Between Trade and Merit. Work’s Evaluation Against the Problem of Salary Overlap in Argentina

Abstract

In Argentina, between 2003 and 2015, convention workers achieved remunerations that, mainly in large enterprises, attained values similar to those of their direct superiors. This happened as a product of the continuity in collective bargaining and the possibility that trade unions had to obtain through the latter wages that in almost the whole period exceeded the annual inflation. With the extra hours and wages additional due to convention agreements their final remuneration was even higher than that of the middle management levels. This phenomenon, known as salary overlap, generated strong unrest among hierarchical employees, as they took conscience that they were being hindered in the individual negotiations with their employers. These agreement conditions led to several groups of these workers to create their own trade union organizations or to join those that were already formed. In this way, the individualistic model of individual merit competition started to be challenged. In this article we conduct a qualitative analysis of collective agreements signed by hierarchical workers’ trade unions between 2003 and 2015 and in-depth interviews with managers of transnational corporations, human resources managers and specialized consultants in order to investigate the consequences of the process above mentioned.