
...In dispatching troops against the miners, Frei sent the labor movement a sharp, hostile message...
...One reason is cultural: Chileans' self-image is strongly homogenous...
...Reproduced in English in New Chile, (New York: North American Congress on Latin America, 1972), pp...
...Some firms suffer losses but are compensated by the enormous gains of others...
...Joining trade unionists of differing ideologies and philosophies in a single body, the CUT was perhaps unique in Latin America in its commitment to labor unity...
...What is the proper mix of bread and butter union demands and wider political demands...
...The call by Chile's labor "shock troops" seized the country's imagination...
...Indeed, the 1973 contest was really a greater electoral triumph for the coalition than winning the presidency in 1970, considering the forces arrayed against the government and the fierce opposition campaign...
...The UP issued a list of 91 companies targeted for full or partial nationalization...
...Should the Christian Democrats cooperate with Marxists...
...The AFL-CIO and European union federations threatened to boycott Chilean commerce...
...Other Socialist factions, however, developed close ties to the MIR and other groupings that criticized the UP from the left...
...In line with its proclaimed break with socialism and move to a liberalized economy, the military aimed to create a new, atomized movement based on enterprise-conscious "company" unionism...
...Membership rose dramatically...
...T HE SOCIALIST PARTY FIRST ORGANIZED a rival trade union federation to compete for worker support, splitting the movement at a time when, in the Depression, organizing and bargaining gains were few...
...In addition, the waves of immigrants who rolled ashore on the east coast of the continent rarely crossed the Andes...
...Tomic was third with 27.8...
...The rise in Christian Democratic strength in the labor movement increased opposition confidence that it could win two-thirds of the congressional seats needed to overturn the UP program in the 1973 mid-term parliamentary elections...
...The Radical Party and MAPU developed a mix of policies that put them to the left of the Communists REPORT ON THE AMERICAS on questions of nationalization, but stressed worker participation in management and other themes that resonated in their own middle-class bases...
...The two groups might collaborate on events like May I protests and calls for a return to democracy or respect for labor rights...
...A Christian Democrat, he opposed the Communist and Socialist Party leaders of the textile union and many policies of Allende's Popular Unity coalition...
...Important economic reforms were enacted, expanding social programs and extending state intervention in the economy...
...CNT leaders countered that the explosions could have been designed to discredit the strike and divert attention from its demands...
...Looking ahead to 1973, CUT mobilization would be decisive in holding the UP's margin over the congressional opposition...
...Even the Frei people sided with employers who resisted union organization," said a ministry staffer who reviewed union organizing petitions under the UP...
...Barred from striking by government decree, they initiated "eatins...
...Socialist unionists won 22%, Christian Democrats 10% and Radicals 8...
...2,345...
...Union opposition notwithstanding, the Pinochet government imposed the Labor Plan with minimal changes...
...Stretched between the mountains and the sea, Chile is like an island whose people see themselves as one...
...For nearly six years after the coup, unions were prohibited from any form of political activity...
...8 Communist Party unionists were especially troubled by the conflicting demands of labor partisanship and government policies of restraint...
...By now a young Christian Democrat named Rodolfo Seguel had rocketed to the top leadership post of the Copper Workers Union and the CNT...
...Can the CDT port workers' interest in expanded imports, which means jobs for themselves, be reconciled with CNT industrial workers' calls for protection of the internal market to save their members' jobs...
...One is a national trade unionism in which working class conditions are a question requiring country-wide solutions...
...From their 1968 total of 46% of the vote, the Communist slate fell to 31...
...Immediate prospects for the Chilean opposition, including the labor movement, are not promising...
...Through most of this century, national, class-based unionism has prevailed...
...Most analysts agree it will consist largely of current CNT unions without the participation of the CDT...
...2,346...
...It was not a clean break, however: the important oil workers union and key independent unions in the banking sector and the shoe and leather industry quit the CDT to remain with the CNT, now seen as the principal advocate of labor unity and continued social mobilization against the dictatorship...
...The CNT is planning a founding convention of a new labor central in late 1988...
...F THERE IS HOPE FOR A REUNIFIED LABOR movement in Chile, it rests on what is now a consensus in the CNT that trade unionists should not be too dependent on political parties, too controlled by party labor commissions or too unwilling to work with the entire political spectrum within the labor movement...
...T HE ALESSANDRI YEARS WERE CHARACterized by anti-inflationary campaigns aimed at cutting workers' real wages...
...In November 1977 workers pulled off a nearly total strike in the giant El Teniente mine...
...Conservative forces had won in 1958...
...8. Author's interview with textile union representative, Santiago, September 1972...
...From 1938 to 1946, the tendency of organized labor and the two Left parties to focus their work in the legislative and administrative process was reinforced...
...Though most did not win immediate gains, they reflected increasing impatience and boldness by rank and file...
...3. This estimate is derived from the results of CUT national elections and membership votes for UP party slates...
...Nearly all of Chile's foreign trade, and much of its domestic economy, depended on the copper industry...
...Radomiro Tomic, the Christian Democrats' choice in the 1970 elections, presented a platform similar in many respects to that of the UP, including extensive nationalization...
...6. Quoted in La Nacidn (Santiago), July 26, 1972...
...Union leaders were brought into state posts to administer labor-related programs...
...On September 18, 1973 the new military junta issued a proclamation calling for the firing of workers considered "activists," "saboteurs" or "criminals...
...Pinochet quickly dissolved the CUT and liquidated its assets on the grounds that it was a subversive Marxist-Leninist political body, not a labor organization...
...But at the same time, workers often identify with their employer and workplace as the locus of struggle...
...Chile's social and political history-and its future-cannot be understood apart from the story of trade unionism and working class consciousness...
...A general strike was called, but disagreements over whether to prolong it led to a new, open split between the Socialists and the Communists in the labor movement and the collapse of the CTCH...
...At its founding, the CUT represented about onefourth of the nation's workers, virtually all Chile's union members...
...The relatively restrained positions of the Communists and the Allende socialists in the CUT opened them to attacks from the MIR and the left Socialists for betraying their promises of revolutionary change...
...But with the growth of Popular Front sentiment the split was repaired...
...Both the federation and the party grew steadily through the early 1920s...
...A sharp sense of discouragement took hold among rank and file workers and the population at large, exhausted by what seemed a permanent state of mobilization with nothing to show for it...
...But old tensions soon resurfaced...
...Exposed plumbing and wiring conduits scar the walls and ceiling...
...Progressives among The Ten began working with them, leading to their expulsion on charges of collaborating with Communists...
...Some were breakaway Communists and others on the left who were uncomfortable with the role of the Third International in party affairs...
...The new movement would be apolitical, confining activities to collective bargaining...
...to take a U.S...
...But the government had to develop strategies for 1973 mid-term congressional elections...
...In contrast to the disciplined Communists, Socialist Party activists were divided...
...the middle-of-the-roaders had their chance in 1964...
...The total number of workplace unions and union members practically doubled between 1970 and 1973, a burst of organizing reminiscent of 1930s CIO union organizing in the United States under the New Deal...
...Four years of what was in effect labor "guerrilla warfare" ensued, with selective work stoppages, protest rallies and new organizing efforts...
...Judging they could now win a three-way race, the Right again offered Jorge Alessandri, the ex-president who ran on an openly authoritarian program...
...Eduardo Frei, on the ticket of the rapidly growing Christian Democratic Party, drew 20.7%, and the Radical Party candidate received 15.6...
...But early in his rule eight copper miners were killed and forty injured in what labor saw as a strike-breaking massacre...
...On one hand, enforcement of labor laws boosted unions' institutional interest in organizing the unorganized, building industry-wide bargaining structures and pushing hard for gains at the negotiating table and on the picket line...
...We didn't know how to maintain our independence . . . Loyalty to your party is one thing, an instrument of class unity is something else...
...The country's economic history is key: development was based mainly on the exploitation of mineral resources-coal and nitrate in the last century...
...Within the Christian Democratic party itself, young leadership became increasingly disillusioned with the president's performance...
...The CNT is the largest and most representative, but important sections of the labor movement are estranged from the CNT because its leadership includes Communist and Socialist Party activists...
...Holding the union movement together under these circumstances would test the maturity of Chile's workers and the commitment to unity of their leaders...
...In turn, the two dominant parties agonized over which course of action to take: attacking the Left groupings and the Christian Democrats as "wreckers," or disarming them by taking the lead in making new economic demands...
...But the plan's policing of internal union affairs, prohibitions on collective bargaining above the single-plant level, sixty-day strike limit and ban on strikes in governmentselected strategic enterprises united all unions against the new labor regime...
...The 1952 presidential elections saw a substantial victory for Carlos Ibafiez, a retired Army general who had been key in the upheaval of the late 1920s...
...Collective bargaining was banned and agreements still in effect were voided...
...EXTENSIVE ORGANIZING AND MOBILIZING among Chilean laborers, especially in northern nitrate mines largely controlled by British capital, had been going on for decades when unionists created the Workers Federation of Chile (FOCH), the country's first national labor organization, in 1907...
...Nineteen CNT leaders pack a small conference room for an executive council meeting...
...Most recall events demanding libertad, or paz or justicia under the ruling military dictatorship of Gen...
...The Group of Ten and the CNS held a joint May 1 rally in 1978 calling for increased union freedoms and economic justice...
...T HE FRAYED STATE OF THE CNT NERVE center reflects the Chilean labor movement today, torn by military rule and its brutal repression...
...Continued progress by anti-government forces in the copper mines led to an April 1983 one-day national strike against government labor policies...
...9. Principios No.145, (Santiago: Communist Party of Chile) May-June 1972...
...Communists and Socialists held most CUT leadership posts...
...Decrees No...
...coal miners in the early 20th century...
...Falabella, La diversidad sindical, p. 4. 16...
...They are divided among different federations and independent labor groupings...
...The right to strike was abolished...
...130-142...
...Perhaps worst of all, many Chileans felt that the opposition was unprepared to govern a restored democracy...
...We are not worried about the individual case of each firm, but rather A generation that has known only dictatorshiD the global context of the textile area...
...The CNS did not include copper miners in La Gran Mineria, the half-dozen giant copper mines that accounted for most of the country's output of that key mineral...
...UST AS THE ANTI-FASCIST ALLIANCE BEgan falling apart after the war, Chile's political consensus and truce between the Communist and Socialist parties were violated in 1946...
...He stood up when it was needed, and that gives him the authority to lead the labor movement...
...After the Soviet Revolution, the Socialist Workers Party, like socialist groupings in many countries, became the Communist Party...
...I wish I were still a union negotiator in the private sector," said one Communist textile union official in the Area Social...
Vol. 22 • March 1988 • No. 2
