ILPC 2026

 From the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, the Puerto de Buenos Aires became one of the largest in the continent and the hub of a rail and river transport network which has been the central economic activity of Argentina. Above its structural transformation and complex infrastructure, port operating originated in the daily work of thousands of workers from diverse backgrounds, trades and ages. This paper explores the forms of port labor: stowage, work aboard merchant ships and shipbuilding. The dockers, concentrated in docks and wharves, performed the tasks of loading and unloading for the transport and storage of goods. This practice in those days developed around the increased steam navigation and load packages, bundles and sacks, and in an incipient mechanized large-scale stowage.  Merchant shipped workers, aboard steamers and sailing ships, transport woods along the river and coasts from the places of production to where merchandise would be sold for consumption or processing. Maritime workers were composed of very different categories among the crew: sailors, stokers, waiters and cooks. Between official there was captains, officers, boatswains and machinists. Finally, the workers of the shipyard, dedicated to repair and, to a lesser extent, to the construction of boats and barges, had also a great diversity of trades: painters, carpenters, machinists, among many others. The analysis of each of these labour process, its concrete historical forms, categories, hierarchies, conflicts and solidarities, allow us to know the particularities of each activity, their organizational and material transformations, the new demands and specific dynamics. As approximation to the working universe, the reconstruction of the port labour processes shows working experience in the immediate field production, stressing conflicting character of work, technology and class relationships. Such an analysis of the labour process constitutes a fundamental conceptual and methodological tool to understand the forms of exploitation, work experience and their characteristics in the social history perspective. This analysis puts in the foreground not only the working experience, but also the particular port enterprise configuration: exporting companies, importers of coal, construction of dams, dredging, river and maritime transport, railways, and also small shipyards and fluvial patterns. In this connected heterogeneity, various labour processes converge to form a particular labour community in the port territory. Their analysis is based on an extensive bibliography and a different documentary corpus, which includes state sources (censuses, regulations, reports and balances of Prefectura General de Puertos, publications of the Departamento Nacional del Trabajo) company files (memoirs and proceedings of the Centro de Navegación Transatlántica, among others) commercial, local and tradeunion newspapers.