The General Confederation of Labor (in Spanish: Confederación General del Trabajo, CGT) is a national trade union federation in Argentina founded on 27 September 1930, as the result of the merger of the U.S.A. (Unión Sindical Argentina) and the C.O.A (Confederación Obrera Argentina) trade unions. Nearly one out of five employed – and two out of three unionized workers in Argentina – belong to the CGT, one of the largest labor federations in the world.

It was founded in 1930 by socialists, communists and independents to generate a plural union central. It had a socialist majority until 1945 and Peronist since then.

The CGT during the Infamous Decade

The CGT was founded on 27 September 1930, the result of an agreement between the Socialist Confederación Obrera Argentina (COA) and the Syndicalist Unión Sindical Argentina (USA), which had succeeded to the FORA IX (Argentine Regional Workers' Federation, Ninth Congress); smaller, Communist-led unions later joined the CGT as well. The COA, which included the two unions covering rail transport in Argentina (Unión Ferroviaria and La Fraternidad), was the larger of the two with 100,000 members; the USA, which included, telephone, port, tramway, and public sector unions, represented 15,000.

During the Infamous Decade of the 1930s and subsequent industrial development, the CGT began to form itself as a strong union, competing with the historically anarchist FORA V (Argentine Regional Workers' Federation, Fifth Congress). Centered initially around the railroad industry, the CGT was headed in the 1930s by Luis Cerruti and José Domenech (Unión Ferroviaria); Ángel Borlenghi (Confederación General de Empleados de Comercio); and Francisco Pérez Leirós (Unión de Obreros Municipales). The CGT became the Argentine affiliate of the International Federation of Trade Unions (an organization that both USA and COA had been members of for shorter periods).Goethem, Geert van. The Amsterdam International: The World of the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU), 1913–1945. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006. p. 296.

The CGT split in 1935 over a conflict between Socialists and Revolutionary Syndicalists, leading to the creation of the CGT-Independencia (Socialists & Communists) and the CGT-Catamarca (Revolutionary Syndicalists). The latter reestablished the Unión Sindical Argentina (USA) in 1937. The CGT again split in 1942, creating the CGT n°1, headed by the Socialist railroader José Domenech and opposed to Communism; and the CGT n°2, also headed by a Socialist (Pérez Leirós), which gathered Communist unions (construction, meat, print) and some important Socialist unions (such as the retail workers' union led by Borlenghi and the municipal workers' union led by Pérez Leirós).

The CGT following the "Revolution of '43"

After the coup d'état of 1943, its leaders embraced the pro-working class policies of the Labour Minister, Col. Juan Perón. The CGT was again unified, due to the incorporation of many unionists who were members of the CGT n°2, dissolved in 1943 by the military government.

When Perón was separated from the government and confined on Martín García Island, the CGT called for a major popular demonstration at the Plaza de Mayo, on 17 October 1945, succeeding in releasing Perón from prison and in the call for elections. Founding on the same day the Labour Party (Partido Laborista), the CGT was one of the main support of Perón during the February 1946 elections. The Labor Party merged into the Peronist Party in 1947, and the CGT became one of the strongest arms of the Peronist Movement, as well as the only trade union recognized by Perón's government. Two CGT delegates, the Socialist Ángel Borlenghi and Juan Atilio Bramuglia were nominated Minister of Interior and Minister of Foreign Affairs, respectively. Colonel Domingo Mercante, who was perhaps the military officer with the closest ties to labor, was elected Governor of Buenos Aires (a key constituency).

The number of unionized workers grew markedly during the Perón years, from 520,000 (of which half belonged to the CGT) to over 2.5 million (all belonging to the CGT's 2,500 affiliated unions). His administration also enacted or significantly extended numerous landmark social reforms supported by the CGT, including: minimum wages; labor courts; collective bargaining rights; improvements in housing, health and education; social insurance; pensions; economic policies which encouraged import substitution industrialization; growth in real wages of up to 50%; and an increased share of employees in national income from 45% to a record 58%.

From the 1950s to the 1980s democratic transition

After the Revolución Libertadora military coup in 1955, which ousted Perón and outlawed Peronism, the CGT was banned from politics and its leadership replaced with government appointees. In response, the CGT began a destabilization campaign to end Perón's proscription and to obtain his return from exile. Amid ongoing strikes over both declining real wages and political repression, AOT textile workers' leader Andrés Framini and President Arturo Frondizi negotiated an end to six years of forced government receivership over the CGT in 1961. This concession, as well as the lifting of the Peronists' electoral ban in 1962, led to Frondizi's overthrow, however. During the 1960s, the leaders of the CGT attempted to create a "Peronism without Perón" – that is, a form of Peronism that retained the populist ideals set forth by Juan Perón, but rejected the personality cult that had developed around him in the 1940s and 1950s. The chief exponents of this strategy were the Unión Popular, founded by former Foreign Minister Juan Atilio Bramuglia (who, as chief counsel for the Unión Ferroviaria rail workers' union, had a key role in forming the alliance between labor and Perón), and UOM steelworkers' leader Augusto Vandor, who endorsed the CGT's active participation in elections against Perón's wishes and became the key figure in this latter movement. Vandor and Perón both supported President Arturo Illia's overthrow in 1966, but failed to reach an agreement with dictator Juan Carlos Onganía afterward.

While membership in CGT unions remained well below their peak before Perón's 1955 overthrow, they enjoyed unprecedented resources during the 1960s. The CGT diversified their assets (largely restituted by Frondizi) through investment banking via the Banco Sindical, captive insurance, and investments such as real estate; indeed, by 1965, union dues accounted for only a third of CGT unions' income as a whole. Besides strike funds and employee health insurance organizations (obras sociales), unions plowed these profits into member services such as clinics, retirement homes, kindergartens, libraries, technical schools, subsidized retail chains, and hotels in seaside Mar del Plata and elsewhere. A thriving balance sheet also increasingly engendered corruption among union leaders, however. Many solicited bribes from employers using the threat of strike action and one – Commercial Union leader Armando March – was convicted in 1969 of embezzling up to US$30 million from his union's accounts over the course of the decade.

The 1968 split between the CGT-Azopardo and the CGT de los Argentinos

The election of Print Union leader Raimundo Ongaro as Secretary General in 1968 led to a new schism at the CGT. This was owed as much to the rivalry between Ongaro and other labor leaders, as to the "divide and conquer" strategy pursued by Labor Minister Rubens San Sebastián (who made the schism inevitable by refusing to certify Ongaro's election). The CGT would now be divided into the CGT-Azopardo, which gathered proponents of collaboration with the military junta (also named "participationists", including the general secretary of the CGT Augusto Vandor, as well as José Alonso and the future general secretary of the CGT-Azopardo José Ignacio Rucci); and the CGTA (CGT de los Argentinos), a more radical union headed by Ongaro. The CGTA, which also included the Córdoba Light and Power Workers' leader Agustín Tosco, played a key role in the Cordobazo student-labor uprising of 1969, during which it called for a general strike. The military junta then jailed most of the CGTA leadership, who were close to left-wing causes such as the Movement of Priests for the Third World, Liberation Theology, and the Grupo Cine Liberación film movement.

Following the failure of a 120-day strike at the Fabril Financiera industrial conglomerate, and the reconciliation between Augusto Vandor – leader of the "participationists" – and Perón, the CGTA witnessed many of its unions joining the "62 Organizations," the Peronist political front of the CGT. Perón and his delegate, Jorge Paladino, followed a cautious line of opposition to the military junta, criticizing with moderation the neoliberal policies of the junta but waiting for discontent inside the government. Despite this, in 1969 the CGTA still boasted 286,184 members;Oscar R. Anzorena, Tiempo de violencia y utopía (1966–1976), Editorial Contrapunto, 1987, p. 51 while the Nueva Corriente de Opinión (or Participationism), headed by José Alonso and Construction Union leader Rogelio Coria, boasted 596,863 members; and the CGT Azopardo, headed by Vandor, boasted 770,085 members and the majority in the Confederal Congress.

Assassinations of the leadership and conflict with the far left The 1969 assassination of UOM Secretary General Augusto Vandor, and that of the CGT Secretary General, José Alonso, in 1970, created a power vacuum that left Vandor's conservative successor at the UOM, Lorenzo Miguel, at the CGT's leading power-broker. He used his influence to advance a rival within the UOM, José Ignacio Rucci, as the new Secretary General of the CGT. The pragmatic Miguel thus turned a rival into an ally, while impeding the more combative Light and Power workers' leader, Agustín Tosco, from rising to the powerful post.

Rucci maintained good relations with the dictatorship and earned the aging Perón's friendship. The next years were blemished by often bloody internal disputes and the fight against the leftist Montoneros, however, and in September 1973, a commando killed Secretary-General Rucci. The Montoneros, who neither claimed responsibility nor denied it, were accused of Rucci's death, and the event triggered an escalating conflict between left and right-wing Peronists spearheaded by the Montoneros and the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance, respectively. Other CGT leaders killed by leftists include Machine and Autoworkers Union head Dirk Kloosterman and Construction Union head Rogelio Coria.

Dirty War Staunchly anti-Communist, in 1975 the CGT affiliated itself with the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). Following the March 1976 coup, however, 10,000 factory delegates, of a total of 100,000, were arrested.Hugo Moreno, Le désastre argentin. Péronisme, politique et violence sociale (1930–2001), editions Syllepse, 2005, p. 144 During the Dirty War of the second half of the 1970s at least 2,700, or 30%, of the disappeared were blue-collar workers; this included numerous CGT leaders and activists, notably René Salamanca of the Córdoba Auto Workers' Union and Light and Power Union leader Oscar Smith. At first temporarily suspended, the CGT was then dissolved by the junta. Despite having been outlawed, by 1978 the CGT unions had reorganized themselves into two factions: one supporting frontal opposition to the dictatorship (known initially as the "Commission of 25"), and the other supporting negotiation with the military, named at first CNT and then CGT-Azopardo (led by Ramón Baldassini and Jorge Triaca); both the CGT-Brasil and the CGT-Azopardo were named after the streets on which the headquarters were located. CGT-Azopardo was thus able to negotiate with the military dictatorship the control of employee health insurance organizations.