Lucas González, Universidad Nacional de San Martín
Relevance of the Practice
Under what conditions are intergovernmental relations cooperative or conflictive? When do subnational units comply with federal regulations and under what conditions do they resist them? Are there effective mechanisms of conflict resolution and follow-up procedures securing the actual implementation of decisions?
In 2011, Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner sent to the National Congress a bill for implementing the so-called Agrarian Labor Regime (informally known as the ‘new statute of the rural laborer’). The bill defined federal regulations related to labor rights in the agricultural sector across the country (such as minimum wage, the maximum of eight hours of working day, paid vacations, prohibition of child labor, appropriate working conditions, among others).[1] The most controversial aspect of the new bill was who was in charge of auditing and control: until then, these functions were outsourced to a private company and very much controlled by large agricultural companies in the provinces, in collusion with the rural union (UATRE)[2].[3] In the new bill, the federal government would be in charge of controlling compliance with the federal laws.
Some governors and provincial senators from provinces with large plantations immediately resisted the bill in Congress.[4] Despite these pressures, the PJ (Justicialista Party) faction in government (the Victory Front, or FPV) got the numbers it needed and the federal legislation was passed into law 26,727 (Agrarian Labor Regime) in December 2011. After the session in Congress, the Federal Minister of Labor, Carlos Tomada, declared ‘those who opposed the bill the most were those who always had an attitude of disregard and exploitation of rural workers (…) reaching extreme situations of degradation and slavery (…). This is the economic sector with the largest share of informal labor in the country’ and ‘the previous legislation did nothing to revert that’.[5]
After losing the battle in Congress, governors of large plantation provinces played a key role in resisting federal control of this legislation in their territories. These provincial governments were ‘committed to protect the productive sector’ and were ‘worried about the impact on production’, arguing also that ‘people (in the province) make a living out of this’.[6]
Description of the Practice
Which provinces cooperated with the federal government? Which ones conflicted against it? We evaluated the implementation of this federal labor law in two provinces: Chaco and Corrientes. These two are neighboring provinces, historically, economically, and culturally connected, only separated by the Paraná river. In spite of these similarities, Corrientes’s economy is mostly agrarian, based on large plantations. The main economic products are traditional crops such as rice, tea, yerba mate, and tobacco. It produces about 70 per cent of the dark tobaccos in the country, almost 50 per cent of the total rice, and about 15 per cent of the total yerba mate.[7] Chaco, on the contrary, has a large public sector and historically small agricultural production units, mostly cotton and quebracho. The province had 73 public employees every 1,000 inhabitants in 2015 (Corrientes had 54; the average for the three largest provinces in the country was 38). Agricultural employment represents only 10 per cent of total employment in 2014.
As a result of this economic structure based on small agricultural production units, Chaco’s political elites faced fewer pressures from the agri-business sector and had more political autonomy in relation to policies that affect it, such as the regulation of labor rights in the province. Political elites in Corrientes, on the contrary, faced more pressures from agricultural elites, which occupied key positions in the cabinet, such as the Ministry of Production.[8]
We interviewed one of the federal supervisors of the RENATRE (National Registry of Rural Workers and Employers) who examined work conditions in the agricultural sector and assessed compliance with federal labor laws in Chaco and Corrientes. He stressed that ‘the provincial government helped (implementing and complying with federal labor laws) in Chaco’ (Franco Capitanich, cousin of the Governor, was in the area of the provincial government coordinating with federal supervisors). When asked about the situation in Corrientes, he replied: ‘In Corrientes no; it’s complicated in Corrientes. The provincial political power could not be in favor of something that went against their interests’.[9]
Assessment of the Practice
Despite provincial resistance, in a simple but perhaps revealing indicator, Corrientes had 1,399 sanctions due to failure to comply with federal labor regulations.[10] Chaco has 48 per cent fewer sanctions than Corrientes (it had 945 sanctions). Provinces of equivalent population have values close to those of Chaco (Santiago del Estero has 913 and Misiones 746 sanctions). We conducted a similar search in April, 2019 and the results are quite consistent: Corrientes had 1,392 sanctions and Chaco 938.[11] These results have notable implications for workers, especially informal laborers, in rural areas: conflicts between units of governments affect how federal labor regulations are implemented across the territory.
The cases we analyzed show that provinces with more influential economic elites have lower compliance with federal laws, more conflicts with the federal government, and more repression of federal labor rights. This is so because provincial economic elites resisted redistributive politics in Corrientes more than in Chaco, where the province complied with and supported federal labor laws.
References to Scientific and Non-Scientific Sources
— — ‘Satisfacción de Tomada’ Página 12 (22 December 2011)
González L and Nazareno M, ‘Resisting Equality: Subnational State Capture and the Unequal Distribution of Inequality.’ (2021) Comparative Politics <https://doi.org/10.5129/001041522X16185909705013>
Ministry of Economy and Public Finances and National Directorate for Provincial Affairs, ‘Corrientes. Informe Sintético de Caracterización Socio-Productiva’ (2018)
Premici S, ‘Con todos los derechos de los otros trabajadores’ Página 12 (22 December 2011)
— — De Patrones y Peones (Acercándonos Ediciones 2016)
[1] These rights had been established in 1944 but were later abolished by a law during the military dictatorship in 1980.
[2] In an interview with a high-ranking official of the Federal Ministry of Labor on 24 July 2019, he claimed that ‘you wouldn’t notice the difference between the businessman and the union leader’.
[3] Sebastián Premici, ‘Con todos los derechos de los otros trabajadores’ Página 12 (22 December 2011); — — De Patrones y Peones (Acercándonos Ediciones 2016); Interview with high-ranking official in the area of Labor Policy Planning, Federal Ministry of Labor (Buenos Aires, 22 November 2018); Interview with FT, Resistencia (Chaco, 5 April 2019); Interview with high ranking official in the area of Labor Relations, Federal Ministry of Labor, and the National Commission of Agricultural Work (Buenos Aires, 24 July 2019).
[4] Premici, ‘Con todos los derechos de los otros trabajadores’, above; Interview with the two high ranking officials of the Federal Ministry of Labor (22 November 2018 and 24 July 2019); Interview with former Governor of Chaco (5 April 2019).
[5] — — ‘Satisfacción de Tomada’ Página 12 (22 December 2011).
[6] Interview with high ranking official in the area of Labor Relations, Federal Ministry of Labor, and the National Commission of Agricultural Work (Buenos Aires, 24 July 2019).
[7] Ministry of Economy and Public Finances and National Directorate for Provincial Affairs, ‘Corrientes. Informe Sintético de Caracterización Socio-Productiva’ (2018).
[8] Lucas González and Marcelo Nazareno, ‘Resisting Equality: Subnational State Capture and the Unequal Distribution of Inequality.’ (2021) Comparative Politics <https://doi.org/10.5129/001041522X16185909705013>.
[9] Interview with FT, Resistencia (Chaco, 5 April 2019).
[10] Data collected from the Public Registry of Employers with Labor Sanctions (REPSAL), during October and November, 2018; accessed 27 November 2018.
[11] REPSAL site, https://www.argentina.gob.ar/trabajo/repsal, accessed 4 April 2019.