ILPC 2026

During the last Uruguayan dictatorship (1973-1985), forms of control designed to undermine the strength of trade union organizations were tried out of the State. Although this seems to be a constant in the history of the relationship between employer sectors, the State and workers, in the mentioned period it occurred in a special way. The union organizations, mostly based in the “Convención Nacional de Trabajadores” (CNT), were quickly outlawed. During the general strike that began on the day of the coup d'état, the new government authorized the bosses to resort to the public force to repress any demonstration. They also tried on two occasions to regulate the functioning of the trade union organizations as well as to expand the social consensus. The last attempt, proposed in 1981, was used by a new generation of union activists and clandestine militants to organize the workers. This is how the “Plenario Intersindical de Trabajadores” (PIT) emerged and then merged with the "old" CNT, forming the PIT-CNT.
The historiography about workers and their organizations is quite meager for the Uruguayan case, except for particular periods better studied. Although the last dictatorship and its antecedents have been widely visited by numerous social scientists, the study of the role of workers and trade union organizations has been left aside, except for some specific works. The problem of the scarcity of documents referring to that time can be corrected, at least partially, by the consideration of memories and essays of people linked to the trade union environment.
The objective of this paper is to present in a general and exploratory way a tracking of the main measures taken by the last Uruguayan dictatorial government tending to repress and control the trade union organizations on the one hand, and the pretensions of organizing a union movement favorable to the regime, for another. Likewise, the responses of trade union and political organizations to these measures will be considered.
The approach of this issue has allowed to visualize several facets of the period until now little studied: search of social consensus on the part of the regime, forms of clandestine resistance, continuities and discontinuities in the positions of the tendencies of the union movement, new / old forms of organization (Convention, Central or Plenary), intergenerational tensions, among others. Putting these issues in dialogue with other views will surely enrich its study.