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3: The Unions in the Face of the Crisis
- Wilfrid Laurier University Press
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The Unions in the Face of the Crisis A strike is a strike from a political perspective, but not from a juridical-legal perspective. —Costa Rican Labour Minister Farid Ayales, in a 1995 interview with La República But the spirit of the laws is one thing and reality is another. —Elisa Donato M. and Manuel Rojas B., Sindicatos, política y economía, 1972–1986 T he economic crisis in the late 1970s did not come at the best of times for the Costa Rican union movement. Having peaked in influence among workers, in organization, and in strike activity during the first half of the century, the movement entered into a period of decline in the 1950s and 1960s, experienced a slight resurgence (mainly in the banana sectors) in the 1970s, and had begun to lose ground again by the onset of the crisis.1 As well, according to almost all accounts, the union movement could be best characterized as “weak” or “passive” as it faced the crisis and its aftermath throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. Analysts point out that, during these years, not only did the overall level of unionization among workers remain relatively low and stagnant,2 but the union movement as a whole was unable to respond effectively enough to derail the privatization process and the other programs of the government ’s neo-liberal agenda.3 Despite the very real and serious problems experienced by the Costa Rican labour movement in recent decades, however, union activism has not completely disappeared from the political landscape. In the 1980s, and particularly the 1990s, new forms of union protest and collaboration have also arisen in Costa Rica. In fact, there is ample evidence to suggest that workers’ organizations have not taken the economic crisis and the government ’s neo-liberal remedies for it lying down. In this chapter, I discuss both the problems and the promise of the Costa Rican union movement after 1979 and thus provide more of the historical context needed to understand Costa Rican Church leaders’ varied approaches to workers and the issues affecting them. 3 Notes for chapter 3 start on page 206 33 03_sawchuk.qxd 2004/09/16 15:56 PM Page 33 Problems for the Costa Rican Union Movement xInternal Weaknesses One of the most commonly cited causes of the relative impotence of the unions during the 1980s and 1990s has been the “atomization,” or excessive fragmentation, within the union movement itself. This phenomenon is most noticeable in the public sector, where the workers of even a single institution may find themselves split among a dozen or more unions; the Caja Costarricense de Seguro Social (CCSS, Costa Rican Social Security Bureau), for example, contained thirty-six different unions in 1997.4 New unions continually appear, often as groups within existing unions attempt to break away and form their own organizations. Sometimes these new unions fail and vanish, but more often they remain as small units unto themselves. In 1993, 45 percent of unions recorded fewer than fifty registered members, while 24 percent had between fifty and ninety-nine members.5 As well, because a substantial proportion of unions in Costa Rica have elected not to affiliate themselves with one of the existing union federations or confederations (the latter are also known as “union centrals ”), the isolation and lack of co-ordination among many of these small independent unions is even more pronounced.6 The fragmentation of the union movement can be attributed to a number of factors, including: ideological dogmatism or sectarianism; elitism , in evidence when groups of engineers, for example, refuse to affiliate with groups of bus drivers or other manual labourers; and gremialismo, a “guild mentality,” in which workers associate only with other workers in the same, very narrowly defined, trade.7 Regardless of the exact causes responsible for atomization, this division in the movement has had harmful effects on Costa Rican workers. On the one hand, many of the unions are too small and have too few resources to be able to muster significant bargaining power vis-à-vis employers. This is particularly serious during a period when social and economic conditions indicate that workers can least afford to be losing ground as far as wages, job stability, and similar matters are concerned. More generally, atomization has reduced the level of influence of the union movement as a whole, with dispersion and infighting among unions hindering them from forming a united front able to contest the government’s...