This article retrieves the results of a research about the collective subjectivity involved in the unemployed movement in Argentina. We analyze the collective senses involved in the construction of the demand of "work" that this movement develops. We reconstruct the historical senses of work articulated in the movement's discourse, by exploring the displacements and the semantic condensations that make of work a dense signifier. The articulation of those meanings of work in the subaltern subjectivity is a key to understand the social mobilization phenomenon, due to its potentiality to signify a social situation (unemployment) as damage and as a point of reference for organization and collective action.