Redrafting Alliances: Labour and a New Transition in Argentina, a talk by Associate Professor Viviana Patroni

An important period in the labour movement in Argentina came to a close with the victory of Cambiemos (Let’s Change), the conservative coalition that brought Mauricio Macri to the presidency in December 2015. Over the previous eight years, the country had grown rapidly and large segments of the working class benefited from rising formal employment. Unions were able to re-gain some of the power lost and even the large number of workers who continued to work under informal conditions managed to increase the political weight of their organizations. Many of these victories were reversed as the economy deteriorated severely after 2016. This seminar seeks to account for the changes the labour movement in Argentina has undergone since early in the new century, in the transitions from the ultra-neoliberal regimes of the last decades of the previous century; to governments more akin to the demands of some sectors of the working class, back to conservatism; and since this last December 2019, a new transition that might be yet the most conflictive since the return to democracy almost 30 years ago.
Viviana Patroni is an associate professor in the Department of Social Science at York University, where she teaches in the International Development Studies program. Her research focuses on the political economy of Latin America, the transformation of the world of work in this region since the 1980s, the centrality of labour struggles in shaping patterns of development, and the transformation of labour markets in Argentina since the 1990s. Her most recent work includes an interest on the rise of organizations of informal workers and their challenge to prevalent views within labor movements about their understanding of work and working class.
Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/598619770914602/
For more information: https://glrc.apps01.yorku.ca/event/redrafting-alliances-labour-and-a-new-transition-in-argentina/
All are welcome.
The Global Labour Speaker Series is organized by the Global Labour Research Centre at York University and is co-sponsored by the School of Social Work, Faculty of Education, Department of Equity Studies, Department of Anthropology, Department of Sociology, Department of Geography, Social and Political Thought Program, Department of Philosophy, Department of History, Master of Public Policy, Administration and Law program, Department of Politics, School of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, Department of Social Science, School of Human Resource Management.