WE ARE ESSENTIAL: THE CONTRADICTIONS OF BEING A NECESSARY WORKER

July 23, 2020

hace click aquí para la versión en español

The conversation surrounding essential work within the context of a pandemic that has brought the world as we know it to a halt played out in Argentina on May 25th, nearly half-way through one of the longest quarantines in the world. President Alberto Fernández gathered a group of necessary workers in the presidential palace to celebrate the anniversary of the May Revolutions, a week-long battle that marked the beginning of the end of Spanish rule in Argentina at the start of the 19th century. 

A line of socially distanced garbage collectors, firefighters, military, scientists, police officer, grocery clerks, bus drivers and other workers deemed ‘necessary’ were serenaded an interpretation of Jorge Cafrune’s folklore anthem Cuando llegue el alba, or When the Daybreak Comes, before a teary eyed Fernández bumped forearms with the line of workers. The televised moment echoed an official press release that drew parallels between the ‘heroes’ of the Revolution and the workers on the figurative front lines of Coronavirus and added that “In this time of crisis, Argentines have recovered a value which has been long lost: the value of solidarity.”

In Argentina, where an estimated 45% of the workforce are unreported, it is difficult to know the exact number of workers across the service industry. The National Federation of Retail and Service Workers represents 1.2 million people—add to that an estimated 500,000 across the hospitality industry. While the historic precarization of labor has long pulled back the curtain on the systemic failures of a society which, for the last half century has sparred over an ideology of socioeconomic and political equality for the working class over the historic ruling elite, the pandemic has torn the curtain down and set it on fire. What does ‘essential’ or ‘necessary’ actually mean within the context of work that is valued as menial labor and performed by those at the bottom of the societal ladder? How do we contextualize a pandemic that has brought the world to a halt for a privileged few? And where does solidarity without retribution fit within the new social contract?

Mario Amado has been working at multinational grocery chain Carrefour since the early 90s and has been an active union leader for the last twenty years. In 2018, he put himself on the ballot of the SEC, where he challenged the long-standing incumbents of one of the largest and most powerful unions for service workers. Today, he leads Agrupación La Voz de Comercio, a group that unifies union leaders in Walmart, Vital, Carrefour and other retail giants. We sat down to discuss the narrative and the reality surrounding essential workers, the importance of worker participation in leadership and policy making and the future of the working class in Argentina.

Where do your political convictions come from?

Ideologically, I’m a Peronist with all of the contradictions that implies. Sometimes it is hard for me to listen to the Peronist anthem and the part that goes ‘to combat capital’ and here I am working for a multinational. I try to adapt that phrase so that combatting capital becomes fighting for better working conditions for the people I represent. 

Have you always been political?

Always. My dad instilled in me ideas of social justice and Peronism. He was a field worker and they exploited him until there was nothing left to exploit. He was a man that never finished elementary school but had a lot going on in his head. I hitchhiked and walked to Buenos Aires from a town called Acheral in Tucumán when I was 14 years old [Editor’s note: Tucumán is in the Northeast of Argentina approximately 1200 km from Buenos Aires]. I came here alone to work wherever I could. I worked in restaurants washing dishes, washing bathrooms, washing everything. I lived in pensions [sic] if you didn’t have enough money they put a lock on your door and you lost everything inside. I lived in the streets. I slept in the plazas. I got the shit beat out of me so that I wouldn’t be raped or have everything stolen from me. Before Carrefour, when I was washing dishes [sic] in restaurants you negotiated mano a mano with the owner. I was 16 years old sitting across from the owner of a pizzeria who put a revolver on the table and asked me, what do you want? and me like Nada, I want you to pay me what I deserve. Justice was always very important to me. I always thought that if I am going to work then I should get my fair share. I believe that work is the foundation of everyone’s life. But if I’m going to bust my ass working, I get something fair in return. I want the treatment to be fair. I want my place of work to have dignity. And I always believed that you have to work for the well-being of others.

When did you start working for Carrefour?

I started as a stock boy in 1993 and was fired for supporting the person who was supposed to become the union representative for that store. I was able to re-enter at another store because at the time Carrefour didn’t have their hiring centralized. 

Did you immediately get involved with union work?

I started working as a union representative more than 20 years ago at this store. I spent an additional eight years as a sub-secretary of FAECYS [Federation of Argentine Service Workers]. That allowed me to travel all over the world learning about the reality of unions and the problems that workers face in other countries while I tried to bring the Argentine experience to those places. I decided to put my name on the ballet with a group of colleagues to challenge the incumbents and lost by very little. It was a fraudulent election and it has later come out that underneath President Macri there were presidential orders that the guy who won had to win. I opted to keep fighting for a better union. The election ended but the problems never did. 

What are the problems you are currently facing?

There are 1600 of us that decided that this fight needs to happen and we are working to build up our name and ideas. We are talking about a renovation of ideas. If we don’t change the ideas, nothing is going to change. So I am in the middle of that construction. I know it is going to be difficult. I know I am challenging one of the largest economic and social structures in the country. This union in Buenos Aires alone is immense and what happens here ends up replicating itself in all of the other union organizations. 

You have a two-sided job because you work to improve the working conditions within different stores where you are a union representative but you are also working towards something much larger which is to change the structure of the union itself. Can you tell me what that union looks like today?

The union provides services and benefits. They give you diapers, they give you glasses, they give you a pool in the summer but it has lost its essence as a union. It’s not in the streets. It’s a union full of directors behind desks. A lot of directors have never worked in the types of places they represent. I think that we have a responsibility to protect the union model but to do that we need to change the model for recruiting directors. The times that we live in demand a union that is in the streets. A union that walks in the streets and that doesn’t mean going out to break stuff. It means going out to demand your rights are respected and change the union participation. We need to work to get people to fall in love with being part of a union again. 

The same union leader has been in power for more than 30 years and the union continues to negotiate under a national worker’s treaty from 1975, right?

Last night he came on television to say that ‘Salaries aren’t a problem because he has loosened where the businesses have asked him to.’ He publicly acknowledged harming workers to benefit big business. 

Beyond changing the union system, what are the current working conditions that you are fighting to change?

That depends completely on what store you work at because not all chains operate the same way and not even all stores within a single chain operate in the same way. 

Salaries, for example, pay is $36,000 monthly for a full-time 48-hour weekly position.  

That is the officially negotiated salary across all workers whose jobs fall under the general purchase retail and service umbrella. In the supermarkets, pay is better. Here for example, in this store and others where my group is present we have the majority of our workers here full-time or 32 hours a week and they can make anywhere between $60,000 and $70,000 monthly after tax. But that is here. The supermarkets abuse the part-time system. They’ll have someone working part-time come in 6 times a week and for someone who lives far away you travel 4 hours roundtrip to work a 4 hour shift nearly every day of the week. That’s ridiculous.

[Editor’s note: it is difficult to accurately value the ARG peso to US dollar exchange. Official rates are 71ARS to 1USD while black market rates are 127ARS to 1USD at the date of publication of this interview. For further context, the National Center for Census and Statistics considers, controversially, 43,000ARS the total monthly income for a household of 4 to stay above the poverty line.]

Is that higher salary dependent on working holidays and Sundays? [Editor’s note: holidays and Sundays are paid double]

That’s where my own contradiction comes in. I should be encouraging people to not work so many holidays or Sundays but there is an economic reality. I can’t impose myself into their pockets. I want Argentina to return to closing businesses on Sundays but incorporating the money people make on Sundays into their paychecks. 

What percentage of workers actually work full-time?

I don’t know the percentage across stores but I imagine somewhere between 40% and 45%. At this store, we are at 80%. But that’s because we are present. In the mini markets nearly everyone is part-time.