Neoliberalism Was Built on Anti-Worker Repression
For a generation, academics have described a virtuous circle of democracy, free trade, and the empowerment of workers in developing countries. That’s simply not what neoliberalism has meant in practice.
Workers carry a coffin with the slogan that Argentinian president Carlos Menem used during his proselytizing campaign on September 6, 1997, in Buenos Aires during the mobilization and strike called by the Confederación General del Trabajadores (CGT) to protest record unemployment in Argentina. (Daniel Luna / AFP via Getty Images)
Saúl Ubaldini’s Ford Falcon exploded a few minutes before 2 AM on the morning of August 17, 1989. The bomb threw the car several feet into the air and shattered the windows on the first floor of the Confederación General del Trabajadores (CGT), Argentina’s main labor union federation. “For us,” asserted a longtime CGT organizer, “it was the government.” Thirty years later, Ubaldini’s assistant — the man who parked the car the night it blew up — explained that “Saúl knew, and I saw it in his eyes. He knew he was going up against something big, something that wanted to shut him up.”
What Ubaldini, the secretary general of the CGT, was going up against was a set of neoliberal economic reforms proposed by Argentina’s newly inaugurated president, Carlos Menem.
From 1983 through 1988, Ubaldini’s CGT launched thirteen general strikes against similar reforms proposed by Raúl Alfonsín, the country’s previous president. Those strikes paralyzed the economy, stopped the reform process, and destabilized Alfonsín’s rule, all while establishing the CGT as one of the most important social forces in Argentina. When Menem announced his intentions to open and deregulate the Argentine economy, Ubaldini’s CGT was the indisputable symbol of resistance.
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