[4] 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).

[7] 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%.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[6] 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.

[16] The CGT and labor in general was suppressed not only directly, but by a sharp turn to the right in economic policy embodied by Economy Minister José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz.

Repeated wage freezes that led to a 40% decline in real pay, as well as free trade policies and financial deregulation that damaged industrial output and domestic credit, adversely impacted the CGT.

The regrouped CGT called a second general strike on 22 July 1981, as a wave of bank failures led to sharp recession, and rallied tens of thousands.

Thousands were subsequently detained, and two days later, greatly weakened, the military junta began the Falklands War in an ill-fated attempt to bolster nationalistic feeling and unite the country behind its rule.

Disunity at the CGT and a renewed wave of strikes dovetailed into an effective campaign message by the Peronists' traditional rivals – the UCR and its nominee, Raúl Alfonsín – who denounced both the ongoing chaos and the association between Labor and the junta, criticizing a "military-labor pact."

With hyperinflation corroding the economy by 1989, the CGT introduced a 26-point program to support Justicialist Party nominee Carlos Menem's presidential bid, including measures such as declaring a unilateral external debt default.

Menem won the 1989 elections on a populist campaign platform, but entrusted the Ministry of Economy to the Bunge y Born company, a major agribusiness firm.

Menem's ample victories in the 1991 mid-term elections gave momentum to his agenda of labour reforms, many of which included restricting overtime pay and easing indemnifications for layoffs, for instance.

[19] Aside from these shows of force, the CGT, led by Food Processing Union leader Rodolfo Daer, remained conciliatory with the anti-labor Menem for the sake of the Justicialist Party.

The collapse of de la Rúa's government in late 2001 made way for the parliamentary selection of former Buenos Aires Province Governor Eduardo Duhalde, whose alliance to MTA leader Hugo Moyano helped lead to the gathering of much of what remained of the CGT under his leadership.

Benefiting from a close alliance with Kirchnerism (in power in Argentine Government since 2003), Moyano leveraged his capacity as head of the Council on Salaries (an officially sanctioned advisory board) to secure a stronger collective bargaining position and frequent increases in the minimum wage.

[21] From the 1990s onward, and in spite its strength as the only labor representative in many forums, the CGT has faced growing opposition from other trade unions, such as the CTA, or the left-leaning grassroots organisations of unemployed people known as Piqueteros (Picketing Men), groups first in evidence during the Menem years which later become tenuously allied with the Kirchner administrations.