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Uruguay Labor Unions
In March 1985, Sanguinetti abrogated laws and decrees
issued
by the military regime that had banned the labor unions,
the
immunity of labor union leaders, and the right of public
and
private workers to strike. He also restored the legal
status of
the primarily communist-led National Convention of Workers
(Convención Nacional de Trabajadores--CNT), dissolved by
the
military regime in 1973; in 1983 the Interunion Workers'
Assembly
(or Plenum) (Plenario Intersindical de Trabajadores--PIT)
adopted
the name PIT-CNT to show its link with the banned CNT. The
longrepressed labor movement took advantage of its newly
granted
freedom by staging strikes and marches during the first
six
months of democracy.
The communist-led Uruguayan labor movement, which
claimed to
represent about 300,000 of the 1.3 million Uruguayan
workers,
also called general strikes in the late 1980s, as well as
strikes
in specific job areas, mostly involving civil service
workers or
those in state enterprises. In 1986 Sanguinetti's
government and
the Colorado Party signed a "nonaggression" pact with the
PCU.
Under the Colorado-Communist Pact (the "Co-Co Pact"),
militant
labor members of the Colorado Party and the PCU formed
alliances
whenever the National Party promoted a movement within a
labor
organization. Nevertheless, the powerful main labor
organization,
the PIT-CNT, staged three general strikes in 1986.
The attitudes of the leadership of the Moscow-oriented
World
Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), which was affiliated
with the
PIT-CNT, were among the main issues discussed by
candidates in
the 1989 presidential campaign. The leading candidates
endorsed
proposals for legislation to require secret strike votes
and
other union regulation. Labor activity in Uruguay was
virtually
unregulated. The WFTU supported the PCU and other leftist
political groups united in the Broad Front. In November
1989, the
movement was preparing for a showdown with the mainstream
political leaders over whether or not to espouse a more
marketoriented economy with foreign investment. Although the
PIT-CNT's
leadership opposed increasing foreign investment, the
organization was becoming fractionalized among those
influenced
by perestroika (restructuring) in the Soviet Union,
those
who rejected it, and non-Marxists seeking to challenge
leftist
domination of the movement.
Lacalle advocated regulating labor union activities,
including the right to strike. In his view, the decision
on
whether or not to strike should be made by the workers in
a
secret vote, after the failure of obligatory
reconciliation
efforts. Shortly after Lacalle took office, Minister of
Labor and
Social Welfare Carlos Cat, who ran for mayor of Montevideo
in the
1989 elections, met with representatives of business
organizations and the PIT-CNT but failed to reach an
agreement.
The PIT-CNT demonstrated its right to strike with a
six-hour
general work stoppage on July 25, 1990, to protest the
government's austerity and privatization programs.
Despite Lacalle's efforts to regulate the sector,
Uruguay's
labor movement in 1990 had significant clout as an
interest
group, mainly with regard to its highly disruptive strike
tactics. Like leftist political organizations in general,
however, the labor unions' continued use of the same
rhetoric and
methods that got results during the military regime were
seen by
some Uruguayan journalists and sociologists as major
contributors
to both emigration and apathy among young Uruguayans.
Data as of December 1990
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