Uruguay's Labor Movement in Disarray

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After a half century of monolithic unity that allowed Uruguay's only trade union federation, the Plenario Intersindical de Trabajadores-Convencion Nacional de Trabajdores (PIT-CNT), to emerge intact from the 12-year (1973-1985) dictatorship, a fissure has opened in the labor organization. Along with certain practices, which were not supported by the country's union history or by the majority of its the rank and file, that arose in some of the smaller unions, an alliance of those same groups is now fomenting the confrontation between salaried workers and the Frente Amplio (FA) government, dragging with it the entire union movement.

On March 1, when President Jose Mujica, the second-consecutive FA president, took office, he was backed by a number of parties and groups in which, although not officially and without formally becoming part of the administration structure, the federation was always one of the administration's pillars.

However, in the seven months between Mujica's swearing-in and Oct. 7, the PIT-CNT has called four half-day work shutdowns and a 24-hour general strike that have managed to damage the image of the government at home and abroad. Beyond the federation's incoherent attitude that Uruguayans still do not understand--which explains why the Oct. 7 work stoppage did not have the massive support of most previous strikes in the country's history--the government has obviously been shaken by the …