This article presents an analysis of the evolution of collective bargaining in grassroots trade unionism in Chile between 1990 and 2010, when the return to democracy offered a new political scenario to explore the potential of their organisations. Through the use of multiple statistical, documentary and bibliographical sources, we investigate the scope and limitations of their economic struggles at the level of establishments, showing a very restricted trade union deployment, subject to numerous threats from employers and with various obstacles to the exercise of their bargaining activity, which for these reasons became mainly an instrument to defend basic rights and prevent the fall in real wages rather than to dispute corporate profit.